By Kevin Abergel, Taktiful, and Richard Romano, WhatTheyThink

The new 2025 Taktiful/WhatTheyThink Digital Embellishment Study takes a close look at users of digital embellishments who use the capabilities to add special colors, effects and textures to printed materials. The aim of the study is to understand who is using them, how often they are using them, what customer interest in them has been and the extent to which they represent a profit center, either presently or potentially. We also ask about the challenges of implementing these capabilities, including design and production. Ultimately, we want to know where the bottlenecks are in achieving success with these capabilities. This study is a follow-up to the 2023 study that looked solely at specialty inks and toners.

Use and Value of Digital Embellishment Capabilities
The most basic question, of course, is: Why did companies that offer digital embellishments start offering them in the first place? And the answer is to have digital embellishment capabilities be a profit center – more than one-half (54%) of survey respondents said that it was the main reason they added these capabilities (Figure 1).

At the same time, almost one-half (44%) of survey respondents reported that “many” of their competitors also offer digital embellishments, while the same amount (44%) said that many don’t. Twelve percent don’t know the competitive landscape when it comes to digital embellishments. We expect the competitive landscape to heat up as embellishments become more familiar and popular.

Popular Applications
Business cards are the most popular commercial printing application for digital embellishments, followed by direct mail, brochures and books, while labels are the most common packaging-related embellishment applications, followed by folding cartons.

Other popular applications include:

• Invites
• Premium packaging
• Invitations and greeting cards
• Pocket folders
• Postcards

The Business of Embellishments
Not everyone who added embellishment capabilities had a fully devised strategy for it. For example, one-half of respondents had created a business plan on how to bring their digital embellishment capabilities to market, while 44% did not.

By far the most common means by which print service providers are marketing their digital embellishment capabilities is by creating a branded offering (selected by 62%). More than one-fourth (27%) use manufacturers’ marketing materials, but 12% say they are not marketing these capabilities at all – and 13% are not marketing these as a separate offering than basic CMYK jobs.

Customer Familiarity
How familiar are customers with digital embellishments? Survey respondents said that, prior to installing the digital embellishment equipment, 46% of customers were at least somewhat familiar with digital embellishments. After installation, that jumped to 90%, the biggest jump being in the “very familiar” category. That customer familiarity increased so dramatically suggests that sales and marketing efforts around these capabilities are what make them a profit center.

In general, however, producers of print embellishments have seen little change in the extent to which the market has become more educated/knowledgeable about embellishments. One-third (35%) said the market has become more educated over the past 12 months, and, interestingly, 13% said the market has become less educated. We could interpret this to mean that their customer base has not kept up with the latest changes in technology. Still, one-half of respondents said that the knowledge base among customers has stayed about the same.

Satisfaction and Perceived Value
Generally, users of digital embellishments are satisfied (52%) with the quality of digital embellishment jobs. Only 6% are dissatisfied, while 15% are neither satisfied nor dissatisfied.

These capabilities have become key to print businesses’ sales and marketing efforts – 84% of digital embellishment users find them in some way valuable – 11% find them “extremely” valuable, 46% “very” valuable and 27% at least “somewhat” valuable. Only 12% find them of little or no value. And print businesses find them valuable in no small part because clients are interested in them – 88% of respondents said that clients are at least somewhat interested in digital embellishments, 12% “extremely,” 36% “very” and 40% “somewhat.”

Three out of 10 (29%) said they have seen more demand for embellishments from customers, and only 9% said they have seen less demand.

As we found in the original Specialty Ink & Toner Study, there is a bit of a disconnect between sales and profit satisfaction (Figure 2). Almost two-thirds (65%) are satisfied (19% very satisfied) with the profits they make off these jobs, but 37% are satisfied (10% very satisfied) with the sales of these jobs. And 19% are dissatisfied (4% very dissatisfied) with the sales of digital embellishment jobs, compared to the 4% who are dissatisfied with their profitability. So, these jobs are profitable, but the bottleneck is in sales.

We asked our survey respondents to rank a list of obstacles and “sales team” was hands down the biggest obstacle. “Pricing” ranked just below that, closely followed by “file design.”

Looking Ahead
Just about two-thirds (65%) of digital embellishment users said they are likely (15% very likely) to purchase another embellishment press in the future, with only 10% unlikely to acquire another press for producing digital embellishments.

The vast majority (88%) of digital embellishment users feel positive about the future of the digital embellishment market – and more than one-third (36%) said they feel “very positive.” Only 6% are neutral, while 6% feel negative about the digital embellishment market – no one “very negative” (Figure 3).

Conclusions
Print businesses primarily added digital embellishment capabilities in order to have them be a profit center. Customer demand also was a factor, primarily among larger printing establishments. And while users generally are satisfied with the profitability of the digital embellishment jobs they are producing, they are less satisfied with sales, and they do see the sales staff as the weak link in the chain. More sales and marketing effort is needed to make these jobs as profitable as they potentially can be. One of the most effective ways of marketing these capabilities is to create a branded offering around them – case studies have found that this was a route of success for companies offering embellishments of all kinds, and we’re happy to see that most of our survey respondents are indeed doing this.  

We also noted that business cards were the top application for digital embellishments, and we feel this represents a bit of an underuse of these technologies, although direct mail is a close number two. These capabilities tend not to be applied to more prosaic commercial print applications, and no, we would not expect them to be used for, say, transactional printing – but digital embellishments potentially could be used to raise the value of more “boring” print applications. As long as one can demonstrate and communicate the value proposition of adding embellishments to print – any kind of print – it doesn’t need to be limited to business cards or even invitations or lottery tickets.

Other major challenges center around the design and set-up of these jobs, although that seems to be less of a challenge for digital embellishment equipment users than those who were solely using the fifth-color option on their digital presses. Still, there is no doubt that they can be a bit more difficult and take longer to set up than CMYK jobs. And small businesses are stretched thin staffwise as it is, but reaching out to manufacturers and asking for assistance or training can be a way of dealing with these challenges.

There is much, much more in the full report, which can be purchased at store.whattheythink.com/downloads/2025-digital-embellishment-study/.   

Reprinted with permission from WhatTheyThink.