Display Advertisers
KBA
RIS Paper
Dauphin Graphic Machines
MAN Roland
Graphic Consulting
HK Graphics
Bay State Bindery
Printer’s Repair
Seaboard Bindery
Printing & Publishing Council of New England
Domtar
Robert Cohen
Concord Litho Group
Matheson-Higgins/Congress Press
Utica National Insurance
Heidelberg

Plus more than 100 companies in our Where-to-Buy section (Full List).

Subscribe

Advertise

Request a Media Kit

Four years after the purchase of Daniels Printing Company, Merrill/Daniels emerges as a strong market leader with a bright future
By Pamela Mieth
When Daniels Printing Company was purchased during that crazed period of consolidation in the late 1990s by Merrill Corporation, St. Paul, MN, there was regional concern that the future of the company — a cornerstone of New England’s proud printing heritage — would be directed by outsiders.

Initially, it was unclear how the acquisition of one of the region’s largest, oldest and most venerable printing companies would affect the industry and how much of Daniels Printing would remain recognizable in the marketplace.

Four years later, the former Daniels Printing Company, now Merrill/Daniels, has been smoothly blended into a newly created regional market leader with a proud, long history and a bright future.

Consolidators reshape the New England printing landscape
Merrill’s 1999 purchase of Daniels Printing came at a time when the economy was in full swing. Investors were looking for profitable opportunities. Consolidation swept through the nation’s printing industry like a brush fire across a parched landscape. Inevitably, the big wave of consolidation reached New England.

Merrill was part of that wave, yet it was different than the others. It made one purchase in New England — what many consider a crown jewel of the region’s industry. Others had a hungrier appetite for printing companies and some of those consolidators have had difficulty managing those acquisitions.

Consolidated Graphics of Houston purchased two Massachusetts companies. Mail-Well Corporation of Boulder, CO, bought United Lithograph in Somerville from private ownership. Printing Arts America added Bay State Press in Framingham to its roster of printing companies.

Illinois-based Wallace Corporation secured its own trophy, the well-respected W.E. Andrews Printing Company in Bedford with its sister plant in Manchester, CT, when it bought publicly owned Graphic Industries of Atlanta.

The Canzano family sold Acme Printing in Wilmington, MA in April 1998 to World Color which then acquired Universal Press in Westwood and the Rand McNally book production facility in Taunton. Less than 15 months later, World Color merged with Quebecor Printing to form QuebecorWorld. That merger pushed the Canadian firm ahead of R.R. Donnelley & Sons to become the world’s largest printing organization based on annual sales.

Consolidation had changed the face of ownership at the region’s biggest plants.

Merrill enters New England marketplace
The Daniels’ acquisition made sense to Merrill because the document and information management company was looking to expand its presence in the New England marketplace.

In Daniels, Merrill found a company rich with a history of lengthy service to businesses throughout northeastern United States. All indications were that Daniels’ client base would remain stable, ensuring the new owners of continued steady demand for Daniel’s quality work. Merrill also saw opportunities where it could leverage Daniels’ high-end commercial printing to other Merrill clients nationally.

In Merrill, Daniels found a way to preserve its traditions while becoming part of a greater whole — a progressive company with greater technological resources and a broader reach.

More than 100 years as a family-owned company
Daniels was founded by Abraham Daniels in 1880 at a location, which is now Stuart Street in downtown Boston. The first press was manually operated and type was set by hand. Early work included handbills for neighboring theaters and fancy dance cards. Delivery of printed work was by goat-drawn cart.

As the business grew, Grover and Maurice Daniels succeeded their father in the company’s leadership in 1916 and relocated the business to 77 North Washington St., in Boston’s North End, where it remained for more than 50 years.

In the early decades, Daniels maintained its artistic and theatrical connections by printing silent film librettos for local moving-picture companies, and then branching into clothing and fashion catalogs. The company weathered the Great Depression without layoffs by cutting salaries and trimming the workweek to three days.

Lee Daniels joined the company after service in the Navy during World War II. He became the company’s president in 1966. The years following the war were a time of growth for Daniels, as the region’s economy thrived throughout the 1950s. Dozens of companies, many brimming with ideas for consumer products and comforts, others looking to establish themselves in developing industries, needed printed materials.

Daniels bought its first offset press in 1961; and in 1968 met its growing demand for space by moving across the river to Everett. By the time the company reached its centennial, it had cemented its reputation as one of the best commercial printers in New England and the country.

Ray Goodwin takes leadership as Merrill Print Group is formed
The Daniels’ plant in Everett, located just over the Mystic River Bridge from Boston, became the headquarters for Merrill/Daniels, better known internally as the Merrill Print Group (or MPG). Ray Goodwin, a seasoned Merrill executive, took over the reins as president after the sale and oversees its operations in several states.

A management team that mixes industry veterans and relative newcomers who possess care for the craft and an appreciation of the new technologies and directions shaping the industry aid Goodwin. Among them is Richard Kenney, vice president of strategic sourcing; Bob Burke, vice president of manufacturing/operations; and Kevin Gilligan, vice president of sales/marketing.

Other key holdovers from Daniels Printing, who were welcomed aboard by new ownership, were former owner and Chairman Lee Daniels, and James Gately, who started as a salesman in 1959 and rose to become a partner in the company.

Both men have stayed on with Merrill/Daniels in unique capacities. They continue to work to develop new business and nurture longtime accounts that in many cases both men were instrumental in developing decades ago.

Merrill’s resources strengthens print operations
Kenneth F. Merrill founded his company in St. Paul in 1968. In 1984, the K. F. Merrill Co. changed its corporate name to Merrill Corporation and elected John Castro its president and chief executive officer. Merrill Corporation went public in 1986, but returned to private ownership in 1999.

Today, Merrill is a leading, diversified communications and document services company, applying advanced information systems and Intranet/Internet technology to provide a broad range of services to its financial, legal and corporate clients. Merrill’s services integrate traditional composition, imaging and printing services with online document management, distribution and collaborative solutions.
This integrated approach helps streamline the preparation and distribution of business-to-business communication materials. Merrill serves its domestic clients through 47 offices in 35 cities throughout the United States. Its international clients are served through client service centers in London, Paris and Frankfurt.

Merrill’s continued growth resulted in revenue of approximately $575 million in the last year, Goodwin reported. Merrill has four business units: Financial Document Services, which focuses on corporate financial printing; Strategic Communications Services, which markets to real estate, mutual fund, life insurance companies and large corporations, serving their varied print and distribution requirements; Document Management Services, which focuses on the reprographic needs of the legal community and manages in-house copy centers for law firms; and the Merrill Print Group (MPG), which manages all the commercial and financial printing needs for Merrill as well as a particular focus on Northeast-based design firms, agencies and corporations.

Due to the fact that a substantive portion of MPG’s sales are inter-company, Goodwin said that Merrill does not release actual sales figures for the business unit. He said that 25 percent of MPG’s revenue is generated from external customers with 75 percent from internal clients. He added that printing within the Merrill Print Group is done for any number of clients but internally assigned to another Merrill business unit. He also added that MPG is profitable and has a “positive cash flow.”

Merrill Print Group extends beyond Everett plant
In addition to the Everett plant, which occupies about 135,000 square feet in two buildings, MPG also has printing facilities in La Mirada, CA, (about 30 miles from Los Angeles), Chicago, Dallas, Union, NJ (about half an hour outside New York City), and St. Cloud, MN.

The Everett plant is the only one to have both web and sheetfed presses. St. Cloud has sheetfed only and the rest have purely cold-set web presses. Merrill/Daniels employs about 250 people at the Everett plant, and 500 nationwide.

Merrill also maintains warehouse/fulfillment operations in nearby Woburn, MA; Monroe, WA; and St. Cloud. Fulfillment capabilities have also recently been expanded into the Everett facility.

Constant investment in new technology
By 2001, company officials noted, four years of investing in advanced technology, which culminated in a completely digital prepress operation, was capped off with the purchase of a new 28 by 40-inch KBA Rapida 105 eight-color press (with tower coater and extended delivery). That purchase made Merrill/Daniels the only East Coast commercial printer with four eight-color presses. The others presses in the line up are a 28 by 40-inch Heidelberg two-color press (with perfecting capability), and three 28 by 40-inch Mitsubishi eight-color (with aqueous coaters) presses.

Everett also has a 36-inch Harris five-color heatset web press (with combination folder/sheeter), two 36-inch Harris four-unit full webs, and a 36-inch Harris two-unit full web. The cold web platform also includes an inline stacker with three-knife trimming.

Merrill/Daniels has invested strategically and consistently to upgrade to a full digital workflow. It maintains a Fuji 6250 color drum scanner and a Linotype-Hell Saphir flatbed scanner. Its electronic prepress facilities include seven PowerMacintosh G3 stations, three PowerMacintosh 9500 stations, two iMac stations, a Micron Windows NT station, two Wacom tablets, Yamaha and APS CD-writers, Adobe Type Library, Scitex Impose-enabled Brisque4, and two Scitex 52G-enabled Brisques with 146GB towers.

Merrill/Daniels received one early dividend from its investment in digital equipment before the first prepress files were ripped. As a longtime member of Printing Industries of New England, Daniels Printing and Merrill/Daniels supported a legislative effort by the trade association to remove the sales tax on the purchase of prepress equipment in Massachusetts. Daniels and Merrill/Daniels were one of about 26 Bay State printing companies that funded a lobbying effort that ultimately succeeded after a four-year effort in passing a sales tax exemption for the purchase of prepress equipment. That tax exemption, quarterbacked by the trade association, saves the Massachusetts printing industry an estimated $5 million to $6 million annually.

For digital and analog proofing and platesetting, Merrill/Daniels has two CreoScitex Trendsetter Spectrum 3244 thermal proofing/platesetters, HP2100TN and HP8500DN printers, three Barco Impress digital proofers, a Canon 1000 color copier/printer, 3M Color Key, a Scitex Dolev 800 v with an Inline Carnfeldt GL 361 film processor, and two Barco Crescent platesetters (42 and 42HS).

Bindery services include four programmed paper cutters, five folders of various sizes up to 26 by 40-inch (includes three MBOs and one Stahl), two Vijuk pharmaceutical folders, five McCain binders with soft-fold capability, a Rollem scoring machine, and equipment for collating, wafer sealing, three-hole drill and shrink packaging, along with customized padding and gluing machines, specialty book building and hand assembly.

The company’s emphasis on service and technology extends to ink production, fitting for the Daniels’ tradition as leaders in color reproduction, has extended to Merrill/Daniels. Sun Chemical provides continuous ink formulation services to the company. Colors are matched and ink draw downs produced. Colors can be adjusted on the press to computerized specifications; the water used is specially filtered for consistency. Services include production of up to 400-pound ink batches on-site, the design of specialty varnishes, and the supply of aqueous coatings, both in gloss, satin and matte.

An equal commitment to high level of service
Although the Everett plant is in a traditional industrial neighborhood, it is a beacon of modernity. It is 9002 certified, the internationally recognized benchmark for quality.

Accordingly, there is careful planning of each job and numerous checks for product quality along the path a print job takes. In the rare case that something does not go as planned, the focus is not on laying blame, but assessing the root-cause and assuming appropriate corrective action, while ensuring the process is seamless for the customer, said Manufacturing Vice President Bob Burke. Streamlining the operation and eliminating wasted or extra steps reduces room for error and allows Merrill/Daniels to be more cost effective and efficient.

The Merrill/Daniels plants often operate 24 hours a day, seven days a week, so getting customers’ jobs completed properly and on time or ahead of schedule, is the top priority of production managers. That focus is passed down the line to press operators, right through to employees in finishing and shipping.

Sales head Gilligan cited a recent example of a client from Denver who popped into town and dropped 20 jobs on the company with only three days to get them produced. Merrill/Daniels got everything done — a day early — giving the client time to stop off at Legal Seafoods to take lobsters home for his spouse’s birthday. Indeed, on a recent Friday at 5:15 p.m., a tour of the plant showed both press and prepress employees in full swing.

Annual reports, due to the high level of quality and attention to detail needed, will remain one of the company’s cornerstone products, officials said, and Goodwin added there is still the continual need to understand and respond to clients evolving print requirements. Web site-based “soft proofing” is a recent area of focus.

Another trend, Goodwin said, is nowadays the company doesn’t just provide one-time, individual work, but is required to offer total solutions across a very broad spectrum. “We used to get $10,000 jobs,” he said. “Now we’re working on $40-million-RFPs (requests for proposals).”

He said clients want “vertical buys” — access to a range of services that can take care of all print needs from business cards to forms and complex marketing materials, to supply chain management.

While Merrill/Daniels sees part of its focus more and more on larger “contracted buys” for a range of printing, document and communications services from corporations looking for one-stop shopping, Goodwin is quick to point out that “We really love the specialty design work.”

And, it’s that attitude that is helping Merrill/Daniels retain longtime customers. Among those noted longstanding clients is International Paper, for whom Daniels, and now Merrill/Daniels, has printed each of the 18 editions of its “Pocket Pal,” the graphic arts production handbook, including the first one back in 1934.

One of the challenges of merging Daniels into Merrill, Goodwin said, was educating the rest of the Merrill divisions about the commercial printing capabilities that came along with the Daniels acquisition. It didn’t happen overnight, he said, but it did happen.

About the author: Pam Mieth is a freelance writer living in Cambridge, MA.

Photographs: John Goodman, prepress technician II.

Owned & Published by Printing Industries of New England