Metro Graphic Arts of Grand Rapids, Michigan is set to close its doors in February. The 62-year old company has fallen due to interest in GPS navigation and online maps.
A detailed story by the Grand Rapids Press details the demise of this company that once sold 600,000 maps per year.
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“Another Mapmaker Falls to Technology”?
Really? That’s the moral here?
Having read the detailed story, I think the appropriate title would have been “Despite Boom in Cartography, Mapping Company Goes Out of Business.” The article makes clear that they still had customers and viable products–so what gives? Then the picture at the bottom of the article gave a clue: I’m no printing expert, but I’d wager to say that the technology there is at least two generations out of date.
With all due respect to the owners and employees, rather than blame “GPS” and the Internet, I’d take a look at whether the company aggressively made the appropriate reinvestments and listened to their customers as the competitive landscape changed.
Finally, as attractive as the “death of the paper map” meme may be, I suspect the numbers say otherwise: tracking down those numbers would be a worthy journalistic enterprise.
Brian
I don’t lament this lapse, even if their execution was a large part of the problem. I don’t see paper maps as a sustainable medium for the long term, certainly not in all current formats. Cartography will still live, but I believe there will be a lot fewer paper maps available.
Many national governments have considerably scaled back their map making efforts (United States, Canada, New Zealand, etc.). There have also been consolidations in the map making industry.
These changes just mirror what’s happening to print in a lot of other sectors (newspapers, magazines, directories, etc.). Does saying, “another newspaper falls to technology,” ring true to you?