Marking Devices

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, 411 establishments operated in this category in the late 2000s, producing $637 million in stencils and other marking device products in 2008. Companies in this industry tended to be smaller in size with about 82 percent employing fewer than 20 workers. The 2008 industry leader was Deluxe Corp. of Shoreview, Minnesota, with sales of just under $1.47 billion and employment of 7,172.

The design for several of the devices in this category date from antiquity and have changed very little over the centuries, even though technological innovations have made a key difference in some cases. The introduction of the mass-production automobile assembly line, for instance, led to notable advances in die-casting technology and to the very precise formation of even the tiniest metal parts.

The introduction of stenciling has been dated to eighth century China, and this technique of reproducing designs has long been deemed well-suited for metal or cardboard cuts to produce simple shapes. Only with the introduction of silk-screen printing, however, was it possible to overcome the inherent limitations of stencils' great simplicity. The stencil, for instance, does not permit the reproduction of one design enclosing another (as in the case of a figure eight), unless it is halved to prevent the necessarily unattached central sections from dropping out. The fine meshes used in silk screen printing were substantial enough to support the unattached elements of a stencil, without posing a barrier to the passage of the dye or paint being forced through a water-soluble glue into the desired design. A variant to this blockout-stencil or glue-cut-out-stencil method was the film-stencil method, whereby designs were cut into a colored lacquer laminated to a sheet of glassine paper, so the whole assemblage could be mounted on a screen before the removal of the uncut paper backing and subsequent printing.

The technological advances made by computers transformed many features of office life in the United States at the end of the twentieth century, including the use of certain numbering and lettering devices. Even though the modern office had no use for certain types of marking devices, such age-old implements as hand presses, stamps, and seals, were still widely used as a means of officially marking paperwork of various sorts. Indeed, the increasing automation of offices gave a new lease on life to such marking devices. Highly sophisticated photocopying machines, for instance, reproduced documents with such great accuracy that forgeries were easily made in the absence of a physical impression left by the impact of a notary public's or government official's seal.

The industry was one of relative stability through the late 1990s and into the 2000s, with shipment values peaking at nearly $690 million in 1999. However, by 2005, this number dropped by 30 percent to $481 million. The product value rebounded in 2007 to $618 million. The number of employees in the market also dwindled during that timeframe, falling 23 percent from 7,454 workers in 1999 to 5,754 workers in 2005 to 4,896 in 2007. At the close of the 2000s, industry revenue was up, but employment figures had decreased.

As a consequence of the move in the 2000s toward increasing electronic, digital, and automated technology, the marking device industry was affected by the radio frequency identification (RFID) trend of "smart labeling." Wal-Mart has employed the technology since initially implementing it in three of its 108 distribution centers in January 2005 as the beginning of a larger rollout. In 2006, the company began requiring its top suppliers to do likewise. The U.S. Department of Defense also was on board with the technology, as were Wal-Mart's Sam's Club stores, Target, and Albertsons. Aiding companies in the move toward RFID compliance was expected to assure the industry's growth, although the degree of impact has not been determined. The EPA also expected compliance for new standards in its Treated Wood Initiative and new requirements for the labeling of CCA-treated wood, which provided companies in this industry with ready-made markets in the mid-2000s.