At the Top of Their Quick Print Game

From $2.6 million to $20.7 million, sales among the QP’s Top 100 quick printers vary widely again. Overall, total sales were down approximately 5.5 percent collectively for these one hundred shops: from a total of $539.2 million in 2013 sales to $509.8 million in 2014. Still, more than one-third (36) of them posted double-digit increases year over year.

Additionally, sales were relatively flat for several printers on the list, while a not-so-sweet 16 experienced downturns last year. One of those was Renaissance Press, Richardson, TX, which posted sales of $4 million in 2014, down nearly 10 percent. To make matters worse, the firm rang in the 2015with a devastating, two-alarm fire during the night of January 21, reported president/CEO JD Danielson, “that destroyed two-thirds of our business.” The firm has since relocated and reopened on May 1.

For those 76 companies where sales increased, the growth sometimes was substantial, often exceeding double-digit percentages. Miller’s Minuteman Press in Maryland, for instance, enjoyed a spike of more than 30 percent. With 87 employees and annual sales approaching $10 million, Miller’s has become one of the largest Minuteman franchises. (For more on the firm, see our profile on page 30.)

Rounding out the rest of the Top 10, five more saw sales increase at 10 percent or more (two were close, at 9 percent). Cornerstone Print & Marketing, Lincoln, NE, was the “superstar” of this group, posting an increase of nearly 50 percent for total 2014 sales approaching $12 million. Seven of the Top 10 had sales exceeding $10 million; the Top 3’s sales surpassed $15 million each. (See Leaders of the Pack table for more details.)

Within the Top 11 through 20, sales ranged from $6.5 million to $8.5 million. Docuplex, Inc. (#13), Wichita, KS, saw sales rise 74 percent and moved up five spots on our list after acquiring Color Impressions Inc. in July 2013. (Two years earlier, Docuplex had purchased PrintMaster.) Now with 65 employees, its sales exceeded $8 million, reported president Jay Ewy. Of these 10 firms, Docuplex was one of only two recording double-digit sales increases. The other, at 14.4 percent, was PIP Printing of Alaska (#19) on sales of almost $6.8 million. On the downside, Raintree Graphics (#14), Jacksonville, FL, had a 12 percent drop in sales: to $7.8 million from $10.5 million last year, when it ranked #9.

The sales gap between the Top 21 through 30 printers was from $6.46 million to $5.1 million. Three of these 10 leaders recorded double-digit increases, including directFX Solutions (#22), Memphis, with 19 percent growth and sales of nearly $6.4 million. Insight Communications (#29), Bountiful, UT, had 18 percent growth on sales of nearly $5.2 million. On the other hand, AlphaGraphics on University (#21) in Tempe, AZ, lost 10 percent of its prior year sales, dropping to less than $6.5 million.

Among the next 10 print firms, the sales gap narrowed even more with slightly more than $500,000 separating #31 from #40. Some print shop sales exploded in 2014, such as Allegra of Princeton, NJ (#31), which grew by acquisition. Owner David Kovacs and his now 30 full-time employees saw sales increase by a staggering 229 percent at the single-location operation, bumping it over the $5 million mark. Sir Speedy of Lancaster, PA (#33), was up 22 percent to $4.98 million, while sales at Main Graphics of Irvine, CA (#37), increased by 13 percent to $4.73 million.

Further down the list, PIP Printing and Marketing Services of Columbus, OH (#71), was hit hard by a 26 percent decline in sales last year, slipping to $3.2 million from $4.3 million in 2013. Plum Grove, a digital print firm in Hoffman Estates, IL, saw sales slide by more than one-quarter also, to $3.3 million; its QP rank slid, too, to #64. “It was not a good year,” CEO Peter Lineal admitted, neither for him nor his 21 full-time employees. “We lost a big client last year,” explained Lineal, who has seen his share of sales ups and downs since starting the company 35 years ago.

Download a PDF of the full list.

To expand -- or not?

Adding new equipment and presses is another way to stay ahead of the technology curve in the printing industry. Chuck Stempler, president/CEO of #3 AlphaGraphics Seattle – whose sales were up over 9 percent to nearly $15.4 million – is doing his best to ensure that his firm remains in the Top 10 for next year’s QP ranking: Stempler already has three sheetfed offset presses, four digital presses, and three wide-format printers in his six Seattle-area locations. This past April he took delivery of a Scodix digital-enhancement press. Stay tuned for an update on how it is performing for him and whether or not it’s pointing to profits.

Stempler noted that he may add a seventh location yet in 2015, but two-thirds of our Top 100 small and instant commercial printers still operate a single shop – and there were only 12 new shops planned for this year. Some have experimented with expansion and not fared well. “I will not own more than one location (been there and done that!), since we can best serve our community by having the owners at the facility,” asserted Adrienne Streeter of Streeter Printing (#89) in San Diego. Her 19-employee firm posted sales of $2.74 million, up 6 percent from 2013.

For other businesses, geography and demographics dictate expansion. In Northern California, #15 Copy Central, based in Emeryville (between Berkeley and Oakland) has 13 shops and sales of $7.7 million. The multi-location strategy seems to work well for CEO Craig Fairbanks.

Sales per shop, per employee

• For the sales-per-shop leaders, the Top 10 each had revenues of more than $6 million per location (see table for breakdown).
• Factoring in multiple-shop operations, each of the 167 shops sold $3.8 million per on average in 2014.
• With 3,442 people employed in the Top 100 firms, the average sales per employee amounted to $158,847. (See Leaders table for the Top 10 in sales per employee.)

Miscellaneous Factoids

• Allegra Marketing Print of Seattle (#100) is new to the list this year, thanks to a 158 percent sales uptick resulting in $2.54 million total in 2014. Congratulations to president Steve Nasca and his team of 17 employees!
• The oldest ranked firm? Ironmark (#2) of Annapolis, MD, has roots dating back to 1955 (as CPS Gumpert) and 2014 sales of more than $19 million. Happy 60th anniversary, Ironmark!
• AlphaGraphics of Sandy, UT, made the list at #82, thanks to a sales increase of 20 percent (totaling nearly $2.9 million).
• Sales at Avid of Illinois in St. Charles, a Chicago suburb, were up 12 percent last year. But $2.47 million was not quite enough for the 11-employee shop to crack our Top 100 this year. See QP’s complete list of Honorable Mentions: _______________

Services breakdown

Perhaps the biggest eyebrow-raiser in this year’s Top 100 services breakdown is the surge in four-color process jobs, which accounted for nearly 15 percent of the work produced compared with less than 1 percent a year earlier. The dollar value translates to nearly $76 million in 4/C process printing. (See corresponding pie chart.) Supporting the process color trend, multicolor offset printing also was up: to nearly 5.6 percent from 1.15, translating to more than $28 million in sales for these 100 firms. If these statistics are not revelations that the use of more color is taking off among end users, we don’t know what is.

Wide-format printing is another mainstream industry trend supported by the Top 100 quick printers. The percentage of wide-format inkjet imaging (36 inches or larger) more than tripled in 2014, to 6.3 percent (from 2 percent in 2013), representing over $32 million in total sales. On this year’s survey, QP broke out signage as a separate category, which fetched an additional $16 million slice of the revenue pie and a slightly more than 3 percent of overall sales.

Production inkjet is another new category added this year, representing 1.13 percent of sales, which amounted to nearly $5.8 million.

The prepress, one-color offset, digital printing/copying (monochrome and color), and mailing services categories all stayed relatively the same, with minimal movement. Bindery and finishing services dropped to under 9 percent (from nearly 14 percent) but still represent almost $45 million in sales. Interactive/web services gained a percentage point, now up to 1.3 percent and $6.6 million.

Brokered/other services seems to have leveled off, after a big surge in 2013 when it jumped to over 33 percent from 12.7 percent in 2012. For 2014, this category represented 14 percent of overall sales of the Top 100 printers and contributed nearly $72 million to the bottom line.