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...

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...

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...

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...