Shades of Greg: 2016. The Year of The Flood

11/2015

Mergers, acquisitions, sell-outs and less paper.

2016 will see the beginning of the End.

More signs.  The tipping point is in your rearview mirror, if this is news to you, it's too late.

• Today, Xerox may be running out of ink with quarter after quarter of declining technology business. They've also decided to scrap the wax.
• Lexmark, after years of building a portfolio of MPS contracts is finally ready to sell out.
• HP, the thickest of the thick, is splitting into two. HPG, (HP Inc.) can now move quicker and turn their profits into R/D for print.  Will this five billion dollar start-up be the last print vendor standing? Can the old Printelligent model work?  Mother Blue has been adding vans almost as fast as she's laid off employees.  She has an impressive array of services, and a behemoth of a team ready to take the argument to the streets - direct.
• Samsung may gobble up Nuance, enhancing a practically non-existent MpS program.
• The independent channel continues to shrink and evolve.  Just this week, Loffler joined the Xerox dealer channel and Marco cashes in, selling to an equity firm.
• On top of all this, the American Forest & Paper Association released their yearly report stating, "...total printing-writing paper shipments were down 4% in September as compared to September 2014."  The same report a year earlier sited a 7% drop from 2013 to 2014.

Taken individually, the list has one dimension.

But observed from a distance, and just to the side, these points reveal a multi-dimensional reality: The deluge is here.

Knee deep in a receding surf for the last 18 months the final Wave is coming.  If you haven't sold or gotten out the only choice you have is to hunker down and hope for the best.

So what does it mean?

The End is just the beginning...ask yourself this one question,

"If office print disappeared tomorrow, what would I be doing the day after?"

Whatever answer you come to, you are absolutely correct.