From the Editor: ACUP+ 2025 Reflections
There’s nothing like an in-plant conference to stir your creativity and give you ideas. I just returned from the Association of College and University Printers (ACUP+) conference in Costa Mesa, California, and what a week it was.
In-plant managers at the ACUP+ 2025 conference.
Though the weather wasn’t as “California” as most of us expected, with temperatures only in the 60s, the conversations flowed easily, and everyone came away with something new to bring back to their in-plants. Plus we got an in-plant tour that made our jaws drop.
Ken Macro gave the opening keynote at the 2025 ACUP+ Conference.
Ken Macro’s opening keynote set the bar high. The professor of Graphic Communications at the California Polytechnic State University took a deep dive into the five generations that make up today’s workforce (with a sixth – Gen Alpha – coming up quickly). Peppered with anecdotes and slang from the students he teaches, his presentation has us laughing throughout even as we learned what Millennials and Gen Z are looking for in a job and how to better work with them.
Bob Neubauer gave a keynote presentation at ACUP 2025.
I had my time at the mic as well when I gave a presentation unveiling research IPI recently published in our new report: “In-plant Equipment Investment Trends (2025).” (Download the report at this link.) In one slide, I showed a top 10 list of the most popular equipment in-plants intend to purchase in the next two years. After color and black-and-white toner equipment, the next most sought equipment will be direct-to-film printers and digital embellishment equipment. That's a pretty strong indicator that in-plants are serious about adding new services, like apparel printing, and increasing their value.
The vendor floor was packed, with 37 companies showing their products.
The conference spanned three-and-a-half days, with lots of great sessions and a pretty full vendor floor, where attendees congregated. I'll detail the sessions later, but they covered quite a range, from marketing and MIS to bindery and mail, with a lot of interest in stickers.
University of Alaska's Rich Little demonstrated vehicle wrapping (on an attendee's car).
One unique ACUP experience was a hands-on workshop during which attendees could try their hands at heat transfers, decorating mugs with dye-sublimation and a mug press, applying window/wall/floor wraps, and most impressively vehicle wraps. Rich Little from the University of Alaska once again demonstrated the process, this year on an attendee’s car, and others got the chance to do it themselves. After experiencing these processes for themselves, attendees were excited to add some of these new services at their in-plants.
One ACUP highlight for me was our tour of Santa Ana Unified School District’s amazing in-plant. Under the new leadership of Jesse Ortega and Tisha Sanchez, this in-plant has been reborn and is thriving. Decades of complacency have been replaced by cutting-edge equipment and services that made everyone in the ACUP group jealous.
The cavernous in-plant facility at Santa Ana Unified School District.
The apparel decoration area alone was staggering. It featured not only direct-to-film and direct-to-garment equipment, but five embroidery machines. The shop had wide-format flatbed printers and cutters, a half dozen roll-to-roll wide-format printers, inkjet presses, label printers for stickers, laser engravers, plus a range of Canon and Ricoh production printers. What was most mind-blowing was that the entire operation is run by a staff of only 12. It was a truly eye-opening glimpse into what an in-plant can achieve with strong leadership and solid organizational support.
In-plant managers talk with one of the vendors, EDU Business Solutions.
This was my 28th ACUP conference, and the first one where I was the oldest of the ACUP old-timers. All of the ACUP regulars of yesteryear have now moved on (thought it was nice to see a few retirees like Andrew Scott, Steve Dimond, and John Heine in attendance). It was kind of sad for me, but at the same time I was glad to see the association still going strong with a lot of younger new members. They're the ones that will keep ACUP -- and printing -- strong in the years ahead.
Bob has served as editor of In-plant Impressions since October of 1994. Prior to that he served for three years as managing editor of Printing Impressions, a commercial printing publication. Mr. Neubauer is very active in the U.S. in-plant industry. He attends all the major in-plant conferences and has visited more than 180 in-plant operations around the world. He has given presentations to numerous in-plant groups in the U.S., Canada and Australia, including the Association of College and University Printers and the In-plant Printing and Mailing Association. He also coordinates the annual In-Print contest, co-sponsored by IPMA and In-plant Impressions.
