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At New Direction Partners, we often advise selling owners of printing businesses to be prepared to stay on in one role or another after the transaction closes. Because keeping a hand in the business at the new owner’s request is a given in so many deals, it’s helpful to have some idea of what the responsibility is going to entail and what psychological adjustments are going to be needed along the way.

Trade show season is just a few months away, with PRINT 17 returning to Chicago in September and the SGIA Expo kicking off its 2017 edition in New Orleans in October. At a trade show, you can make a shopping list of what you need to enter the ranks of the industry’s high-value acquisition candidates.

At New Direction Partners, we have seen that once a company has made its first successful geographic expansion, the experience may pique interest in making others. However it is accomplished, geographic expansion brings a range of strategic benefits to the buyer.

Recently, New Direction Partners spoke with a group of investors about structuring a multi-company transaction. It’s a conversation we wouldn't have expected to be having on behalf of printing firms just a few years ago.

As the former president of a Printing Industries of America regional affiliate, I had the good fortune to work with many smart and successful owners of thriving printing businesses. I had the greatest respect for their abilities, but then as now, there is one thing that I would never have recommended that they attempt: selling their companies without professional representation and advisement.

If, as the owner of a printing company, you suddenly decided to stop showing up for work, could the business carry on without you? It’s a serious question, and the answer speaks volumes about how well prepared you will be for the decision that every owner eventually has to make.

Congratulations — having carefully planned and executed the acquisition of a printing company to complement the one you already own, you’re finally prepared to sit down with the seller to close the deal. Naturally, you’re feeling good about what you’ve accomplished and what the future holds for the merged entity that your effort has created. This is the point at which we always urge our buying clients to pause.

In diplomacy, the motto for negotiators and peacemakers is “Trust, but verify.” The advice applies to M&A transactions between printing companies as well. Get the facts, confirm the understandings, and be open about everything that the process discloses.

Negotiation is the most critical step in our six-stage journey toward a deal — the phase in which the transaction either comes together as the negotiators want it to or falls apart because their efforts have worn them out.

"I may not know everything, but I know what I like." We base many personal decisions on this bit of homespun wisdom, and more often than not, it leads us to the right choice. It’s also not a bad starting point for a preliminary review of printing companies identified as candidates for acquisition.

Given the current robust health of the M&A marketplace there’s a good fit out there somewhere for every seller and buyer.

Probably no subject gets more attention from business writers and management gurus than strategy. That’s not surprising. Without a coherent set of objectives — a precisely defined goal to work towards — everything else is just going through the motions without actually getting anywhere.

At New Direction Partners, we have found that closing a deal is almost always the culmination of a number of steps—six, to be precise.

In our recent webinar, we were happy to report that the pace of dealmaking in the industry remains strong.

My personal involvement with M&As began when I was the president and CEO of a family business that originated as a newspaper publishing company in 1906. During my tenure, we sold our non-heatset web division and after that our sheetfed operation. Later, as president and CEO of the Printing and Imaging Association of Georgia, I worked with a number of our members who were considering M&A transactions of their own. This experience taught me two things...

It looked like a good fit. The seller, unfortunately, didn’t see it that way.

It’s no surprise to see wide-format shops attracting their fair share of attention in the M&A marketplace. We’ve represented a number of them as sellers in transactions this year, and they make an interesting contrast with our commercial printing and packaging clients.

As a trade association president, I knew that one of my most important jobs was to offer our members a friendly, well informed, third-party perspective on strategic business issues. Today, our New Direction Partners clients want the same thing: not just information about the mechanics of M&As, but also a genuine understanding of the industry and the mindsets of the people who own those companies.

For many years, I had the privilege of serving in leadership positions with Printing Industries of New England (PINE), the largest printing trade association in the Northeast. Then as now, I was greatly impressed by the resiliency of our members and their ability to adapt to changing business circumstances.

we’ve seen a number of articles suggesting that last year’s boom in mergers and acquisitions may be running out of steam.