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Blanc Printing | Allegheny County Blanc Printing is a printing and multimedia development firm run by longtime client Karen Zatta Martin and her husband, Steve. The business was doing well until, five years ago, it was severely damaged by a flood. Suddenly, business began to struggle under the weight of unexpected repair costs and significant amounts of debt. Not knowing what to do, Ms. Zatta Martin turned to the University of Pittsburgh Small Business Development Center to help her create a new financial plan to get the business back on track to success and ready for growth. The consultant helped Ms. Zatta Martin take an organized approach to her finances, completing a financial analysis and projections. He helped her develop a plan to pay down debt more aggressively before undertaking any capital investments. He also assisted her in assessing a potentially high-risk expansion opportunity, and they decided to wait until the business was better prepared to handle the risk. Together, they devised a strategy to focus more efforts on higher margin revenue streams. Apart from all this, Ms. Zatta Martin was also dealing with a number of staffing challenges when she approached the consultant. He helped her reduce inefficiencies by eliminating unnecessary positions, enabling high-performing staffers to take on more responsibility, and ensuring salaries were consistent with market rates. He also created a break-even analysis, so Ms. Zatta Martin could monitor sales and expenses and develop target payroll numbers. Ms. Zatta Martin’s year-end sales showed improvement after just a few months of working with her consultant, and the resolution of staffing issues freed her to focus on increasing sales. Her consultant conducted quarterly meetings and financial check-ups to ensure the business continued becoming more financially secure, so she could undertake more ambitious growth strategies down the road. The nature of how the client did business had to evolve as a result of the business growth and the economic downturn, so the consultant helped her update her business plan and create new projections. When presented with the opportunity to work as a vendor for a large printing company, Ms. Zatta Martin and her consultant assessed her financial situation to determine whether the potential profit outweighed the costs of the opportunity. Ms. Zatta Martin began working with a certified public accountant to do pre-tax planning and develop additional strategies to improve her balance sheet. She brought her consultant into many of these conversations to get a second opinion and maintain consistency of vision across the past few years of working with the SBDC. Sales have increased significantly – 125 percent in only a year – and margins are up significantly. The company’s debt is very manageable now and they are considering buying a new printer that will greatly improve their efficiency. The staff adjustments have allowed the business to pursue a stronger emphasis on design capabilities. Blanc Printing won two national awards for graphic design and printing last year, beating out design firms and printing companies ten times their size. The business also won a large contract with the Pittsburgh Public Schools and received stellar ratings while fulfilling it, thus opening up many more opportunities to respond to requests from government agencies. |
