Fast-Track Firms--Leaps and Bounds

Carl Norton, chairman and CEO, wishes he could report that building a business such as Nationwide Graphics is an easy task, but negotiating deep-pocket financing to cultivate a consolidation machine is far from simple. Norton is not a printer by trade; he is a lawyer. His Nationwide Graphics partner, Vice Chairman and Senior Vice President Jerry Hyde, is a CPA. Still, the two investigated the printing industry thoroughly and, in January 1998, arranged financing to build a consolidation powerhouse of their own.