Capturing Photo Specialty Opportunities with Canon Production Inkjet
Despite the fact that more than one trillion photos are snapped, stored, and shared annually on digital devices, printed images and photo specialty products remain a sought-after way to preserve memories and document experiences. Want proof? Some industry analysts predict the global photo printing and merchandise market might exceed 41 billion dollars by 2027*.
Defining the applications
The consumer market is the most visible driver of growing demand for photo specialties, with millions converting their digital images into photo prints, personalized photobooks, custom holiday cards and invitations, wall art, calendars, magnets, and other creative products and gifts.
The consumer market is the most visible driver of growing demand for photo specialties.
Corporate and nonprofit organizations also use similar products. Photo-intensive business applications include booklets, brochures, newsletters, directories, business cards, and promotional photobooks. In the educational market, photo specialties range from student portraits and IDs to yearbooks, student planners, sports programs, and beyond.
Disrupting the market
The majority of these products have historically been produced on offset or liquid toner presses or with the traditional, chemically based silver halide photo processing that has been used for over a century. But now production inkjet is disrupting the market in a big way. With the ability to produce exceptional quality; at faster speeds; and with reliability, color consistency, higher sustainability, and lower costs, inkjet is not only expanding the availability of photo specialties for the masses but also creating expanded application and ancillary business opportunities for a wide range of print providers.
But now production inkjet is disrupting the market in a big way.
Identifying the opportunities
So, where do these opportunities lie for different segments of the industry?
COMMERCIAL PRINTERS. General print service providers with production inkjet printing capabilities, strong expertise in variable data, color management, and finishing capabilities can profitably grow their business, open new markets, and fill excess capacity by serving as white label providers for other photo specialty entities or by offering their own photo product line.
BOOK PRINTERS. With personalized photobooks moving beyond traditional consumer and corporate markets into education, genealogy, and other verticals, production inkjet allows book printers to capitalize on their ability to offer all kinds of high-quality, short-run, image-intensive books—from wedding albums and family memory books to high-value real estate books, architectural books, travel books, cookbooks, children’s books, coffee table books, and more.
TRANSACTIONAL AND DIRECT MAIL PRINTERS. Seasonality is a major challenge for this market, with estimates showing 26 to 30 percent of a printer’s annual photo specialty revenue earned between Thanksgiving and Christmas. But this unique challenge is also an opportunity for transactional and direct mail printers that are adept at complex variable data projects—like personalized holiday cards, party invitations, calendars, and photo-based gifts—and that may be facing lower cyclical demands from businesses during this time.
As the high volume inkjet market share leader, Canon Solutions America is committed to making production inkjet a core technology for photo specialty printing.
Delivering the inkjet advantage
Production inkjet has emerged as the competitive platform for photo specialty production, capable of producing stunning quality, adapting to unique market demands, and creating profitable new applications for print service providers. As the high volume inkjet market share leader, Canon Solutions America is committed to making production inkjet a core technology for photo specialty printing. It is setting the pace for innovation in the category and focused on helping print providers identify and capture this fast-growing market’s high-margin opportunities.
*SOURCE: Credence Research, 2019
Did you know?
Canon’s Photo Smart Suite is a flexible portfolio of presses, workflow, media, and finishing solutions that helps PSPs best leverage production inkjet technology for the profitable photo specialty market.
