New leadership team takes the reins of Bow Finishing
By Colleen Lent
Craig Cook is appreciative of the industry experience he’s gained from his family and how it has prepared him for his role as president to lead Bow Finishing Company, Inc. of Concord, N.H. into a new era.

Cook is the son of Mike and Gail Cook, the founders of Bow Finishing, and the grandson of Forrest Cook, who founded the Concord Litho Group, the large commercial printing company which for many years held a minority interest in Bow Finishing.

Cook and Doug Wright, Bow’s vice president of operations, are forging a new identity for Bow Finishing.

“We are not in any way affiliated with Concord Litho,” Wright said, however, he and Cook admitted that it’s hard for the public to see Bow Finishing as autonomous, considering the two companies share family history and are located on the same street. The two companies don’t share finances, employees, or proprietary client information.

A company gets its start
In 1958, Forrest Cook first posted his open for business sign as the founder of Concord Litho, which provided his son an opportunity to learn the trade. After working for his father for about eight years, Mike Cook decided to try his own entrepreneurial cap on for size and established Workshop Cards in 1967 with his wife. The national greeting card venture, located in nearby Bow, enabled the Cooks to work with well-known artists and illustrators, including Mercer Meyer, Cindy Szekeres and Joe Veno.

After operating profitably for more than two decades, Mike and Gail Cook sold Workshop Cards in 1989, allowing them to enter a partnership with James Cook, Mike’s brother and then owner of the Concord Litho Group. The husband and wife team managed the day-to-day operations. Meanwhile, James Cook held a minority interest in the business. The impetus for the partnership was to cultivate additional outsourcing opportunities for the Concord Litho Group.

With three decades of graphic arts and greeting card finishing experience, Mike and Gail slipped comfortably into the driver’s seat. In its infant years, Bow Finishing started with two greeting card folders, a 54-inch cutter, and piecework production. As the Cooks weathered the seasonal peaks and dips, it became difficult to maintain a year-round staff of 15 employees. As a solution, they expanded the company’s product and service line with the acquisition of other capital equipment, including saddle-stitchers and Stahl folders in an attempt to offset the cyclical sales cycle.

Industry experience and ingenuity fertilized the business, increasing sales and personnel growth at Bow Finishing. To cultivate new customers, the company realized it would need to stretch its reach and work with printers and brokers outside of the Concord Litho Group.

Health issues sidetrack business plans
In 1996, a formidable foe — health issues — hit the company leaders hard. Mike and Gail were forced to spend much of the year away from the business. Bow Finishing experienced its first unprofitable year in a decade when sales dropped $100,000 from $1.3 million in 1995 to $1.2 million in 1996.

At the time, Craig Cook, an honors graduate of Pepperdine University with a bachelor’s and master’s degree in English and psychology, decided it was time to return to his native Concord. The younger Cook had been working as a children’s social worker for the Los Angeles Department of Youth and Family Services. “It was a big transition,” Cook said.

Yet while a youngster through his early teenage years at home with his parents, Cook listened to the daily conversations about the rigors of the finishing business. And despite living 3,000 miles away, he was always in touch with the goings on back home.

New leadership emerges
Once on board at the company, Cook immersed himself in daily operations, working alongside three shifts of employees. Bow Finishing experienced steady growth in sales from $1.5 million in 1997 to $2.7 million in 2002. To maintain strong sales, in 2001 Mike and Gail Cook bought the minority interest held by James Cook, allowing the company to operate independently.

“The decision to break the tie with the Concord Litho Group was a difficult one, but necessary in order to attract other commercial printers,” Craig Cook said.

The addition of two key employees — Wright in 2001 and Damon DeCoste, the company’s imaging services manager, in 2003 — followed the break from Concord Litho as the parent firm. With 20 years of manufacturing experience, Wright has a “full gamut” of experience, ranging from graphic arts, to direct mail, to printing. Wright said he welcomed the challenge of expanding Bow Finishing’s product and service offerings to include direct mail services. “There’s a lot of opportunity,” he said. “We changed the whole outlook of the company.”

Meanwhile, DeCoste also shares a host of professional experiences, ranging from software development, to direct mail data processing, to direct bindery imaging. Certification plagues from Scitex Digital Printing, Inc. and AccuZip, Inc. hang above the desk of his second story office, overlooking the manufacturing floor. DeCoste’s training in computers and finishing machinery allows him to manage internal and external communications, including an FTP site for large client files, customized customer fonts, and postal presorting. A networked computer system allows DeCoste an open dialogue with manufacturing coworkers on the floor. “It basically takes the human error out of the jobs,” DeCoste said.

New team upgrades equipment and expands service
In early 2003, Bow Finishing added new equipment, including two Scitex Dijit 5120 inkjet systems and a Kirk-Rudy 215-V mail base with a Research infrared drying system, to complement its growing lineup and employee additions. “Our facility contains the latest automated mailing equipment designed to process mailings efficiently and quickly,” Wright said. A sampling of other Bow Finishing equipment includes a 2002 Polar 155ED-Auto Trim & Weigh Scale, 11 Stahl folders, three McCain saddle-stitchers, six Label-Aire automatic labeling machines, and three Challenge three-hole industrial drills.

With knowledgeable employees hired, a full range of machinery and software acquired, and two years of research and development completed, Bow Finishing was ready to offer inline imaging along with data processing to its customers.

“We want to provide one-stop shopping to our clients,” Craig Cook said. “Moving into the mailing/fulfillment segment of the graphic arts market was a logical extension of the services we currently provided. Literally, millions of self-mailers, brochures and catalogs were produced at BFC then shipped across the Northeast to various mailhouses. We wanted to increase our value to our customers. And what better way than by saving them in freight, production and turnaround times by offering them in-house mailing.”

Employees are the key to any successful business
Cook and Wright said having the right equipment is one half of the successful company equation and having the right people is the other half. “We know we’d be nowhere without these people,” Wright said.

While the partners said they have a simple management style of open communications, which isn’t referenced in organizational leadership textbooks, perhaps educator and author James Grunig’s theory of symmetry best describes Bow Finishing’s approach. The symmetrical or open style embraces decentralized management, employee ideas, and innovation. According to Grunig, an organization adopting a symmetrical attitude has a balanced relationship with its relationship of giving and taking, rather than a lopsided one of just taking. Cook said it’s important for management to encourage listening, cross-training, problem solving, and a “make-it-happen” attitude.

At the same time, Cook and Wright said a positive work environment can’t be achieved if the leaders are detached, giving orders and suggestions, from a distance. “We like to get involved,” Wright said. “The separate entity thing is pretty much demolished.” Perhaps, the management style and a new profit sharing program are contributing factors to Bow Finishing’s low employee turnover or defection rate. One third of the company’s 63 employees have been with Bow Finishing for at least seven years.

Cathy Cullen, the company’s office manager, said three things act as a double cappuccino that keeps her going each day — working with personable bosses, interacting with a host of people, and handling a variety of responsibilities.

Meanwhile, many employees, like head technician Scott Moreno and first shift supervisor Glenna Ross, have devoted most of their professional lives to the finishing and mailing industry. Echoing the thoughts of DeCoste, Ross said Bow Finishing employees must keep abreast of industry developments and changing regulations through training sessions and ongoing conversations with vendors, customers, and the United States Postal Service, which eventually benefits the customer. BFC is continually researching the latest postal software and regulations in order to realize their customers the greatest postal discounts available.

On the lookout for new opportunities
“We continue to work with various vendors and suppliers for unique and opportunistic ways in which to compete successfully in these current economic times,” Cook said. Cook and Wright said if Bow Finishing doesn’t shake hands with changes in technology, postal requirements, and customer needs, the company would start seeing red ink, rather than green, on the ledger books. “Despite the cliché, we are always working ‘outside the box.’ We do not have the luxury of sitting still and waiting for the next opportunity to present itself. We are forced to create opportunities,” Cook added.

Wright and Cook said the company’s philosophy has allowed it to expand its customer base from a handful of Granite State printers to more than 50 printers and brokers throughout the United States and Canada.

While Bow Finishing specializes in large volume finishing jobs, it opens the front door when the smaller volume customer knocks. Thus, the company processes purchase orders ranging in size of 300 to 50 million pieces, according to Wright. In some cases, Bow Finishing may handle all of the finishing components of a matched mail piece, including folding, addressing, gluing, sorting, and mailing. In other cases, the company handles just one facet of a job. “We’re hitting the full gamut,” Wright said. “We don’t shut our doors to anybody.”

With 2003 more than half over, Cook and Wright have declared their New Year’s resolution for 2004. The partners are planning to buy Mike and Gail Cook’s interest in Bow Finishing, allowing the new management team to forge ahead on its path of autonomy.

In the interim, the two said membership with the Greater Concord Chamber of Commerce and Printing Industries of New England is helping to spread the word that the two companies are amiable business neighbors, operating independently.

Membership in trade associations also allows Bow Finishing to again stay abreast of industry and community changes and developments, as education is fodder, keeping the company nourished with news. “We’re on the cutting edge,” Wright said. “If we sit still, we’re going to get run over.”

About the author: Colleen Lent teaches communications at Southern New Hampshire University and writes weekly business profiles for Seacoast Newspapers. She also provides copy writing services to small New Hampshire businesses. She can be reached at 603-463-9449 or by e-mail at .