The Company is one of the world's largest manufacturers, importers and imprinters of promotional products.  The Company has been in business more than 80 years and its products are sold worldwide.

The specialty advertising industry had experienced sales declines due to a steep reduction in customer promotional spending and the influx of lower priced foreign products. 

These industry-wide issues caused margin erosion for domestic manufacturers. Consequently, the Company needed to develop a profit improvement plan that would return it to sustainable profitability, solidify its banking relationship, and generate the additional capital necessary to fund its restructuring and position the Company for growth. 

Fort Dearborn was instrumental in the development and implementation of the Company’s restructuring plan, including a more aggressive importation strategy for finished goods, development of short-term cash control and forecasting tools, identification of specific cost reduction and profit improvement initiatives, preparation of a detailed long-term forecast, and initiation and management of a sale/leaseback transaction.

As a result of Fort Dearborn’s assistance with these efforts, the Company successfully refinanced a $7MM credit facility with its existing bank and initiated $3MM of much needed capital from new financing.  

At the conclusion of the engagement, the Company was well positioned to profitably pursue its new strategy.