Written by Mike Bogad, VP of Business Development, following this year’s Printing United conference
Printing United was packed this year, in every sense. The floor was full, and it seemed like every booth I passed had a crowd around it. The Alliance’s own numbers back that up: 27,000 registered attendees from 100 countries, more than 850 exhibitors across roughly a million square feet at the Las Vegas Convention Center.
Software took center stage
What stood out to me wasn’t the size of the show. It was where the conversation kept landing. There was plenty of equipment on display, on both the mailing side and the printing side, but in booth after booth, software was the thing tying it together. That’s a change. In past years, software was the secondary conversation behind the hardware. This year it was front and center.
AI was the other constant. It was on the signage, it was in the pitch at nearly every booth, and the sessions on how AI and machine learning are changing shop workflows were standing room only. Whatever you think about how much of that is real versus branding, the industry has clearly decided this is where the conversation lives now.
What customers are talking about
The most useful thing I heard, though, came from customers, not vendors. The word I kept hearing was consolidation. Smaller shops are becoming larger ones. As they grow, they’re being forced to streamline, mostly because they can’t find enough people to run the equipment they already have. Centralization is the response: newer equipment, simpler processes, and operations built to run on less labor than they needed before. That thread ran through nearly every customer conversation I had.
I spent most of my time at our partners’ booths this year, I didn’t get to walk the rest of the floor the way I have in past years. I think that says something on its own about where the useful conversations were happening.
Accountable mail: the last manual step
Those conversations kept pointing to the same gap, and it’s one we’re already positioned for. In a lot of these shops, accountable mail is one of the last pieces still done by hand. Certified Mail and Certificate of Mailing still mean a firm book, a stamped form, and someone making a trip to the post office before scanning and filing the paperwork. Everything else on the floor this year was about automating what’s left in the workflow. Accountable mail is what’s left. Between the equipment on display and the conversations I had, it’s clear both the hardware and the software are finally ready for that step, which is exactly the gap Easy Send Digital is built to close.
The overall mood on the floor backed that up. People weren’t just busy, they were confident about where the industry is headed.
Looking ahead to 2027
Next year’s show moves back to Las Vegas, September 14 to 16, 2027, and by the close of this year’s event, two-thirds of the exhibit space was already booked. That alone is a good sign for how the industry is feeling about where things are going.
