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  • Strategic Acquirers Open Up Financials for Sellers
    By John Hyde - Tuesday May 21, 2013
    Could you imagine buying a house and the seller asks to review your financial analysis showing how much money you’re going to make from the investment? Residential real estate practice would consider this an absurd request, instantly denied. The buyer is paying the agreed-upon price in full with cash at closing and the seller has no reason to pry into the buyer’s affairs. But in the crazy world of strategic M&A among privately-owned print, mail and graphics communications companies, seller due diligence into the buyer is hardly an exception. In fact, right now the NAPL M&A advisory team is handling three client matters each of which involves full disclosure by the buyer of the analysis that supports the transaction. One involves a $20...

  • 3D Printing Will Have No Effect on Business Valuations for the 28,000 Companies in the Print, Mail and Graphics Communications Industry
    By John Hyde - Monday May 6, 2013
    3D Printing will have no effect on business valuations of print, mail, and graphics communications companies—for the foreseeable future. Simply, owners and senior managers of privately-owned print providers will need to look elsewhere than 3D Printing for growth. This technology may someday be relevant and perhaps even “disruptive,” but today it has zero relevance to the 28,000 or so companies in the domestic USA that operate within the $80 billion printing industry. A recent visit to the Inside 3D Printing Conference and Expo at New York’s Jacob Javitz Convention Center served as my foray into 3D Printing. The word “3D” next to the word “Printing” sparked my interest, knowing that my clients among privately-owned...

  • Don't Panic Over New Competitor
    By Tom Crouser - Wednesday April 24, 2013
    When Kaufmann’s department store opened in the Town Center Mall in my hometown, the Diamond department store closed its doors. The Diamond’s management (Federated Department Stores) had fought the mall and other changes to retail (they fought for the blue laws keeping stores closed on Sunday, for instance). But practically to the day that Kaufmann’s (now Macy’s) opened, they closed. I was reminded of that when a printer friend in Boston panicked at the threat of competition and felt compelled to sell. I said, “Not so fast.” Here’s what Barney wrote: “A 20-year-old promotional products company is moving their location to about three miles away from me and wants to buy me out so they can go into printing. They don’t have...

  • 3 Lessons Learned from Succession Plan at Kingery Corporation
    By John Hyde - Monday April 22, 2013
    The recent NAPL News Talk Live program on Exit Strategy had an M&A-orientation because “sale of business” has overtaken “gifting to children” as the roadmap of choice in the print, mail and graphics communications industry. The one panelist on the webinar who implemented a non- M&A succession plan is John Kingery, Chairman of Kingery Printing Corporation. Succession planning was the farthest thing from John Kingery’s mind until a day in 1991 when he realized that the government would end up with substantial wealth that otherwise would go to his family. Simply, Kingery Printing had become too profitable to risk passing away without a plan for minimizing estate taxes. The roots of Kingery Printing can be traced to a...

  • 3 Ways to Get a Better Night's Sleep
    By John Hyde - Friday April 5, 2013
    If you own a company in the printing, mail, and graphics communications industry, you probably know someone who is near the end of survivability or you’re treading water yourself these days. If neither of these apply to you, skip “Last Chance” and go to “Planning”. Last Chance: For owners who wake up at night worrying that their business is circling the proverbial drain, here are 3 critical factors that can make a difference in the quality of whatever outcome takes place over the next few days/weeks/month(s): 1. Connect with friendly local competitors; despite what you may think, they are the most likely candidates to buy assets and hire you (and some of your people) 2. Be open minded and rely heavily on a trusted advisor...

  • 5 Tips for Acquiring a Marketing Company
    By John Hyde - Thursday March 28, 2013
    Acquiring a marketing firm can be a strategic investment for printing company owners looking to broaden and deepen relationships with existing customers. Additional services can spur new business — and under the right circumstances, the marketing firm’s customer base can be a valuable asset, both in the short and long terms. That said, there are as many post-merger war stories as success stories. More than a few printing company owners will tell you that a year after the acquisition, all they had to show for their investment were half a dozen used PCs and a handful of customers who chose not to follow the talent, wherever it went. So what should a printing company owner looking to acquire a marketing company look for? 5 suggestions...

  • Printers Helping Printers: Thoughts on the New Association
    By Tom Crouser - Friday March 22, 2013
    Just because printers agree doesn’t make it right. And just because an expert says it is so doesn’t make it right either. I’m reminded of all this as I see another group of printers beginning a trade association with the focus of printers helping printers. Don’t get me wrong. I’m all for it, as long as it is done appropriately. Unfortunately, I know of a number of times when the old NAQP got off track. Here are a couple of experiences, which I put forth in hopes that the new group can avoid similar situations. My favorite example is the multiple times a good presenter came with a new marketing concept. Everyone is thrilled, but fails to ask if the speaker has actually put the concept into practice and had any measurable results...

  • Remembering "Acquiring Sales Without the Baggage" — 10 Years Later
    By John Hyde - Tuesday March 5, 2013
    Remarkably, it’s 10 years ago this month that I was invited to speak at the NAPL Top Management Conference on the topic of “Acquiring Sales Without the Baggage”. Reflecting on “then” and “now”, royalty transactions in 2003 were a negative backwater of printing industry M&A. They grew in popularity from 2003 to 2006, and were literally the only game in town until 2011. We’ve seen a return to EBITDA-based transactions since then, and our M&A practice has also seen cases in which investment paradigm such as ROI or cash yield on investment has worked their way into recent negotiations. n 2003, we were coming off the internet boom and blowback from the wave of consolidations that had shook up the landscape of the print and...

  • How to Price New Services
    By Tom Crouser - Monday February 18, 2013
    How do we price something that we’ve never done before? It appears to me that many business owners worry more about how to price a new product/service than they do learning about how to do it in the first place. Web sites, social media, QR codes, email broadcasts, shopping carts as well as Twitter, Facebook Business Pages and LinkedIn pages all come to mind. How do you price such a service for customers? First, understand you can never accurately price something you haven’t done before. Second, you need to know how to do it before you worry about pricing. And third, it’s hard to learn on the customer’s nickel but that’s been the tradition in the printing industry. Going far afield however requires a better approach and I have a...

  • Transaction Concepts for Acquiring Print and Graphics Communications who have Multiple Partners (Part Three)
    By John Hyde - Friday February 15, 2013
    The dynamics of family-owned and entrepreneurial companies raise unique challenges for strategic acquirers. This is the third blog post in a series of 3 that offers several transaction concepts for acquiring print and graphics communications companies who have multiple partners. “I really like this M&A opportunity,” said an NAPL client. “But one of the partners doesn’t seem interested in selling their business. It probably doesn’t matter because he’s the production guy. I’m thinking of just hiring his partner as a sales person. The production guy will end up owning a plant full of equipment with no customers, but he’s too stupid to understand that his partner controls the sales and the company is worth zero if he...

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