FPMSI Inc.:
A coalescence of graphic communications FPMSI (Fulfillment, Print & Mail Solutions, Inc.), a provider of direct marketing and fulfillment services in North Andover, Mass., embraced this concept because in its 15 years of operation, the company has moved five times to keep up with its fast growth rate — averaging 25 percent a year. Since 2002, the company has tripled its annual revenues and doubled the number of employees. Founder and President Laura Harper attributes the growth to many factors including understanding the needs of the clients and continuously expanding its services to meet those needs.
“When I first started in this business, printers did printing and mailing and fulfillment did mailing and fulfillment,” says Harper. “Now the pressure is that everybody is doing everything. The industries that were once separate are now merging to become an industry in itself called marketing service providers.” As customers seek a one-stop shop for its marketing solutions, FPMSI aims to satisfy their requests. A multi-million dollar
company
Tired of moving, FPMSI found a 2 million-square-foot building — formerly owned by Lucent Technologies — at 1600 Osgood St. in North Andover. The company occupies only 75,000 square feet — including a 15,000-square-foot, six-rack-high warehouse — and there’s plenty of unoccupied space into which it can spread out.
FPMSI has listened to its clients’ marketing objectives and provided results. “If it was something that we didn’t do, we’d still resource it for them and get it done,” says Harper. “As an example, when I first started, I would outsource the mailing as I didn’t have the equipment to do it myself, but after there was justification, I finally bought the equipment needed to do it myself.” The company’s primary focus from the beginning has been hands-on assembly, fulfillment, and storage and distribution of marketing materials, promotional items, and products. Over time, FPMSI added the direct marketing services and digital printing. It also brokers other print. Adding digital printing
equipment
In 2007, FPMSI acquired a Xerox printer with an XMPie software solution for small print runs and variable data applications. The company can now produce one-to-one marketing pieces with personalized information that boosts response rates. “We’re happy with Xerox,” says Harper. “We’ve always produced quality work and I needed to be sure that the output we did was the highest quality.” Adding the digital printing equipment enabled FPMSI to take the next step as a marketing partner and offer web-to-print solutions. Web portal streamlines
marketing
Demonstrating quality
The process of becoming certified helped improve internal operations as well. “For us, ISO is more than standards; we have created a Knowledge Management System,” says Silvestri. “In all of our areas — customer service, finance, operations, strategy — we’ve identified critical business metrics and documented everything. We use the knowledge we’re gaining to run the business. It’s about process and process improvement, and looking at the organization as a whole from top to bottom and making sure every item is being addressed. It’s applying quality to performance, production, metrics, financials, customer service, voice of customers, and employees. We take all this into consideration when making decisions.” “We focus on what we call the two Cs: continuous improvement and customer commitment,” explains Quality Assurance Manager Stefanie Johanson. “It’s looking, analyzing, and measuring all phases of the company to better ourselves. If something goes wrong, we find the root cause, document the process, and commit to fixing it to improve our systems.” To help train employees on the quality management system, the company received a Workforce Training Grant from the state of Massachusetts. “Now we can keep everyone up to speed on training at all times,” says Johanson. “Training everyone from management to production on the system ensures that quality is not just one person, it’s the entire organization. It’s a system that everyone buys into.”
“Being MFSA accredited allows buyers of fulfillment services to know that we went through this rigorous audit — a quality program with many categories,” explains Harper. “It shows that we’re truly a fulfillment company, and not just a company that says ‘I do fulfillment.’” Another differentiating factor for FPMSI is that it is a certified woman-owned business. The Center for Women’s Leadership at Babson College and The Commonwealth Institute recently named FPMSI as one of the top 100 women-led businesses in Massachusetts, ranked, in part, by gross annual revenues. FPMSI was also named one of the 2008 Leading Women’s Businesses by Women’s Enterprising Magazine. Continuous improvement
Since 2007, Harper has been the first vice president of the New England chapter of the MFSA, and will become president in 2009. She was named to the MFSA Board of Directors at its recent annual meeting. Another association of great importance to FPMSI is PINE. “Trade groups are a terrific resource,” says Harper. “PINE has been instrumental in educating us within the printing industry, which we did not know much about. We’ve had a relationship with them for three years and they’ve been very supportive of us and helped educate us on the print world. “The interesting thing about PINE,” she continues, “is that there’s that correlation between our industry and the printing industry and how they’re coming together as one. PINE has become a very big part of us in the print world.” Harper grew the company by focusing on quality, exceeding customer expectations, and hiring employees who adhere to the company’s vision of going above and beyond customer expectations to provide value-added services to customers. “Another reason for our success is the key employees that I’ve brought on that buy into the vision of FPMSI,” says Harper.
In 15 years, FPMSI has realized numerous accomplishments
already, and aims to continue on its successful path with a fast growth
rate. The foundation has been set.
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One sign
of a confident company is when the business moves into the corner of
a partially vacant 2 million-square-foot facility because there’s
plenty of room to expand.
FPMSI
has evolved from being a traditional lettershop and fulfillment house
to a full-service marketing solutions provider that recently added digital
printing with variable data capabilities and web-to-print applications.
Consistent
growth forced the company to constantly change locations throughout
Massachusetts. After one year of working out of her house, Harper moved
the business to a 1,000-square-foot mill building in Lawrence. One year
later, FPMSI relocated to another Lawrence mill building, and from 1996
until 2000 expanded from occupying 5,000 square feet to 15,000 square
feet. When it outgrew that facility in 2000, the company moved to a
28,000-square-foot building in Haverhill. Then in 2004, the company
had to lease an additional 15,000 square feet of space across the street.
Today,
operating two shifts a day with 55 permanent employees and temporary
staff as needed, FPMSI mails approximately 20 million postcards, direct
mailers, letters, and packages each year. It also handles more than
300,000 units, including kits and pick-and-pack orders of a wide range
of products from promotional items to vitamins, lamps, and hair products.
Customers consist of primarily regional companies, but reach national
and international levels as well in a variety of industries including
pharmaceutical, finance, education, advertising, defense, and retail.
“We
got into digital printing to help our clients be more efficient in their
marketing,” says Harper. “In the past, companies traditionally
pre-printed thousands of marketing pieces. They would typically use
a printer and then send it to us as the fulfillment company and we would
store it and ship it out. Now, companies realize that much of that material
is wasted, which created the need for printing on demand to keep inventories
low. And, many want one source to be able to do everything. It was a
benefit to our clients for small-run printing solutions to offer digital
print. While we have been producing variable data documents for 15 years,
we now have the ability to add color and variable imagery as well. Moving
into the future, that’s a huge part of the marketing world.”
One
company taking advantage of this new service is a worldwide manufacturing
company that is expanding into the U.S. The company needed a partner
to help them with their marketing in the U.S. and Canada. “With
our online ordering portal, all of their dealers — they now have
100 and are looking to grow that to 500 in the next year — have
the ability to go online and order the materials that they need to promote
their products,” says Silvestri. “We’re completely
behind the scene. It’s customized to the look and feel of the
dealer. They might order 100 of this or 500 of that and we’ll
print the order and ship it out.”
Another
accomplishment for FPMSI is that it became the first company ever to
be accredited by a new grading system in the fulfillment industry. MFSA
(Mailing & Fulfillment Service Association), a national trade association
for the fulfillment and direct mail industry, established the accreditation
to help companies improve their operations. To receive accreditation,
FPMSI had to meet the high standards of 168 criteria, such as establishing
strict standards within the fulfillment industry for order packing,
warehousing, and even employee training. 
“Fifteen
of our employees are MQC (mailpiece quality control) certified through
the U.S. Postal Service,” Johanson said. “Again, it reinforces
the training of our employees and our commitment to stay informed and
to provide that knowledge to our clients.” 
“It’s
extremely important to have key people who understand where you want
to take your company and that you can trust them implicitly to focus
on their area of the business and carry that vision throughout the entire
organization. We want to be sure that everybody from finance to operations
to marketing and communications to our quality program shares our vision
of what we’re trying to accomplish here.”
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