The print industry is doomed, dying, and essentially over. That’s what everyone’s been saying for some time now. 

But one small operation in Santo Domingo with the rather ungainly name of Lino Press managed to make it work for them. 

They turned a business on the brink of collapse into a new profit centre—and came up with a boatload of replicable ideas along the way. Here’s how they do it! 

The Problem 

By the end of 2020, Lino Press was hanging on by a thread. A few local newspapers still paid to have their press runs done at the plant, but the warning signs all over the industry were adding up, and they were not all that far away. 

• Incoming orders: Many of their big clients were cutting their print budgets or going digital entirely.  

• Old technology: Lino Press still used offset presses from years ago, and they were slower, less efficient, and more wasteful than modern machines.  

• Market shifts: Readers might still want their morning paper, but advertisers were bailing on the print model. 

It seemed like the beginning of the end. But you know what they say about when things are at their worst… 

Four Big Changes 

Lino Press didn’t have a crisis meeting or make rash decisions in reaction to bad news. Instead, they made four key decisions, each of which created a new possibility for the company. 

#1. Investing in Digital Printing 

By 2024, the company had replaced 65% of their older offset presses with state-of-the-art digital machines. This wasn’t just newfangled technology for technology’s sake. Here’s why it helped. 

• Flexibility: Digital printing let them handle smaller print runs without tying up resources.  

• Personalization: Order personalized newspapers for one-time events (birthdays, weddings, corporate events). Job setup: Jobs now took minutes to switch between, instead of hours. 

The result? Machines ran 40% more of the time, and they were able to cut their paper waste in half. At the same time, they went from struggling to maintain volume to expanding their capacity. 

#2 Diversifying Offerings 

If all your eggs are in one basket and that basket is falling apart, what do you do? For Lino Press, the writing was on the wall when their local and national newspaper clients cut back. 

Hyper-local newspapers with community-specific content Flyers, inserts, and quick jobs Personalized newspapers for events (birthdays, anniversaries, weddings, corporate events) 

These new services (particularly those last two) became hits in the market. By 2025, new products and services accounted for 20% of their revenue. That’s a lot when you consider this was a company that once did only traditional, daily newspaper runs. 

#3 Automation 

A business with old, inefficient, and manual processes is like a juggler with too many balls in the air. For years, Lino Press’s workflow had been slowed down by outdated machines, prepress and setup times, job changeovers, and so on. 

So they decided to automate. 

MIS for everything: From ordering, prepress, and production to updates with clients The results? 

Turnaround time: 4.5 days per job down to 2.2 days. Production capacity: They increased their publications by 12 without adding staff. Efficiency and time savings: Automation took a lot of laborious handoffs off their people’s plates. 

Automation made it possible to get more done faster, which was huge in an industry where time and cost were at a premium. 

#4. Expansion 

If you always do what you’ve always done, where have you been? Lino Press realized at one point that it wasn’t just in the Dominican Republic where interest in print was waning. 

The problem wasn’t the same in countries like Puerto Rico, the Bahamas, and Haiti. Despite economic factors and other ups and downs in those markets, people still got their news from paper. The reason? Unreliable internet access.. 

With automation and expanded services, Lino Press could meet demand and win new customers in these other markets as well. 

Takeaway 

When Lino Press reinvented themselves, they also helped the Dominican Republic export over $350 million in printed products in two years. And they’re a medium-sized firm. Imagine what bigger print houses can do to increase paper exports. 

Lino Press could have shrugged and decided they were a dead industry walking. But they didn’t. Instead, they invested in technology, expanded into new services, automated their workflow, and expanded into new markets. 

The result was a business with new growth areas to explore in an industry some said was on life support. 

If your business is in an industry that’s in a decline phase, don’t lose hope. If anything, now is the time to take action. 

Decline isn’t the end. It’s an opportunity, if you know what to do.