Sometimes a child outshines the parents. That is the story of Imaging Solutions, which was formed two years ago with the merger of two printing shops in the Richmond area. The company, which offers a slew of services from fine art printing to Web design, has performed so well that it is the Manufacturing category winner for the Virginia Business Fantastic 50. Revenues for 2000 were about 20 percent greater than 1999. Even with the recent downturn in the media business, sales for 2001 are ahead of last year’s.

Richard S. Godsey, president; Candace Haske, vice president; and Steve L. Fitchett, executive vice president, credit their success to offering more than just printing services. Photo by Mark Rhodes

It made sense to form Imaging Solutions because it is hard for smaller shops to keep up with the expenses of rapidly evolving printing technology. "With the strength of our companies combined, we’re far stronger than each of us was standing alone," says Richard S. Godsey, president.

Two years ago, Godsey was president of Plummer Printing Co., a 15-employee shop in Petersburg. He was concerned about keeping up with technology and started looking for a like-minded business partner. He found one in Steve L. Fitchett, president of Carriage House Press, a 20-employee shop in Richmond. The two men shared a dedication to customer service and similar visions for a business strategy. They decided to merge, and Fitchett is now executive vice president of Imaging Solutions.

Once they had a sound base, more acquisitions followed. A few months before the merger, Fitchett’s company acquired Micromagnet-ics, bringing the printer squarely into the software age with this new capability of CD-ROM and diskette duplication. Then in mid-2000, Imaging Solutions acquired Richmond En-graving, adding art prints and digital photography to its list of services.

Even though the two parent companies had similar goals and strategies, Godsey and Fitchett say the most difficult part of the merger was combining the two corporate cultures. "Being a small company that doesn’t do many mergers, it’s not like we had a whole battery of trainers," Godsey says. In fact, it was primarily Godsey and Fitchett, with input from the employees, who determined what the operational processes of the new company would be. They say it took about six months before the employees (all of whom retained their jobs) fully accepted "the Imaging Solutions way and stopped thinking of ‘the Carriage House way’ or the ‘Plummer way,’" Fitchett says.

The result, however, is a better overall operation. "Each organization has some attributes and some less-than-perfect processes," Fitchett says. While Godsey and Fitchett and two additional stockholders did most of the merger negotiations, they did bring in a consultant to look at the companies before proceeding. That was one of their best moves, they say now, because the consultant brought an unbiased perspective and confirmed that the two companies were a good match. "You don’t want to learn you’ve jumped into the river with a piranha," Fitchett says, adding, "The consultant had no ego involved and could be totally objective."

Imaging Solutions now has about 53 employees and is finishing an expansion of its Richmond production facility, including the addition of five new color presses. Its four-year revenue growth was 237 percent.

The two principals credit that success to their ability to offer much more than just printing services. In 1996, they were both ‘just’ printers, Godsey says, "but now, with the refurbishing of the same information, we can make printed brochures, CDs, digital brochures, put them on the Web site or mail them." The merger "keeps you from reinventing the wheel when you can find the company that’s already doing well in an area you want to work in," Godsey says. Imaging Solutions inherited desire and business sense from its forming companies — and left its parents in the dust.

Return to Virginia Business - June 2001