LFP - Large-Format-Printing
New SGIA Market Strategies Report Available
Friday 25. July 2008 - Industry snapshot of online strategies, market concerns & sales staff structure
Specialty imagers with less than $1 million in annual sales this year spent a median of $25,000 to $49,000 on their sales staff compensation, advertising and other selling expenditures, according to a new Market Strategies Survey by SGIA Surveys & Statistics.
The SGIA report, featuring the Associations largest survey participation rate ever, found these imaging shops paid a median range of $25,000 to $49,000 in sales staff compensation, up from a median of $16,961 in 2006.
Larger specialty imaging companies (reporting $1 million to $4 million in annual sales) said in 2008 they spent $250,000 to $299,999 to sell their products. Their sales staff compensation was in the $150,000 to $199,999 range, compared with a median compensation of $86,393 in 2006, the SGIA report said.
The report, which examined the industrys online marketing strategies, sales staff structure, cost of sales and market concerns, also stated the majority of survey respondents (93.4 percent) have a company Web site. Specialty imagers rely more on online tools such as links in third-party blogs (up to 7 percent of users in 2008 from 4.6 percent in 2007) and social networking sites (12.3 percent compared with 8.3 percent last year).
“Its interesting that imagers are increasing their use of the Internet as a collaboration tool, including blogs, social networking and other Web 2.0 tools,” said Katy Sauer Lellelid, SGIAs Business/Marketplace Analyst.
Most specialty imagers have in-house sales staff, but they arent always dedicated solely to sales, according to the report. Suppliers and distributors had the most sales staff dedicated to sales responsibilities (59 percent), followed by graphic producers (46.4 percent) and industrial/in-plant application companies (44.2 percent).
Only 25.2 percent of the garment decorators surveyed had a sales team working solely on sales, according to the report. “This is because most of the garment decorator respondents were small businesses (more than 33 percent had less than $249,000 in 2007 sales) that lacked the resources for dedicated sales staff,” the report stated.
The other groups tended to be larger-scale operations 50 percent or more of the respondents reported 2007 annual sales in the $1 million to more than $20 million range.