Fast-Track Firms--Leaps and Bounds

In March of 1998, Nationwide Graphics bought its first company, a Las Vegas printer. The second acquisition, a Miami-based operation, came in July of that same year. The third buy hit the following September, an Atlanta-based printing operation.

The three companies churned out a combined $32 million in sales for Nationwide Graphics that year. Plus, an added bonus, as Nationwide Graphics acquired its first three organizations, it absorbed the executive-level brainpower of several printing industry veterans—giving Norton and Hyde perhaps the only element yet missing from their consolidation equation: The insider edge.