Tom Williams

To the owner of a packaging or a printing business, there will always be something subjective about the idea of its value. But practical methods of business valuation do exist, and it’s wise for owners to incorporate them into their business strategies.

Big events, such as Print 17, are great opportunities to reconnect with clients and to stay in touch with the pulse of the industry.

Integrating your company and one you’ve purchased into one entity will be a stiff test of your executive skills — perhaps the most demanding test you’ve ever faced. But, with strategic planning and careful execution, you can make the merger accomplish everything you envisioned when you first decided to pursue it.

"I may not know everything, but I know what I like." We base many personal decisions on this bit of homespun wisdom, and more often than not, it leads us to the right choice.

When a business owner seeking to sell holds out for a higher price than what the market is willing to pay, it often comes at his or her own peril. Sound advice from M&A advisers, based on comparable recent sales, is typically the best way to understand a fair price in an acquisition transaction.

With drupa 2016 just a few months away, naturally the industry is thinking about the new capital investment opportunities that a show of this scope and size presents.

Everyone likes a bargain. There was a time when the printing industry’s M&A marketplace was full of them — for all the wrong reasons.

It goes without saying that the rosier a company's financial picture is, the more attractive it will be when the time arrives for the owner to sell the business. That is why building business value must become job No. 1 for owners, stockholders and their managers in anticipation of a sale.

There are two ways to build a printing company’s top line: by increasing share of market, and by increasing share of customer. Successful companies are good at doing both.

Nobody likes interruptions to their best-laid plans, but they happen—and M&A deal making isn’t exempt from them.