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A partially boarded up Apple store in downtown Portland, Oregon.
By Ed Avis
Could 2020 get any worse for Precision Images in Portland? The APDSP member firm was hammered by COVID – sales in April were down 46 percent – then in late summer protests in downtown Portland became violent. Finally, in September smoke from nearby forest fires smothered the city.
“We’re on fire and up to our eyeballs in political unrest,” says Phil Guzie, co-founder of the company. “I think our business community is running for the hills out of downtown Portland. And we’re feeling the effect of that. I think until the election is over we’ll have to deal with this.”
Guzie’s situation is bad but he actually has a lot of company. An APDSP survey earlier this week reveals a tough situation: 41 percent of respondents say business this summer was down by 26 percent to 50 percent over last summer, and 9 percent said it was down more than 50 percent. Only 9 percent said business was about the same or up from last year. The remaining 41 percent said business is down but less than 25 percent.
Remote Work
Has the fact that so many people are working at home during the COVID crisis affected sales? Yes, says Susan Smith, owner of East Bay Blue Print & Supply, which has three locations around Oakland, California.
“Trying to deliver for a while was difficult because so many customers were working at home,” she says. “I’d say that a lot of people that work for mid-size companies are back in the office but there’s still a few employees working at home. Some county departments are open but a few of those people are still working from home. And they don’t move as fast when they’re working from home.”
Guzie reports the same thing about remote workers: “We’re seeing a reduction in printing and an increase in deliveries to their residences.”
Going Digital
Another issue – and one that will have long-term effects on reprographics – is that some municipalities were motivated by COVID to go to digital submission of documents for permitting.
“We have talked about paperless construction process for a bazillion years, but this has accelerated that,” Guzie says. “Our city required wet stamped and signed documents for permits [but] were talking about digital for years and years, and now we got there. So that’s a lot of printing that was required that we don’t do anymore.”
Smith says she has seen the same thing in Oakland. Some of the cities weren’t doing any new permits during the height of the shutdown, and when they re-opened, they went digital. That’s not a total loss for her – some clients are asking her to scan in drawings that need to be submitted.
But of course the long-term consequence of an all-digital submission process is undeniable. If submittals are done digitally, that means several sets of prints that normally would have been made are eliminated.
COVID Bright Spots
There have been some unexpected bright spots to the COVID crisis. More than 9 out of 10 respondents to the survey said they are creating signage related to COVID, such as social distancing signs and floor graphics.
And some firms have expanded their services to include more advanced work: A quarter of respondents are making “sneeze guards” and other dividers and more than 30 percent are making face shields and other safety equipment.
The printing and acrylic work due to COVID presumably won’t outlive the crisis, but the new clients that reprographics shops secured because of that work might survive. Thirty-five percent of respondents said they’re now doing work for healthcare facilities that they had not worked for before; 24 percent said that about schools and colleges; and 24 percent said that about restaurants. Other important categories of new customers include banks, retailers and factories.
Guzie reports that Precision is making acrylic dividers for educational institutions, healthcare facilities and amusement parks. It’s mostly custom work that requires a site visit and measurements.
“Are they one-and-done customers? Or will it lead to something else?” Guzie asks. “We’ve gotten into some schools’ facilities departments and that may lead to more work. But we also have done some work for coffee shops, and they’re not going to be replacing their sneeze guards every six months. But are there decals or A-frame table toppers we can sell them?”
In some cases reprographics shops are doing COVID-related work for non-AEC clients that they previously worked for, but with different services. For example, Smith says East Bay Blue Print is doing social distancing floor graphics for the county hospital, something they had not done before.
“The hospital’s building department was a customer before, but not as much as they are now,” Smith says.
One more potential bright spot: Exactly half of the respondents to the survey reported that they are doing some work for AEC clients that they had not served before.
Talking to the Right People
As with any sales situation, finding the right people to talk to is critical. That’s been a challenge with shops selling COVID-related signage, because many potential customers already have relationships with other printers or sign makers who can do that kind of work.
“In the old environment there was just a handful of people who could create construction documents, but with signage and that there are hundreds of competitors in that world,” Guzie notes. “Plus we don’t always know who to talk to at a client’s firm about signage. We’ll have a contact we’ve been playing golf with for 30 years who buys reprographics prints, but that guy is not the one buying signage. So now we have to go back to those firms and say, ‘Who is buying this stuff for you?’ And it’s a whole other person. And they of course have been golfing with somebody else for 30 years and have a relationship with them.”
Optimism?
There is hope among the reprographics community that the industry will rebound fairly quickly. Data about upcoming construction projects is looking slightly less dire – the AIA reported that inquiries into new projects grew in August for the first time since February – so traditional reprographics might resume somewhat.
The survey respondents see some light at the end of the tunnel: 12 percent think business will bounce back to pre-COVID levels by the end of this year; 51 percent think it will rebound by next summer; and 26 percent think it will take more than a year to bounce back. Seven percent don’t think it will ever bounce back.
“It’s pretty slow,” Smith says. “We changed our hours back to normal for a while, but now they’re back to less. It can be very slow at times.”
