After more than a decade of working with small and midsize companies in the Twin Cities commercial banking industry, Paul Lilienthal was looking to buy a business. When the investment banking company he had retained suggested Golden Valley–based Pictura Graphics, he quickly realized that he’d found the picture-perfect opportunity for him.
Founded in 1985, Pictura Graphics was an established company in a niche market with tremendous opportunity for growth. Lilienthal sealed the deal in 2003—and then began to refocus the business.
“Pictura Graphics was primarily a wholesale service company to the trade-show graphics industry,” Lilienthal recalls. “The existing base of customers would call for certain things they knew we could deliver.” But Lilienthal believed that there was much more the company could provide.
Lilienthal began to implement a plan to diversify the company’s customer base, target markets, printing capabilities, and product and service offerings. Soon the company expanded both locally and nationally into visual merchandising and point-of-purchase displays in retail outlets. It also added new digital printing capabilities to meet customers’ demand for graphics on fabrics, flexible media, and other materials. (Among Pictura Graphics’ newer markets: vehicle wraps for advertising on automobiles, buses, and train cars, as well as visual displays in retail stores.) What’s more, it added a variety of installation services to its mix.
Pictura Graphics’ client list, which has expanded along with its product and service offerings, now includes Reebok, Macy’s, Andersen Windows, and Home Depot. The company’s revenues, which hit $9.5 million in 2007, have grown more than 70 percent since 2003.
There’s another dimension to Pictura Graphics’ capabilities: The company is a member of the Printing Industry of Minnesota’s “Great Printer Environmental Initiative,” a program aimed at increasing environmental, health, and safety compliance, along with pollution prevention, within the printing industry.
In September, Pictura Graphics was named the first nationally verified Sustainable Green Printer by the Sustainable Green Printing Partnership, an independent organization founded in June 2007 that establishes and evaluates sustainable business practices for the print and graphic communications industry. The partnership provides benchmarking tools and verification of sustainable business practices based on a published list of criteria.
“Earning the honor of being the first to achieve certification is a very, very big accomplishment,” Lilienthal says. “We believe that sustainability is an integral business practice and a brand differentiator. We strive to achieve continuous improvements in all areas of environmental stewardship within the visual communications industry.”
As part of Pictura Graphics’ commitment to reducing its environmental footprint, the company recently launched its EcoImages line. These signage products feature materials that are recyclable or made of recycled material; they also use inks without volatile organic compounds, chemicals that can emit vapors which contribute to environmental degradation. Pictura Graphics also partners with industry suppliers that are committed to reducing the environmental impact of graphics printing at the manufacturing level.
“More companies are increasing their focus on corporate social responsibility, which extends to the vendors that they use,” Lilienthal says. “More and more, companies are going to specify and mandate that their vendor partners will be evaluated on their corporate sustainability and environmental efforts.”
