Push-Pull Strategies

"It's not a very pretty situation out there as end-use business is moving around a lot from converter to converter," Crutchfield sums up. "The old ties of converters to end customers appear to have been severed."

That's not to say there isn't any resistance to a purely price-driven pressure-sensitive world. "There is no doubt that there is cost pressure in the pressure-sensitive label market, but we are far from being a commodity marketplace," contends Albert Groen, specialty product line director, Avery Dennison (Painsville, Ohio). "The request for different pressure-sensitive applications continues to require engineered solutions, and there is room for differentiation in almost all segments."