Profitability has been the number one concern for printing operations in multiple surveys recently. Fears that competitors are pricing below cost topped the British Printing Industry Federation’s Printing Outlook Q2 2025.

Profitability was the leading area of concern for respondents in a Printing United Alliance and NAPCO Research state of the printing industry survey.

Competitive pricing is a major theme shaping the industry with pressure on cost effectiveness and operational efficiency driving many technology developments.

However, while productivity improvements may support greater capacity, this often leads to tighter profit margins.

Larger businesses can benefit from appropriate economies of scale and absorb price first strategies, but this makes it harder for smaller operations to compete solely on price. 

As such, attention is turning to exploring ways of increasing profit margins and there is growing interest in embellishments.

In fact, generating profit was the main reason the majority of respondents (54%) in the 2025 Taktiful/WhatTheyThink Digital Embellishment Study added digital embellishment capabilities.

The findings also showed:

• Two thirds of respondents (65%) are satisfied with the profits they make from digital embellishment jobs.
• 35% said that digital embellishment jobs were “always” more profitable than regular CMYK jobs, while 44% said they “usually” are.

So, it was no surprise to hear the survey also found 88% of respondents said their clients are keen to learn more about digital embellishment capabilities.

This interest is obviously affecting investment plans. According to Keypoint Intelligence’s 2024 Color Embellishments 30% of respondents were looking to purchase a printer or press that can produce embellishments inline in the coming year.

However, the digital embellishment study found that only 37% of respondents are satisfied with their sales of these jobs.