Talking Trends with HP’s Global Lead for Large-Format

Mercè Barcons

HP’s General Manager and Global Head of Large Format Go-To-Market, Mercè Barcons, sat down to talk about the trends the company is seeing in the wide-format and signage space for 2022 and beyond.

Of note, she says, is that while the pandemic has certainly accelerated the transformation of the large-format market, the pressures the industry was facing were already present long before COVID-19 was part of the global conversation. There are a few trends, in particular, that she believes will continue to play a large role in shaping the industry in the months ahead.

Turn-around times will continue to shorten.

“Workflows and the way operations run have transformed over time,” she says, “but these concerns are even more important now. The fact is that printers are saying that in 50% of jobs, customers are asking for 48 hours or less. This has forced printers to think about how they are running their business, and about using automation to improve workflows.”

She notes that to survive, PSPs will need to be even more cognizant of their efficiency and be willing to transform the way they operate to be able to react to these fast turn-around times customers are demanding. Also putting pressure on the need for better workflows is the fact that the jobs themselves consist of shorter runs, she noted, so at HP, “the innovation team is thinking about things like how to use AI for automation, and for things like fleet management and diagnostics,” as part of the effort to streamline every part of the production process.

Sustainability will continue to be a major issue.

Barcons notes that most — if not all — Fortune 500 companies have made pledges to be carbon neutral by 2030, which impacts the vendors they work with, including their print providers. In fact, she says, when asked, 80% of print service providers note that sustainability is a priority for 2022, with everything from better managing energy use, to adopting more robust recycling practices, to using less abrasive inks are all steps PSPs are taking to improve their environmental footprint.

When it comes to the media side of that equation, she says that HP is working hard across the board with media vendors to not only certify more sustainable media options, but to also help mitigate some of the paper shortages for their customers as much as possible.

Security is becoming more important.

The third trend Barcons notes was that security is becoming even more of a talking point post-pandemic, as more and more businesses move to a permanent hybrid, or fully remote, work environment. “With digitization, comes the need for security,” she says, “and when working with a vendor, businesses want to go with the one that has the best solution. That is going to be a critical difference going forward.”

HP, she notes, prides itself on having “best in class” solutions on the security front, with pieces that address everything from the creation of the job all the way through to the end of life for the piece, and how to not only make it more sustainable, but also more secure. Points such as ensuring data integrity, to protecting entire systems from incursions by eliminating points of vulnerability that could serve as entry points, are all part of the security picture.

Applications are getting more personal.

Personalization was already a major growth area pre-pandemic, but the last few years have seen that demand ramp up far more quickly, Barcons says. Applications such as wallcoverings and vehicle wraps are just two of the traditional wide-format applications that are seeing a surge in demand for more individual designs — especially from consumers.

That said, she notes, working directly with consumers is “very different in how they approach the markets.” The vast majority of PSPs are still focusing on the B2B space, especially since working direct to consumer requires a very different type of operation, but the digital transformation, she says, has enabled PSPs to tap directly into this growing market, and “it is our work as a provider to make sure they can deliver on [those job requests] and respond to those customers, who have very different designs, and a very different mindset.”

As we continue to move closer to the end of the pandemic, business isn’t’ going to just return to how it was before 2020. The challenge is looking ahead at what the next normal will look like, and for wide-format printers, determining how to best position themselves to be ahead of the growth curve. These trends will influence the shape of the rest of 2022, and likely into 2023 and beyond, so the time to think about the future is now.