Hot Markets for 2007 — Prepare for Growth

Flunking to Number 24 is higher education ($138B, +12 percent; with $3.0B to print, 0 percent). More than 4,216 traditional colleges and universities are competing for 15 million full-time students, and are losing to both foreign schools taking back their populations and to alternative private education ($1.0B to print, +20 percent).

Tuitions ($1.5B to print, +15 percent) increasingly depend on outdoor/transit advertising and free-distribution media containing inserts. Catalogs? No. Athletics ($0.4B, +17 percent) is the biggest point gainer as large universities like Ohio State surpass $1 billion in annual sports revenues. This segment, along with cultural events ($0.5B, +0 percent), continues as a big buyer of posters, programs, signs, tickets and other mostly sheetfed and screen printing. Development ($0.2B, +4 percent) will slow. Curriculum materials—included in publishing, not here—are declining as Web-based learning tools replace textbooks.

Religion and charity ($358B, +0 percent; with $2.9B to print, -1 percent) falls unblessedly to Number 25. No mega-donations are in the offing or offering box. Religion ($0.9B to print, -18 percent) will decline for the second straight year. Now down to one-third of all donations, it graces print with mostly web book, magazine, program and fund-raising packages. Giving to education ($0.3B, +0 percent), especially at the community level, should generate $400 million in small plant sheetfed and digital imaging.

The remaining segments of charity, ranked by giving, are health ($0.3B, +9 percent), arts/culture ($0.1B, +13 percent), human service ($0.1B, -7 percent) and society benefit ($0.1B, +0 percent).

These 25 hottest market- places should account for 64 percent of U.S. GDP, and 92 percent of all printing sales. Off the list, but worthy of sales attention, are Number 26 energy ($4.05T, +16 percent; with $2.3B to print, -15 percent), Number 27 business/professional services ($481B, +8 percent; with $2.0B to print, +13 percent), and aerospace/defense ($148B, +2 percent; with $2.0B to print, +0 percent). Rank the relative presence of each category to the geographies of your plants and sales offices. PI