Custom XM*

Paul Strack remembers spending time in a playpen in the office he now runs. His parents, Ira and Mary Lee Strack, started Custom Printing Co. in 1966 as a way to provide for their four kids (with another on the way). They hired their first employee in 1968, expanded the plant five times over 25 years and continued to invest in technologies such as direct-to-plate printing and high-speed copiers.
The son came aboard in 1990 and continued to push for prudent adoption of new techniques with a high-quality Kodak digital press in 2007 and, in a first for the state, dimensional printing, a 3-D printing process, in 2009.
As it added services — targeted marketing, Web-to-print, print-on-demand — the company rebranded itself as Custom XM in 2008 to accommodate the range of its offerings.
Considering the state of much of the printing industry, it’s no wonder Custom would want to adapt. The National Association of Print Leadership estimates that the average firm similar in size to Custom (less than $5 million in revenue) has lost more than 20 percent of its revenue since July 2007. Meanwhile, Custom has held steady as it transitioned from a commodity-based outfit to a service provider.
“They used to think of printing as a cost,” Paul Strack, the company president, said of his clients. “Now, on so many of our offerings, people can measure investment.”
One of Custom’s biggest leaps has come in offering customized Web sites and microsites for marketing campaigns, allowing companies to interface with customers and collect data on an individual level.
Digital communication now allows for swift, direct and lean print offerings. Strack cites a client in the health care industry for which Custom fills on-demand educational materials that arrive at the point of use without the client ever handling more than digital versions of the materials.
“We have built this mousetrap where we can retrieve hundreds of orders through the week,” Strack said. “The end user doesn’t even know we exist.”

Previous Honorees