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Challenging technology doesn’t deter South Boston print service provider, Communication Graf/x
By John Scibelli
From his second floor office on West Broadway in South Boston, Don Wilson likes the view. Not only the one out his window, but the view from where he has come and the opportunities that lay ahead.

Wilson is president and co-owner of Communication Graf/x, a 10-year-old digital prepress services company that has grown into a full-service graphics provider.

The arc of Wilson’s 30 years in the business stretches from the tail end of the hot-metal type era to today where the marriage of digital technologies and information management is changing how printing is bought and sold while also raising clients’ expectations of their print communications providers.

It was the early 1970s and Wilson, who grew up in Revere, had just completed his freshman year at Northeast Regional Vocational Technical High School in Wakefield. It was time to choose a vocation from among four tracks — drafting, printing, culinary arts and carpentry. Wilson chose culinary arts, but got passed over in the selection process. He selected printing, his back up plan.

He learned camera work and stripping and went to work part-time following his sophomore year for Atlantic Typesetting in South Boston. Wilson liked the work and continued part-time after his junior year.

His transition from teen-age high school student to entry-level employee armed with a skill should be a case study for how the vocational system is supposed to work. After two years as a part-timer, he was hired full-time at Atlantic after completing his senior year at school.

Ambition and a failed first business venture
The typesetting industry was changing when Wilson joined Atlantic full-time. Wilson followed a co-worker for a similar job at Composing Room of New England — another of Boston’s well-known typesetting houses where he later met Elliot Schultz. Schultz had worked at Trade Composition which had recently merged with Atlantic, but was offered a position at the more stable Composing Room. Neither of the two men had any idea that they would later become business partners.

Composing Room was a good learning ground and Wilson had the opportunity to move from stripping to the mark-up desk but saw little opportunity for advancement beyond there. Along with another former Atlantic employee who had an art school background, the two launched a graphic design and print brokerage firm that they ran during the day, while keeping their full time positions on the second shift at Composing Room.

Now 21 years old, Wilson along with his partner were able to attract enough business to install a used press. “Beach Graphics struggled for two years. We were the business card kings of Revere. The only problem was we couldn’t make any money selling business cards for $9.95,” Wilson said.

When Kimball Loring, the owner of Composing Room learned of Wilson’s entrepreneurial ambitions, he offered him a sales position when a long-time employee went out on medical leave. “I didn’t even own a suit at the time” Wilson said. Loring armed Wilson with a $200 clothing allowance and one good piece of advice: “Don’t buy polyester.”

Wilson sold typography and graphic services to the demanding Boston advertising agency market for the next 12 years while landing high-profile clients like The First National Bank of Boston and Digital Equipment Corporation. He was promoted to sales and marketing manager for the company in 1990. “I can remember telling an old high school friend at the time that I thought I would be able to eventually retire from this company,” Wilson said.

But then, Apple’s Macintosh computers were starting to gain a foothold in the world of publishing. The handwriting was on the wall. Technology was about to force some painful changes upon the typesetting industry.

The management team at Composing Room, which included Wilson and Schultz, had the foresight to venture into desktop technology, but were stifled by the priorities of the local typesetting union. The union was also dealing with the issues of migration from proprietary typesetting systems to the open architecture of desktop technology — and what that meant to its membership.

The end of a business relationship
With the knowledge learned from the technological transition they were dealing with and the need to expand the company’s service into other areas of the graphic arts industry, Loring, Schultz and Wilson began exploring partnering or merging with area prepress shops.

One such meeting that was brokered by a supplier, led the team to a prepress shop in South Boston who themselves were struggling with the changing technology. Wilson said Mastergraph Co., a 20-year-old prepress shop “looked like a really good fit.

“Composing Room had a strong client base and knowledge of postscript. What we needed were color skills and printing capabilities, which was exactly what Mastergraph had,” he said.

A deal could not be reached despite several meetings between Kim Loring of Composing Room and Mastergraph owner Aram Heghinian. “I was getting a lot of pressure from several large clients. One client needed printing capabilities and another prepress. If we didn’t move then, I would have lost them,” Wilson said.

A new business takes off
On July 5, 1993, Wilson and Schultz started their first day as owners of The Communications Arts Group. A partnering arrangement was worked out with Heghinian, who also owned the building on West Broadway where Mastergraf was located. Each company would cross-sell the other’s products and services. Both companies were on the same floor and networked their computer systems to one another.

“We put the capabilities that the Macintosh and desktop technology provided in the hands of skilled graphic artists, craftspeople with years of knowledge and expertise in typography and in color,” Wilson said.

“From the beginning we realized that changes in technology were going to force us to reinvent ourselves every few years,” Wilson said. Desktop and prepress business picked up right away. A healthy economy helped the new company gain a fair share of business in the competitive Boston market. But the typesetting industry in Boston was really in tough shape. “I can remember a conversation with a type buyer at a major direct marketing firm. He said that we (Elliot and I) were crazy starting a typesetting company when many others were going out of business. He soon became one of our strongest supporters once he saw the quality of work that we provided,” said Wilson. Having a strong client following and bringing them along in the early days of desktop production also helped the fledgling new company.

A name change and rapid growth
The company quickly changed its name to Communication Graf/x after finding there was a shop in Rhode Island using the Communication Arts Group name. Numerous influences propelled the company forward during it first few years. Type shops all around them were closing which allowed Communication Graf/x to pick the cream of the crop of craftspeople. The shop was also gaining a strong reputation for quality and service. They knew what they had to do to service the agencies. A second shift was started within six months. “We had some limited printing capabilities, really good color, great typography and desktop skills and we serviced the hell out of the customers,” said Wilson.

Composing Room eventually partnered with Monotype Composition. Berkley Type and Technology closed and several of their key people were hired including former owner Dante Savoia.

By the summer of 1995, the company was in need of more space and leased an additional 2,500 square feet on the same floor. Another imagesetter was purchased as well as a color laser printer, but the one area that still needed addressing was the pressroom. It became apparent early on that the printing quality was not what their client base was accustomed to. “We began sending a lot of the work out to other shops in the area,” said Wilson. After time they found that they could not get the level of quality, service and margins they needed to continue on this way.

Command Printing is launched, then grounded
“We decided to set up the printing component as a separate entity for several reasons,” Wilson said. “There were already two companies involved and as the technologies kept shifting, it was becoming increasingly difficult to determine which company would do what work.”

Wilson, Schultz and Heghinian along with a sales representative who was now working for Communication Graf/x set up a new corporation that would serve the existing two companies only. All sales for Command Printing would come through Communication Graf/x or Mastergraph.

The partners bought a brand new two-color 28-inch Komori Sprint to bolster their color printing capability. Along the way they also added a Ryobi for small format two-color work. The difficulty of running a printing business with three employees and four owners became apparent quickly. Shortly thereafter, the minority partner was bought out and eventually, all of the shares were purchased by Wilson and Schultz who merged the printing operation into Communication Graf/x.

Control the page and you’ll control the production
It became very apparent in the winter of 1997 that the company would need to reinvent itself again as desktop production continued to mature and more and more clients began moving this work in-house (and into employees homes). Two major clients accounting for close to 50 percent of the company’s billing did just that.

One of Boston’s oldest and most respected mutual fund companies awarded a significant piece of desktop work to one of their former employees who was now working out of his home in the mid-western part of the country. E-mail and faxing had replaced couriers delivering color laser comps each morning.

Additionally, a major direct marketing agency had recently moved to larger space and doubled the size of its internal studio and desktop production capabilities.

At the same time that the partners were facing layoffs and cut backs, they were also examining some new opportunities. A former client was looking to set up a design shop and was interested in subleasing some space that was now available, as well as a partnering relationship with the company.

Additionally, a former competitor with a strong sales background called to “discuss the possibilities.” This sales rep had been selling design services recently for one of the better creative shops in town, and they now had access to one of Boston’s best designers who would partner with them. “I felt that if we were creating the pages, then we would determine where and how the desktop production and prepress would be done,” Wilson said. He and Schultz decided to jump on both of these opportunities.

They hired Mike Guthrie who was the former owner of Berkley Type as a sales representative, and they sublet the space to the design team. Both of these decisions help to move the company to their next evolutionary step as a one-stop graphic services provider. The company could now take a project from start to finish all in-house — from design to color separations, prepress and typography through printing.

Demand for traditional prepress services decreases
Around the same time, yet another shift began occurring. Early on, more than 30 percent of the company’s revenues were from traditional prepress ad production work. A file would arrive from a client. The company would provide high-resolution scanned images, color correction and retouching and then combine them with a native Quark file, complete other prepress work such as trapping and generate a film based hard-copy proof for the client’s approval. Once approved, they would generate final films and analog proofs to the publications.

Black and white ad work was the first to be affected by digital file transfers. AdSend, a service offered by Associated Press, quickly became the standard for black and white ad distribution and Communication Graf/x was one of the early adopters and reseller of this service. “Within an hour, we would have an ad to any newspaper in the country,” Wilson said. But how long would it be before color ads were being sent over a wire — and what kind of proofs would be required? Wilson set his sights on several digital technologies in order to keep the company ahead of the curve. The company invested in a Kodak Approval digital proofing system for the color ad work.

Next up was large format digital imaging. As just about every prepress shop across the country was scrambling for products to replace the dwindling need for film, analog proofs and scanning, large format imaging seemed to fit the bill. A commitment from a major client to purchasing a significant amount of large format imaging and finishing was all that Wilson and Schultz need to take that plunge.

The company purchased a 72-inch wide 12-color ink jet printer in 1999. In addition, they bought and set up a complete large format finishing department for mounting and laminating. Two years ago, they added a second wide format inkjet printer, an HP 5000.

“The market for large format has become saturated over time, but it’s been a good niche for us,” said Wilson, adding that large format imaging and finishing work now accounts for 25 percent of all of the company’s sales.

Investing in digital printing technology
Wilson said, looking back, the natural progression of business would bring Communication Graf/x into the realm of digital print technology. He and Schultz had been looking at digital presses for a while and considered a direct imaging press, but then they got looking at the HP Indigo.

“The big selling point for me was variable data printing,” he said. “I knew then and I know now we can go out and sell marketing programs to clients. And with direct marketing, clients want a cost-effective way to communicate with their customers.

“The quality of the printing. The ability to do short-run work — and by short-run I mean 100 pieces, 50 pieces, or even one piece,” Wilson said. “And then longer runs using a client’s variable data to help that client communicate efficiently. These were all selling points that convinced me we needed to make this investment.”

“July 2002 was our worst month ever and HP Indigo people were in here the telling us we needed this press,” Wilson said. “We signed a deal in September. The press was installed in October. Our pressman took a 10-day training course to run it and before October was over, we had run our first job on it.” No sooner was the HP Indigo installed that it was called into action. A client needed 50 copies of a 44-page report produced and delivered within two days.

“We got the files on a Monday night,” Wilson said. “The Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce had the reports Wednesday morning. On Thursday morning the lead story in the business section of both the Globe and the Herald was this report prepared by the GBCC and printed by us in just one day.

Lots of possibilities down the road
Wilson described the HP Indigo purchase as the toughest business decision he’s ever made. I’ve got 20 more years in this business. When we were looking at the press, Elliot said to me ‘this is your call. I’ll be retiring before this press has run its course.’”

Wilson sees lots of possibilities down the road. He’s involved with the South Boston Chamber of Commerce and donated a personalized variable data holiday fund raising piece for the chamber this past Christmas season. Wilson also showed the benefits of variable data printing to a long-time client, now a principal at a public relations firm, by running a variable data promotion for the PR firm no additional cost. She was so impressed, she and her associate have been selling the virtues of variable data printing to their clients. That gratuity resulted in three sizeable jobs for Communication Graf/x. Two projects for one of the region’s largest defense contractors and a media kit containing variable data for the world’s largest athletic shoe company. “There’s no doubt that the Indigo is a good fit for us,” Wilson said. “Is it the end of investments in digital technology for us? No, it’s just the beginning.”

From his second floor window where you can look out over the South Boston waterfront and see the changes underway including the new convention center just a few blocks away, Wilson and his employees have a lot to look forward to.

“The economy will turn around,” Wilson said. “It always does. And when that happens, we’ll be ready.”

About the author: John Scibelli is editor of New England Printer & Publisher. He is also director of communications for Printing Industries of New England. He can be reached at 508-804-4113 or by e-mail at .