The Company provides prepress and design services for printing applications, to customers in the consumer products, industrial products and packaging industries.

The Company had experienced significant sales declines, as major customers increased prepress services performed in-house. Reduction in industry demand also deteriorated gross profit margins by one-third in under two years. The Company had not been profitable for the prior three years.

Fort Dearborn Partners worked closely with management on both revenue enhancement and cost reduction initiatives.

In spite of their mature industry, the Company was able to improve revenues by identifying select opportunities for price increases on certain products, billing for additional value-added services historically provided at no additional charge and increasing freight and handling costs, recovered through customer reimbursement.

Fort Dearborn advised and assisted management in restructuring the Company to realign labor costs with forecasted sales, reduce overall administrative costs, close an unprofitable division, sell non-essential property and equipment, and identify  ineffective personnel.

The result of the FDP developed improvement actions was quick and substantial: the Company returned to profitability in under four months.