Mark Hahn

Mark Hahn

Mark Hahn is a managing director and founder of Graphic Arts Advisors, a boutique strategic financial advisory and consulting firm focused exclusively on the printing, packaging, mailing, marketing services, brand management, and related graphic communications industries. With more than 35 years of graphic communications experience in the areas of finance, operations, sales, M&A, and general management, Hahn has served as chief financial officer, chief operating officer and other senior positions with several commercial printing companies, as well as founding and eventually selling his own printing company.The firm assists company owners and management, as well as their lenders, investors and shareholders in the following areas: mergers and acquisitions, sale of business, strategic and financial advisory, capital structure and funding, financial analysis, interim and turnaround C-level management, business valuations and serving as consulting experts. Hahn is the author of The Target Report and is regularly published and quoted in printing industry trade and management journals. Mark Hahn can be reached at (973) 588-7399 or mark@graphicartsadvisors.com

Target Report: Blueprint for Convergence

Reprographers were some of the earliest adopters of fully digital workflows. Their familiarity with wide-format monochrome printing devices and digital workflows enabled a wide variety of services to a diverse client base. Clearly, this convergence is still eminent in modern-day printing companies and M&A activity.

Direct Mail Printing Providers Stretch Out

Despite the increased postage costs and degradation of postal delivery standards, marketers continue to utilize direct mail printing as an effective communication channel. As a response to the relaxed delivery time standards, direct mail printers have responded by acquiring companies distant from their home base.

Wide-Format Settles Into its Middle Age

Wide-format printing technologies now have specialized variations serving niche markets. This has resulted in competition within the industry as the business evolves into sub-segments. Now, success in wide-format depends on delivering a value proposition to customers rather than just owning a large printing device.

The Target Report: Printing Papers Get Squeezed Out

The supply and demand curves have crossed, and the paper mills are in charge. While labor strikes and supply chain disruptions have shifted pricing leverage to the mills, one trend not likely to reverse is the conversion of papermaking machines from printing paper grades to packaging grades.

Alphabet Soup of Trade Association Mergers

As the industry converges and consolidates, so have many trade associations. This might be best exemplified by the recent merger of SGIA and PIA, which is reflective of the ongoing consolidation in the highly fragmented and diverse universe of companies that make up the industry.