Kristi Dannelley
President and co-owner of Magna IV of Little Rock
Kristi Dannelley has been with Magna IV, a print and marketing business, for nearly 20 years, previously serving as its accounting manager, controller, chief financial officer and chief operating officer. As president, she oversees all aspects of the company’s financials, operations, investments and new product and account development. She also founded and oversees Incredibly Charming Paper & Gifts, Magna IV’s sister company. A licensed CPA, she previously worked in public accounting at Frost PLLC.
Dannelley is a summa cum laude graduate of Henderson State University in Arkadelphia with a bachelor’s degree in business administration. She is a current board member and previous president, vice president and treasurer for Big Brothers Big Sisters of Central Arkansas.
Technology has had a massive impact on printing. What have been some of the biggest changes?
Technology has been a challenge and a blessing. Digital substitution has eroded a lot of our transactional business and traditional revenue sources like magazines and brochures. But it’s also given us the opportunity to expand our services. By embracing new technologies, we’ve been able to offer valuable new tools like online marketing portals that have helped us win national accounts.
Today, clients are able to see us as a long-term marketing partner rather than one-time print shop. Whether clients want to use direct mail or a digital campaign, they now know we have the tools to cost-effectively deliver their messages and provide quick and meaningful results.
How does Magna IV stay relevant and stay ahead of ever-evolving technology?
There’s a joke among industry peers that “nobody gets rich in the printing business.” The fact is the printing industry is a capital-intensive business where today’s technology is likely to be obsolete next year. If you don’t stay current and significantly invest in your business, then you simply can’t compete on the national level. Our late founder, Gary Middleton, and his wife, Pat, lived by that philosophy from day one. My tech-savvy business partner, Kent Middleton, has great intuition for what technology will be relevant for our customers and has pushed us to be early adopters of new methods.
Magna IV has some prominent clients, like Dave & Buster’s, ConAgra and Gold’s Gym. What do you offer that maybe bigger firms don’t?
Magna IV is laser focused on being a solutions-based provider, and we have the production capabilities to back it up. It’s nearly impossible to find a print business with our breadth of equipment and a fully staffed programming department. Because of this, we can quickly develop and execute custom marketing solutions for national brands with multiple locations.
One day, we might build an online marketing portal for a restaurant chain so different store locations can customize, order and print collateral on demand. Another day, we might create and deploy a digital cross-media campaign with direct mail, email or text messages and then follow up with results reporting.
No matter the project, our aim is always the same. We help clients find their “pain points” and tailor solutions to address them.
What was the biggest mistake you ever made in business and what did you learn from it?
The Great Recession and the digital shift initially caught us flat-footed. Before, we were bumping along with healthy sales and profits with the same business model that 95 percent of other printers used. The next several years were lean as overcapacity in the printing industry corrected itself.
We took a hard look at our vision and developed a strategic plan to evolve from a transactional-based business to a solutions provider. That’s when things began to turn for us. The lesson we learned is to never be caught without a long-term plan. Communicate it to your employees and then manage it constantly.
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