34. Keep Writing Your Story

34.

Keep Writing Your Story

It’s time to wrap things up for now. I hope you have found some inspiration about how and why you should transform now, and some courage to act instead of standing still and doing nothing.

This book is not meant to be an encyclopedia when it comes to facts and data, which is almost impossible because facts change every day in this fast-moving packaging industry. However, the reasons WHY and strategies on HOW to transform will be there forever. You can pick the ones that best fit you and your business and start implementing. It will keep you on your toes and make you stronger and braver moving forward. I hope it will help you continue building your own story. “If you don’t grow you decline”. The mental transformation when changing from an old value chain to a new and today digitally based value chain is too often underestimated. The build-up and implementation of new cornerstones regarding how to do, sell, and set the price is different today. If you do it correctly and successfully you will have a profitable execution of your new direction for your own business. When you start making your own story, find out where you are today. Take your own data of today and years back regarding turnover, gross margins, profit, number of prints, number of jobs, run length per job, etc. That gives you the statistics to build a future trend line on, and you will clearly see how the future will look if you don’t change – if you don’t do anything. Are you happy with that development? If not, accept where you are today and use this book as a base in making your own story (transformation).

Be self-realistic and self-critical of yourself and your business. I mean that in a good way because this is for you and for the sake of your own business. Changing from somewhere you don’t really accept, as a basis, will only waste your time and become very expensive. Not being true to yourself will cost you dearly and confuse you and your customer even more later on. Therefore, no transformation will appear and your investment will end up as a cost only; “you can’t change anything if you don’t accept where you are today”. I have seen too many businesses through my 40 years of working with market transformations that weren’t true to themselves, and then used it as an excuse and easy way out. “Maybe digital is the right thing, but in the future, NOT now and NOT for me, I’ve tried”. You need to make a true valuation of the present situation to be able to move on in the right direction. Now you know the facts and it’s up to you to start making your own story.

“If you want something in your life you’ve never had, you’ll have to do something you’ve never done.”

- JD Houston.

When is the right time to transform? One good indication is, in general, the economic cycles that go up and then go down every 8 to 10 years. Right now, we are leaving a high economy and facing a time of consolidation before finding our way down the hill. It provides us with many reasons, and the amount of time, to change and do things differently. When existing businesses, products, and values slow down it also opens up a need for a transformation. Today, external factors like Donald Trump, who still boosts and pushes the American economy, could shove us outside of the standard economy cycle, which normally then result in a deeper recession. In the packaging market, we now have plenty of new technology that will result in big disruptions of the supply chain. We also have indicators, like the demand toward sustainable, recyclable, and compostable media that also create a big push for change. The graphic industry and packaging market are now more than ready for a disruption and transformation; maybe even a total flip of the market. The good news is that this will generate a new and improved profit for the winners in this market, while the losers will be the one’s doing nothing.

As we look even further ahead, at the next upcoming time for a transformation, we also expect a new paradigm shift that we call the 4th Industrial Revolution. The driver for this is a big and wide technology change including both AI (Artificial Intelligence) and VR (Virtual Reality) and that will also change our day-to-day life. For example, a few sensors in or on our body that checks our pulse, temp, levels of sugar, blood pressure, etc. will produce information from us that will be enough to predefine ourselves. We’ll get information about how we feel and what we need, before we actually feel it. First only collecting the information, then also doing something about it in a practical way. We’ll always be online, already with the next mobile-system (5G) information we’ll stream and flow everything continuously and personalized, the “me and myself” generation. In many cases, packaging also becomes much smarter, more intelligent, and interactive. Connected packages will interact and tell us what we need and what we would like to buy from a store (online or e-store). Problems with reading small texts, as on many labels and packages today, will cease to exist. The intelligent package and our sensors will communicate directly so we’ll know if the product is suitable for us or not. The packaging itself will also include information on how to recycle and compost it in the correct way. To me, the heart of this book is the power of getting released when the market really transforms. The market transmission is an engine that has so much power when it turns into a new chain with new values – dividing and splitting the market into winners and losers. Disruption through new tech must work together with the mental part of the journey, forming a new business model. Buying a new digital press is probably the easiest part. It’s the things surrounding that decision you need to be aware of and in control of. I have collected as much information as possible in a year and a half about today’s packaging market, data, arguments, inspiration, and motivation for you to feel more prepared and inspired to start your own journey and to really transform. The machine part of the digital transformation, including finishing, workflow, and other tools, I have intentionally left out of this book – our first-class specialists at Visutech and HP Indigo will guide you through that part of the process.

The future is increasingly exciting. As you close this book, the next chapter will be your own story. Good luck, work hard, and we’ll see each other down this road.