The Bottom 15% Didn’t Fail Overnight

When I ran my first print management business in the early 2000s, one of our biggest customers was a national bank. We had built a fantastic relationship with them, and the account represented a significant proportion of our revenue. Then the financial crash happened; the bank decided to centralise its print purchasing through a hub in England, and we lost the account.

Until that point, the business had performed incredibly well. I was young, enthusiastic and confident in my ability to win customers and generate sales. Unfortunately, I was also pretty naïve when it came to running a business. We had far too many eggs in one basket; we'd taken on some really bad debts, and I didn't have the financial understanding I needed to recognise just how vulnerable we were.

Sadly, we never recovered.

I can talk about that experience quite openly now, but I wouldn't want anyone to mistake that for it having been easy. Losing a business is incredibly difficult, particularly when you've invested so much of yourself into building it. For a long time, I could have pointed to the financial crash as the reason things went wrong, and it certainly played a significant part. But looking back, I also have to take responsibility for the decisions I made and, perhaps more importantly, the things I didn't know.

It's an experience I've been reflecting on recently, particularly after reading some of the findings from PRINTING United Alliance's 2026 State of the Industry report. According to the research, the top 20% of printers grew by 15.4%, while the bottom 15% contracted by 19.6%. That's a considerable difference between businesses operating in the same industry, many of which are facing similar challenges around costs, competition and changing customer demand.

Of course, those figures don't tell us exactly why some businesses performed better than others. Every company has its own circumstances, and declining revenue doesn't automatically mean a business is failing. Nevertheless, I think the findings should encourage print business owners to look beyond what's happening in the wider economy and consider what's happening inside their own businesses.

It's easy to attribute disappointing performance to external pressures. Rising material costs, energy prices, customers spending less, and increased competition are all genuine challenges. But while we can't always control those things, we can control many of the decisions we make in response to them.

That's something I didn't fully appreciate when I was running my first printing company. I could sell print without any real difficulty. Finding customers, building relationships and generating business came naturally to me. What I didn't understand nearly well enough was how to manage the financial risks associated with that success. Nobody had ever taught me how to run a business, and I hadn't done enough to educate myself.

Having a major national account felt like a tremendous achievement, and in many respects it was. But I was so focused on the revenue it generated that I wasn't paying nearly enough attention to what losing it would mean. I couldn't control the bank's decision to centralise its purchasing, but I could have done a much better job of understanding and managing our exposure.

That distinction matters because businesses don't always find themselves in difficulty as the result of one catastrophic event. Sometimes the problems have been developing quietly for months or even years, through a series of decisions that seem perfectly reasonable at the time.

Take pricing, for example. A good customer asks you to reduce your price on a job, and because you value the relationship, you agree. A few weeks later, production is quieter than you'd like, so you accept another job at a margin you wouldn't normally entertain. Then a customer requests additional work halfway through production, and rather than having an awkward conversation about extra charges, you absorb the cost.

There's nothing inherently wrong with making commercial concessions. Sometimes they're absolutely the right thing to do. The problem arises when those exceptions become normal practice, and nobody takes the time to review their impact. Before long, you can find yourself producing more work, keeping everyone busy and generating healthy-looking revenue, but with very little profit to show for it.

I see similar thinking when it comes to equipment investment. During a recent Print Mastermind discussion, someone was considering purchasing a digital press with some impressive embellishment capabilities. The technology sounded fantastic, but when we explored the opportunity, it became apparent that there wasn't any existing customer demand to justify the investment.

My suggestion was to consider partnering with another print company that already had the equipment, start offering the service and establish whether there was a genuine commercial opportunity before committing to the purchase. If demand developed and the numbers supported bringing production in-house, then there would be a much stronger case for investing.

I completely understand the attraction of new equipment. We're an industry that loves technology, and there's always something innovative being launched. But a new press doesn't automatically create profitable customers, and investing in additional capacity without understanding where the demand will come from can create more problems than it solves.

In both examples, the underlying issue is much the same. We're making decisions based on what feels right at the time without always taking a step back to consider the longer-term financial implications.

One of the things I regularly encourage print business owners to do is spend more time examining the profitability of the work they're already producing, rather than focusing exclusively on winning more of it. It's surprising how often a business can tell me exactly how much revenue a customer generates but struggles to explain how much profit that relationship actually contributes.

A useful starting point is to compare estimated costs with actual production costs across a selection of completed jobs. Did the work take longer than expected? Were additional materials or labour required? Were changes charged for, or simply absorbed? And ultimately, did the business achieve the margin it expected when the job was quoted?

It's also worth looking at customer profitability more broadly. A customer generating substantial revenue isn't necessarily one of your most valuable customers if servicing that account consumes a disproportionate amount of time and resources. Equally, even a highly profitable customer can represent a significant risk if the business becomes too dependent on them. I learned that particular lesson the hard way.

None of this requires an enormous business improvement programme. Sometimes it starts with identifying one customer, one product category or one area of the business that deserves closer attention, then sitting down with the people who understand the numbers and having an honest conversation about what they're telling you.

And if finance isn't your strongest subject, there's no shame in admitting that. In fact, I'd argue that recognising where your knowledge falls short is one of the most important responsibilities you have as a business owner. Find someone who understands the numbers and can help you make better decisions. I certainly wish I'd been more willing to do that when I had my first printing company.

I don't believe the difference between successful and struggling print businesses can be explained by any single factor. Markets change, customers come and go, and sometimes circumstances genuinely work against us. But I do believe that the willingness to question our decisions, understand our numbers and address uncomfortable issues before they become serious problems can make an enormous difference.

Looking back, I wish someone had challenged me more about the decisions I was making when I ran my own print business. It might not have saved the company, but it would certainly have given me a better chance.

Perhaps that's the question worth considering when you look at your own business today. Is there something you've been meaning to address but keep putting off because you're too busy dealing with everything else?

Whilst we can't control everything happening in our industry, we have a responsibility to pay attention to what's happening inside our own businesses. And sometimes it's the problems we've learned to live with, rather than the ones that arrive unexpectedly, that ultimately do the most damage.

The preceding content was provided by a contributor unaffiliated with Printing Impressions. The views expressed within may not directly reflect the thoughts or opinions of the staff of Printing Impressions. Artificial Intelligence may have been used in part to create or edit this content.