As the Olympic torch is finally nearing the end of its relay, marking the start of the Olympic Games themselves we’ve decided to take a look back at the last 7 months of planning and preparation along with the print potential proven by the Queen’s jubilee and the exciting conclusion to this year’s Wimbledon tennis.

As January began, the whole country was overwhelmed by a constant barrage of the events taking place this year – the Jubilee and the Olympics.

The Jubilee was the first event to bring the country to a standstill, months of preparation went into this year’s Big Royal Event. From street parties and carnivals held by towns and villages nationwide, to the London concert and Thames Pageant, the country was celebrating in one way or another. This led to a huge demand of bunting, flags, banners and pictures of the Queen – all things our customers are able to print using their large format printers. There were hundreds of miles of bunting sold in the lead up to the long weekend, DIY retailer B&Q said it had sold 100,000 metres of Union Jack bunting whilst Sainsbury’s reported sales of 364 miles of bunting and 146,000 flags. Sainsbury's general merchandise director Robbie Feather said: 'Record sales of flags and bunting were seen in 2011 thanks to the royal wedding but current indications show that the Queen's Diamond Jubilee is set to far outstrip last year's demand.

It wasn’t just banners and flags though, there were some larger prints used nationwide to celebrate, From window graphics (this Selfridges one was a favourite www.thedrum.co.uk/news/2012/05/30/baf-graphics-helps-selfridges-windows-stand-out-its-diamond-jubilee-celebration) , a commemorative train wrap on the Jubilee Line (london-underground.blogspot.co.uk/2012/05/jubilee-wrapped-trains-for-diamond.html) along with the giant building wrap seen from the Thames Pageant (www.graphicdisplayworld.com/en/categories/wrapping-world/1151-service-graphics-produces-diamond-jubilee-celebration-building-wrap-). The packaging world also went Jubilee crazy, you can see some good examples of this on one of our previous blogs, “2012: The year to be British, so let’s... put a Union Jack on everything we own” (www.printmax.co.uk/blog/2012-the-year-to-be-british-so-lets-put-a-union-jack-on-everything-we-own/) .

Once we all came back to work, put the pimms and the union jacks back in the cupboard we thought that was it until the Olympics, however there was the unexpected surprise of doing relatively well in the Euros and then out of nowhere we had our first British Wimbledon finalist for 74 years. So out came the flags, the banners and some DIY “GO ON ANDY” hats for a 4 day wait when the country thought... maybe we can? Unfortunately the excitement ended there and in true British style we woke up Monday and forgot it had all happened.

With only 2 weeks now until the Olympics start the whole country is getting hyped up again. For 56 days now the Olympic torch has been travelling round the nation, bringing Olympic excitement to towns and villages. Our favourite aspect of the torch relay has to be the great Coca Cola beat fleet. A set of vehicles modified and wrapped by Xquisite Automotive UK www.coca-cola.co.uk/olympic-games/coca-cola-beat-fleet.html . There’s been some print controversy surrounding the torch relay – mainly LOCOG‘s regulations on the use of Olympic symbols and logos. Alongside this there have been some issues surrounding the printed billboards, one from their sponsor Visa which misnamed the featured athlete left some organisers red-faced www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/olympics/9358854/London-2012-Olympics-Visa-left-red-faced-over-Shanaze-Reade-billboard-mix-up-with-Stefanie-Reid.html whilst a graffiti’d BP billboard brought up the issue of sustainability once again, sports.yahoo.com/blogs/olympics-fourth-place-medal/vandals-deface-bp-olympics-billboard-200823142--oly.html.

The opportunities for print companies for the games have been rife but all started uneasily when it was announced that the tickets would be printed in the U.S and flown over. A job that could have been sourced within the U.K, however since that debacle there have been many of the UK print industry brought in to install signage, print billboards, even the skins for the iPads used in TV coverage of the games are to be printed by UK company Diabloskinz.

There are a handful of our network that have seen a direct result from the UK hosting the Olympics with official LOCOG printing, those that haven’t, I’m sure, have been able to monetize the opportunities this year with flags and banners.

If you have any examples of UK companies benefitting we’d love to hear them in the comments below.