Go West Young Man!

August 2008

multipage

"GoWest, young man," served as the mantra for the nineteenth century American migration. The gold rush of 1849 was the impetus for much of the migration of Americans and immigrants to California and theWest Coast. Indiana newspaper writer John Soule's 1851 advice would be popularized by Horace Greeley, and the trend of westward expansion accelerated from the Appalachian Mountains in the eighteenth century across the country to California. United States citizens as well as immigrants would migrate all the way to the Pacific Ocean by the mid-nineteenth century seeking a better life. From why people decided to move to how they would transform the places that they settled, western movement was a landmark phenomenon in American history.

From a business perspective, theWest has been the "gold mine" for NPES members for decades as the North American Market, Western Europe and Japan have constituted over 76% of the worldwide market for print. Today, the U.S. is still the largest print market by far at over $182 billion. Japan is still #2 with Germany and other European markets still in the top ten. From a regional perspective, North America and Western Europe constitute 62% of the worldwide market, so it is clear that they are still important and deserve serious attention by all NPES members.

Much attention in the business press and here at NPES has focused on the BRIC countries (Brazil, Russia, India and China). Clearly, the fastest growing markets over the past decade have been India and China with Brazil and Russia not far behind. In fact, according to the PRIMIR/NPES "Worldwide Market for Print" study, China now ranks as the #3 market in the world and India is #12 and forecasted to grow to #8 by 2011.

NPES has a presence in all of these markets and we just passed our 10-year Anniversary of the NPES China office. So in some respects, we've been ahead of the curve in seeking out new markets for our members' products. Although these markets are still considered to be "developing," in many respects they are "developed"...especially when compared to other emerging markets.

According to a recent article by Harold Meyerson in the Washington Post, "Doing business in China is beginning to cost real money. Not that Chinese workers are buying second homes or anything like that: Their average wage is still a little short of a dollar an hour.

But so many Chinese have now left their villages for the factories that the once bottomless pool of new young workers is beginning to run dry, and the wages of assembly-line employees are rising 10 percent a year." So, where are manufacturers going to find the lowest cost wages today? Meyerson says that many are fleeing south of the border--not our border (Mexico costs way too much.) but China's. They're bound for Vietnam.