Bindagraphics — Build It And They Will Come

In the early '70s, Marty Anson had a dream: Build a better bindery. Now, 25 years later, the $15 million bindery "kingpin" is at it again. This time, he's expanding with new satellite facilities.

BY CHERYL ADAMS

He wasn't sitting in the middle of a corn field, like Kevin Costner's character in a "Field of Dreams," but F. Martin "Marty" Anson had a vision just the same 25 years ago: "Build it and they will come."

Anson wanted to build a better trade bindery—one that would be a solid performer, a state-of-the-art operation that could weather the fierce storm of competition—a storm that could, and often did, put binderies out of business.

Why would Anson, an educated man (he's got an RIT degree), be compelled to open a new finishing operation when others were struggling to survive? Was he crazy?

A lot of people probably thought so—much like the general consensus of Costner's character in a "Field of Dreams." Anson wasn't constructing a baseball diamond in the middle of a corn dynasty, but his vision of building a bindery in Baltimore—in 1973—must have seemed equally insane.

With a bachelor's degree in print management and several years of senior-level management experience in bindery operations, Anson knew that a better bindery was needed in the booming, multimillion-dollar print business. As the controller of Baltimore's Port City Press, Anson was responsible for managing the company's Production Standards Program. He says he "spent a lot of time in the bindery" and, to put it nicely, the operation "needed attention. There was much room for improvement."

But Anson didn't want to improve on an existing operation: He wanted to start from scratch.

Starting From Scratch
So, on January 2, 1974, Anson (with his pregnant wife, who was expecting their third child) put his money on the line. The doors of Bindagraphics opened, and his business "hunch" was right on the money. In fact, that hunch—to build a better bindery—turned out to be a pot of gold, when Anson realized he was doubling revenues almost immediately. ("It's easy to double your sales when you're new," he quips.)

Anson went to the bank for the business loan with a projection of $110,000 in first-year sales. In reality, he doubled that with revenues of $220,000. Second year, he doubled that with sales of $374,000. In its third year, Bindagraphics' sales hit $550,000, which was enough for Anson to know his investment was solid and his dream was coming true.

It was not always smooth sailing implementing the dream of this third-generation printing businessman. (Both of his grandfathers were printers and his father was a graphic arts supply salesman.) But year after year, customer by customer, printers big and small have been coming to Bindagraphics.

And, after 25 years, they're still coming. In fact, with customers like R.R. Donnelley, Cadmus, Fry Communications, French Bray, Peake, S&S Graphics, Colorcraft, Sandy Alexander, Pictorial, Acme Printing and W.E. Andrews, Anson is now the proud founder/owner of (what he claims is) the largest trade bindery on the East Coast, and the seventh largest in the nation, with annual revenues of $15 million in 1998.

Furthermore, the seven-year-old, 120,000-square-foot facility (which Anson built in 1992 to consolidate four separate operations) holds more than $10 million worth of state-of-the-art equipment, providing services in eight major product lines: UV coating (spot and flood); adhesive and Otabind binding; mechanical binding (Wire-O, plastic comb and spiral plastic); cutting, folding and stitching; custom-decorated, looseleaf three-ring binders and tabbed dividers; remoistenable glue application and spot gluing; tipping, attaching, bindery hangers and backbone stripping; and stamping, embossing, diecutting and pocket folder conversion.

These eight areas of production give Anson's customers "the perfect solution for relief of postpress stress," he says, because all the services are available under one roof.

Under the Bindagraphics roof, Anson runs three shifts with 225 employees, who operate some 50 pieces of equipment on a dozen or so production lines. His equipment includes an assortment of MBO and Stahl folders, Polar cutters, Kolbus three-knife trimmers, Muller Martini perfecting binding machines, Heidelberg diecutters, a Hot Star foil stamper and, the most recent addition, a new Bobst diecutter equipped with automatic waste stripping.

ISO 9002 Certified
Not only is that equipment running around the clock, it's running in compliance to ISO 9002 procedures, a certification Bindagraphics obtained a year ago and one that Anson claims is a milestone.

"We're the first ISO 9002 certified bindery in the United States," he proudly announces. "We didn't become ISO certified because we were forced to by printers. Instead, we needed a better way to manage the products we were producing; making sure that our quality management system complied with ISO guidelines seemed like the way to do it. Now we're able to capture the process information—what we do, when we do it and how we do it—and it has helped us create a good systems management program."

Being ISO 9002 certified is just one of many distinctions that Anson says separates Bindagraphics from the rest of the pack. The main difference between Bindagraphics and other trade binderies, he claims, is that his business (which he prefers to call a "bindery/finisher" or "postpress finishing operation") is capable of taking on large and/or complex projects and handling them—in their entirety—at one facility.

"We do the binding, finishing, mailing and distribution—all under one roof," says Anson. "And we do it faster than the other guys."

Those "other guys" might be competing trade binderies or even the printers themselves. According to Anson, other trade houses don't have the capacity or capabilities to be one-stop shops. And printers are "either too damn busy to do the work themselves, even if they have an in-house bindery; they don't have the proper equipment to do the work; or they lack the technical expertise, for example, to complete a complicated folding job," Anson explains, noting that there's one other reason Bindagraphics gets so much work from printers. "They're often so late on a job, they have to outsource it to a bindery."

"Late" is how Anson says he gets 85 percent of his work. "When printers are late, which they oftentimes are, that's when Bindagraphics gets the business."

But, no matter how Bindagraphics gets the business, Anson's not complaining. From third-class mail to National Geographic, he says, Bindagraphics can—and will—do it all. (Yes, National Geographic is a real example: Bindagraphics provided the UV coating for the publication's centennial issue.)

"Doing it all" includes a variety of work for regular customers, like R.R. Donnelley and Cadmus. For these two major players, Bindagraphics provides folding, perfect binding and remoistenable gluing, as well as perfect binding, saddlestitching and inside/outside ink-jet addressing, respectively.

And with each and every job, no matter how big or small, Bindagraphics sends out a survey card. "We want to know what our customers think," says Anson. "If we get a negative comment back, a CPA [Corrective and Preventive Action] form is written and addressed at our weekly CPA meetings. Since we send out free 20-minute phone cards with all surveys, our survey completion rate is extremely high."

Anson employs six inside sales/service reps and two outside sales reps to cover the Mid-Atlantic region. When a whopper of a job came in from the South—a $300,000 order, compared to the average job of $5,000—Anson decided to set up a satellite operation below the Mason Dixon Line, 300 miles south of Baltimore. The High Point, NC, facility opened earlier this month.

The 16,000-square-foot plant is equipped with a 24-pocket Muller Martini perfect binder, a couple of Stahl folders, a Polar cutter, a remoistenable gluing machine and mechanical binding equipment. The operation is currently servicing approximately 20 existing clients.

"We believe, and our [North Carolina] customers tell us, that we'd have more opportunities—some of them giant ones—if we were closer," Anson explains, noting that "giant" opportunities is not an exaggeration. To emphasize the point, he cites the example of Charlotte, NC-based Craftsman Press.

"We did a $300,000, Wire-O bound calendar for them. This project was the biggest we've ever done," says Anson. "There's a very robust [printing] economy in the South. It's green and growing down there, unlike the Mid-Atlantic region," which Anson says is still "prosperous," even though he admits that business has "been flat over the past three years." All the more reason to plant new seeds of opportunity.

While the outlook seems particularly promising in the South, Anson isn't opposed to growing his northern exposure. In fact, he says Bindagraphics will probably open another regional facility somewhere north of Baltimore in the next few years. "We're looking to open satellite sites, a few hours away by truck," he says, "where the smaller, simpler work can be done, with the big jobs being done here."

Not only does Anson plan to cultivate new regional business through satellite operations, he's also preparing for his Baltimore-based business to pick up pace and is planning to expand the existing facility another 50,000 square feet. He predicts the extra room will be needed within the next year or two.

How can Anson be so sure of future growth? How does he know that Bindagraphics will continue to prosper at a time when other trade binderies are going out of business? And considering the ongoing trend to reduce outsourcing—printers doing their own in-house finishing—how can Anson be so sure of the clarity in his crystal ball?

"A lot of printers are still outsourcing, using trade bindery services. There's a lot of work out there to be done. Hopefully, printers' volumes are increasing so much that they're going to continue having a lot of work—work they can't do all by themselves," contends the industry veteran.

"There will always be a need for a trade bindery. Makeready time is getting shorter; lead times are getting shorter; runs are getting shorter; margins are being squeezed; and everyone wants it faster, faster, faster."

And no one does it faster than Bindagraphics, according to Anson.

"That's what separates us from the rest of the pack," he says. "We run multiple shifts and dovetail operations to compress schedules. Traditionally, a printer has to go to a finisher to get a project diecut, foil stamped or glued. Then the product is sent to a binder for binding, then to a mailing operation. When all those steps can be done in one place, it eliminates a lot of finger-pointing, and reduces spoilage and downstream problems. That's what makes Bindagraphics work.

"If you have the muscle, the capacity and the expertise to do a job," concludes Anson, "you don't need a hard sell; you don't need someone doing a full-court press to get work out of a printer."

Which is why, after 25 years, Anson is not only still in the bindery business, but his bindery business is going strong. He had a vision: Build it. And they came.