Arvest Press: Business lessons strengthen resolve of husband and wife ownership team
By John Scibelli
If you were running a small business — any business regardless of the industry — and you knew nothing but good economic times with consistent prosperity, would that mean you are a smart and successful entrepreneur?

Or might it simply mean that you’re more lucky than good? There’s no simple answer.

What is clear, however, is that running a business is never an easy endeavor. Anyone who has managed to keep their business intact over the past five years, continued to meet payroll, and consistently delivered value to customers to the point where they’ve brought you more work, deserves praise and admission to the select club of successful entrepreneurs.

That description aptly fits Harry and Mayda Chaprazian, owners of Arvest Press, an 11-employee commercial sheetfed printing company in Waltham, Mass. The owners have had their share of economic ups and downs during the 19 years of their company’s existence, but their company is now in a strong growth position.

Since the company’s founding in 1986, the Chaprazians have been on the revenue roller coaster that has brought them exciting highs and unwanted lows. The ride has made them better business owners, and given them a greater appreciation for what they have today.

A once-in-a-lifetime chance
Harry Chaprazian was 19 when he and his family immigrated to the United States in 1979. Harry had attended vocational school and planned to be a machinist. When the chance came up to emigrate, his father decided they may never again get that opportunity, so they took it. They arrived in Watertown, Mass. to be near extended family that had been here for several years.

Mayda arrived in the U.S. in the 1970s as a young girl. Her family settled in the Midwest, but moved to Massachusetts to be closer to family and friends. Soon after Mayda and Harry met. They married in 1989, and had their first of three children in 1992.

Mayda had gone to work in accounting at New Balance and later Biogen, and always planned to return to that job after having children so the family would have an income separate from the printing company. It didn’t work out that way.

By 1993, Mayda was working part-time at the printing company handling most of the accounting and bookkeeping. As her children got older, she found herself working more and more. She eventually joined Arvest full time, but reduces her hours in the summer to accommodate her children’s summer vacation schedules.

Early years excitement is tempered by rough patch
Shortly after his family settled in Watertown, Harry took a job at a printing company. Harry started in the bindery, and eventually moved to press work, first operating a small format press, before stepping up to run mid-size sheetfed presses.

Harry began to make contacts and handle very small print jobs. He started in the basement of his parents’ home. He may have been there considerably longer were it not for a bruised ego he suffered from one prospect he was courting.

“What motivated me to grow was in 1986 when a prospect client told me I wasn’t a legitimate printing company as long as I operated out of a basement,” he said.

That was enough to spur action. He took $4,500 of his savings and moved his small press into 1,100 square feet of rented space in Watertown. He was the only employee for nearly two years. Arvest Press was launched April 1, 1986. He selected the name Arvest because the literal translation from Armenian is “art.” He planned to stay at the Watertown location for three years. He stayed 12.

Throughout the late 1980s, Harry focused on soliciting business from software companies that sprang up along Route 128, dubbed, America’s Technology Highway, like weeds in a vegetable garden. His work consisted mostly of short to medium-run printed pieces. He gathered enough work to buy a two-color Ryobi press and a Heidelberg MOZ, which gave him single and two-color capability.

Chaprazian grew his business on the work of about 15 companies that Arvest served regularly. Then, suddenly, the work orders stopped seemingly overnight.

It was 1992 and Docutech machines had arrived. Many companies — including all of Arvest’s customers — soon realized they could reproduce document work on the new equipment and dramatically reduce their printing expenses.

“It was like getting up one day and there was no work,” is how Chaprazian describes the sudden business change. “Before then, we had gotten to a point where we were controlling the inventory of printed materials for our clients. Often we would have extras on hand and when they’d call, we send items right over. In late 1992 and early 1993, the telephones stopped ringing. It was like we were being fired by all of our clients.”

Arvest had grown to five employees including Harry and Mayda. Harry had built up the bindery and was able to do three-hole punches, Wire-o, perfect and GBC binding. It helped secure work for software manuals and grow overall sales.

“At our peak we were doing about half a million dollars per year,” Chaprazian said. “Business was good.” Looking back, one mistake Chaprazian now realizes is that 95 percent of the company’s work was from the same industry — software; and it was virtually identical — manuals and company collateral material. Arvest had too many eggs in one basket. When business stopped, it stopped cold.

“It took us two months to figure out what to do,” Chaprazian said. “We still had work, but it was not enough to keep three or four people busy,” Mayda said.

“It was a horrible period for us,” Harry said. “It was absolutely terrible to say to loyal employees that I can’t support you anymore and I have to lay you off. As an employee, to have the rug pulled from under you like that is not easy. From a business point of view, you’ve got to do what you’ve got to do to survive. I had to do it. We held off for four months before letting our workers go. We were hoping something would change — that something would fall from the sky, but it didn’t happen.”

Then one day, while meeting with an insurance sales representative as the couple was shopping for health insurance for themselves and their baby, the agent suggested Harry and Mayda contact print brokers.

Not one to waste time, Harry made calls the next morning and lined up three interviews. It was a slow process, but with Harry’s persistence, the first job came from a broker, then more. Within three years, Harry and Mayda picked up enough business where they could offer jobs to their displaced former employees. Two came back. One had moved on to other work. Arvest was working with eight different print brokers. Business was coming back, but unbeknown to the Chaprazians, Arvest was now developing an identity as a “trade shop.”

Building back business is a slow process
Shortly after business at Arvest Press got back on an even keel, Harry Chaprazian realized he needed to upgrade and expand some services if he was to keep the work he had and have a chance at more.

“There was no doubt I had to re-tool my shop,” he said. “We bought our first Macintosh and got into desktop publishing in late 1995.” Included in the investment was the purchase of an film imagesetter, which Chaprazian said increased business in the first year by $50,000 to $100,000.

A bigger investment was the purchase of a new four-color Ryobi 3304 a 12 by 18 inch small format press. Chaprazian traded in an older Ryobi when he upgraded.

“Work had gotten steady with eight print brokers,” Harry said. “Looking back, I think it was a mistake not hiring a sales rep. With all of our work coming from print brokers, we had no direct exposure to the buying community.”

As was the case for many printers, business grew steadily during the mid to late 1990s. Chaprazian added two more employees, one to run a growing electronic prepress area, and a pressman. Harry found himself focusing more on overall business management, client service and sales.

With business on a solid track, workspace became an issue. Arvest Press had outgrown its home in Watertown. Over the years it had expanded its Watertown location from 1,100 square feet to 3,000. With gross annual sales on a 35 percent growth track in 1997 and 1998, the Chaprazians were poised to purchase their own building.

At Mayda’s urging, Harry called a real estate agent who had a lead on property in Waltham, not far from Arvest’s Watertown location, nor from the couple’s home in Woburn. They closed on the Waltham property — their current home — in August 1997 and moved in November.

Newly settled, Arvest shifts its focus and suffers again
The Chaprazians added a 20 by 28-inch four-color Komori sheetfed press in 1998, and a Scitex Dolev imagesetter. Annual sales topped $1 million by the end of that year. By then, Arvest had seven employees working full time.

Business remained strong for the next two years as Arvest developed a reputation as a four-color printer. The Komori helped to achieve that new distinction.

As is known all too well to business owners, the good times don’t last forever. There are inevitable economic slumps. Arvest’s began at the end of 2000 and carried into 2001, but it was compounded by a key initiative by the Chaprazians that only made matters worse.

Harry and Mayda grew concerned that too much of their business was coming from print brokers. In mid-1999, with the company in a strong financial position, the owners began to diversify its client base. They invested in and hired their first full time sales representative. The sales force grew to three people by Sept. 11, 2001.

“We had gone through this one time already in 1992, when the business was changed by the Docutech,” Harry said looking back. “I was not prepared for another difficult period.

“I was concerned because we had such a limited client base,” Harry said. “That was another important lesson I learned.” Arvest’s trio of sales reps never generated the level of business Chaprazian expected. Over time, they were phased out.

“With the new four-color Komori, I knew we needed to reach out to the design community. There were hints of a slowdown coming. Harry noticed fewer print orders for newsletters and other printed materials were coming in. He attributed it to the advent of the Internet. Further trouble loomed ahead.

The stalled economy wiped numerous small businesses from the business landscape. Some declared bankruptcy. Arvest had done work for many of those firms either directly or indirectly through brokers, and was owed money. Not only was there a drop-off in new and repeat business, cash flow into the company had taken a hit. Arvest was being squeezed; once again, the Chaprazian’s mettle as business owners was being tested.

“We dipped into our personal savings and were determined to make our way through this without significant lay offs,” Mayda said. “We didn’t want to go through the process of losing people, scaling back, hanging on and then start the rebuilding process. It wasn’t as bad in 1992 and 1993 when we had virtually no customers, but it was still very challenging.”

The Chaprazians had four other employees in addition to themselves on the payroll. They told employees they’d continue to pay their salaries and wages, but they had to cut benefits. “Our employees understood the situation,” Mayda said. “We
didn’t have benefits for ourselves. We weren’t asking employees to do anything we weren’t already doing ourselves.”

They have since turned to Printing Industries of New England for their company’s health insurance.

The revenue roller coaster was in a downward spiral. Between 2001 and 2002, Arvest lost 40 percent of it annual sales. “Just because business slows down doesn’t mean monthly payments on equipment goes away,” Harry said.
The couple and the company had no choice but to rebuild what they had lost. By the end of 2004, they had gotten back — in terms of annual sales — where they were at the end of 2000. “It took us three years,” Harry said.

The future brightens
The Chaprazians hired Michael Kaye as a consultant to help with sales. He later joined the company and now serves as vice president, sales and marketing, alleviating Harry of most sales duties, which allows him to focus on strategic business planning. The company also made a concerted effort to qualify as a preferred vendor for work from the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. No figures were available to show the amount of state work they are getting. Kaye has pushed the company into book work, where Arvest can easily print short to medium sized book runs. Brochure and newsletter print runs range from 500 to 50,000, depending on the project.

Kaye is also having success finding clients in the health care industry, museums and institutional settings, and the financial services industry. Never again will Arvest have the majority of its clients in one industry, nor do they focus on one printing niche.

The majority of its work is still multi-color printing, but an excitement fills the front office and production area as the owners are putting together the necessary hardware to build toward four-color and five color work.

Earlier this year Arvest Press bought a new five-color Komori with coating unit on line. It now has a printing arsenal of the new five-color, the older four-color Komori, a four-color Ryobi and a two-color Ryobi for small format work, and a growing bindery.

A new Screen platesetter is on the floor in prepress and is in operation as of this month as General Manager Kevin Bennett and other employees iron out workflow issues to make the transformation to a fully digital, computer to plate workflow.

Arvest Press has come a long way since its start in a basement in 1986.

“We offer more than one type of printing,” Mayda said. “We have really grown into a full-service company, and our focus is on trying to help clients achieve their business goals. We view ourselves as partners to our clients where we offer solutions, not just printing.

“From a business perspective, we’ve learned not to put all of our eggs in one basket,” she said.

“It’s a nice feeling to have your own company, but you worry about your employees and the work coming in, and whether you have enough work to keep everyone busy,” Mayda said. “I worked at large companies. I don’t know if they go through the same thought processes that we do as small business owners.”

About the author: John Scibelli director of communications for Printing Industries of New England and editor of New England Printer & Publisher magazine. He can be reached at 508-804-4113 or by e-mail at jscibelli04@pine.org.