Cimpress: Getting Bigger by Staying Small
Commercial Printing and Diversified Services
New York-based Duggal Visual Solutions, a wide- and grand-format company that provides value-added services in the competitive high-end of the market, acquired NCG Visuals also located in New York City. The acquired company was originally a commercial printing company and adapted to the competitive market by transforming into a print production firm with expertise in wide-format and environmental graphics.
Modern Litho, a regional serial acquirer of commercial printing companies headquartered in Jefferson, Missouri, announced the acquisition of Trio Printing in St. Louis, Missouri. The Trio Printing facility will cease operations and employees and production are moving to Modern's existing facility in St. Louis. Modern established its presence in St. Louis when it acquired Midtown Printing in 2013, renamed as Modern Litho - St. Louis in 2014 and moved earlier this year into larger facilities. The company added a third hub to its multi-city strategy in July this year when it acquired James Printing, this time reaching westward to Kansas City, Missouri.
Graphic Village, also a serial regional acquirer, announced the acquisition of CTS Packaging in Covington, Kentucky. The acquisition crosses state lines for the Cincinnati, Ohio-based Graphic Village and also crosses the bridge into folding carton production for the formerly commercial printing and marketing services provider company. The multi-state status won't last long, as the company has announced plans to consolidate the folding carton production into its Ohio facility, north of Cincinnati. CTS Packaging is the second acquisition this year for Graphic Village, following on the announcement in February that the company had acquired Newport, Kentucky-based commercial printing company Multi-Craft.
Quad/Graphics continued to add expertise outside its core competency of high-volume printing with the acquisition of Peppermint Warszawa, a creative agency in Warsaw, Poland. Company Chairman, President and CEO Joel Quadracci stated "Quad can fulfill traditional agency functions, such as creative and media strategy, and campaign creation, while also providing integrated marketing execution across multiple channels." That's a mouthful, but also makes it clear that Quad is strategically using M&A to move upstream and create corporate value by adding design services (and one of GAA's five D's defining higher enterprise value in the commercial print segments). In March of this year, Quad acquired digital marketing services company Rise Interactive and in February of 2018 Quad took a major step in its transition with the acquisition of marketing production services and marketing execution company Ivie & Associates (see The Target Report - Turning a Big Ship - February 2014).
View The Target Report online, complete with deal logs for September 2018.
