In-Person PRINTING United

This October will mark the second PRINTING United show, a new event—heir to the erstwhile SGIA Expo—that launched in 2019. The inaugural show, held in Dallas, represented the “convergence” of all the disparate silos the printing industry has become in the 21st century, encompassing commercial, wide format, packaging, industrial, textiles and more.

As I reported at the time, “Anyone who puts ink on anything is likely to find something of interest; production inkjet presses for small-format printing sat side-by-side with wide-format printers; digital textile printers sat next to screen presses. Vehicles sat ready to be wrapped, and in one part of the show floor, there were flocks of feather flags. There were inkjet corrugated packaging presses. Heck, there was even an offset press.”

PRINTING United was a new trade show for a new era, and hopes had been high for the second annual event—but we all know how that went down. In 2020, PRINTING United went virtual and while those who attended it got much out of the online show, it lacked the "je ne sais quois" of an in-person event. 

So now we are highly anticipating the second annual (or perhaps second-and-a-halfth annual) PRINTING United, to be held Oct. 6–8, 2021, at the Orange County Convention Center in Orlando, Fla. The convention center offers 1 million square feet to play with—25% more than Dallas—and Mark Subers, president of PRINTING United, expects to fill about three-fourths of that.

“If I had to look into my crystal ball, I’d say we’re going to land just about where we were space-wise in 2019,” said Subers. “We’ve got a lot of momentum right now in labels, packaging and mailing and fulfillment. We’re probably down a percentage from 2019 with people just being cautious in 2021, but we’ve expanded in other areas. So it’s a little bit more diverse, but just as much space, or close to it, that we had in 2019.”

As for registration, there is no doubt that there is a great pent-up demand to travel, especially to major industry events, although as I write this at the beginning of August, the COVID case numbers in Florida are not especially encouraging. Still, Subers is expecting attendance to be only slightly off 2019.

“We expect to land at around 80% of our 2019 numbers,” he said. “We’d be thrilled with 80%, but even if figures come in less than that, we will still be bigger than any previous show we’ve had, aside from Dallas in 2019. We just concluded incredibly successful, sold-out Inkjet and Wide-format Summit events in person, showing that business travelers are coming out in full force to support in-person events like these. Our priority is keeping industry professionals safe, while helping them get back to business.” 

One encouraging factor is that PRINTING United Alliance research recently found that print sales have been on the rise—up 10.4%—the first increase in more than one year.

"The biggest number that impacts the PRINTING United Expo is that our index in one quarter went from 39% of respondents saying they were going to spend capex investments in the next 12 months to 60%—21 percentage points in one quarter," Subers said. "So I think folks are coming out of the malaise. That 39-60% capital expenditure number is really a tell for me about where people’s minds are going to be in terms of where capex spending is going to be happening. I’m really excited about that number as it shows that confidence is growing across the industry.”

On the show floor, there will be various application zones and pavilions highlighting the different print sectors.

“Apparel is a big focus for us this year where we we’ve got a big apparel zone,” said Subers. “It’s really a microfactory, with lots of equipment and lots of active printed samples. I think it will be a really wonderful experience.”

The show floor will also include a packaging pavilion, a Latin American pavilion (with Spanish-language educational sessions), and—as has been de rigueur at events these days, a vehicle wrap area in the PDAA Wide Format Zone. 

This may sound strange to say, but it will also be welcome to see some heavy metal on the show floor—it’s been the rare event in recent years that had any offset equipment, but Heidelberg and Ryobi will be bringing their heavy machinery, and there may be more.

Outside the show floor, there will be close to 60 educational sessions that cover the waterfront of production, sales and marketing topics. 

If there was one advantage to the shutdown year it was that event producers built out elaborate virtual trade show platforms—and as much as we may all have Zoom fatigue at this point, there are certain advantages to an online event. How much of PRINTING United’s virtual platform will be retained for the 2021 event? Will it be a hybrid event? 

“We really took a three-part approach to the PRINTING United Expo this year,” said Subers.

The first is a show “preview,” that will start running prior to the physical show.

“We’re going to be doing technology previews of things that we hope to see on the floor, all these educational sessions that the editorial team has built out and put together. They’re open to anyone that registers for the show, but they’re not intended to be a standalone digital experience.”

The second part is the show itself, of course, and then the third part will be a “wrap up,” or recordings of all the sessions, which will be available through the "Map Your Show" digital experience. There will also be “here’s what you missed” highlights clips. And, of course, there will be a printed "Show Daily." 

“It’s going to be a great show,” said Subers. “It’ll be very diverse with solutions, and I’m really looking forward to seeing everyone and back into the swing of things.”

More info, and any COVID-related precautions, can be found at https://www.printingunited.com. WhatTheyThink | Printing News will be in Booth 4652. Stop by and say hi!