My February post regarding Bowne took us to 1975... now I want to add a few facts I find interesting many of the Bownies werent aware of. It was until the early 1960s (I believe 1962) that Bowne recorded its first $1 million in SALES! (not profit). When Bowne went public in the mid 60s the major shareholders were Tom and Ted Stanley, Franz von Zeigasar and a few other family members. Prior to the IPO Ted and Franz offered to many employees (not necessarily sr. management, but people who had been with the company for awhile) private stock which was worth many times the cost just several weeks later. No need to name them (most of them have passed away); but they were, for the most part middle class workers in the office, plant and shipping. This singular act will give you some indication of what Bowne was about. 4 major financial printers dominated the industry in the 60s, 70s and 80s; they were Bowne, Pandick, Sorg and C.P. Young. By the early 90s the latter 3 had closed their doors and only Bowne survived (more on that time period in a future post). I will always believe Bownes survival (and dominant position - we were #3 of 4 in 1983 and # 1 by 1992) was due in large measure to Franz and Dick Koontz. Franz (even though he was CEO) always downplayed his business acumen (he was in Army Intelligence in WW2); and always gave credit for our companys success to others. He quietly acquired companies (ex. Bowne Time Sharing) and made investments in others which were ultimately sold for 10 X what we paid for them. Dick ran the business side...and run it he did. Bowne & Co. had 11 employees (including secretaries) when I joined in March of 83 (Matt LaMuraglia enjoys reminding me he joined in Jan of that year beating me by 2 months). The real key to Bownes survival and profitability was the recognition that every major market was different and required management skills geared specifically to that market. Therefore, New York, Chicago, Dallas, Los Angeles and Boston (later to include Houston, Atlanta, Canada and International) each had a President responsible for administration, sales and operations...one person answerable to Dick for sales and profitability (not an easy job, believe me - but the formula worked). The 3rd person (in my judgment) who became the final member of The Trinity after being our outside auditor and joining as CFO was Jim ONeil who believed in the structure which had made us # 1 and did everything feasible to safeguard the Operating Company philosophy. Did we compete with one another - all the time - but we always worked things out among ourselves...rarely kicking an issue upstairs to Dick and then Jim. Im sure each of us has our own feelings as to what happened (try not to post names in a negative vein if possible) but I will always believe that the restructuring from the Operating Company model to the Regionalization model (with sales reporting to Corporate and operations reporting to Corporate) was the beginning of the end. Just so anyone reading this understands succinctly I do not include the establishment of BBC, BPX, or South Bend as negative to our focus..they were actually necessary for Bowne to survive. The issue was when the one go to person was removed from a major city, internal strife and bickering became the norm. Sales blamed Ops; Ops blames sales and there was no one to mediate. What happened went against the very simple maxim...if it works, dont fix it. This post turned out longer than I had intended but I will continue in the future to state what I believed made us great, and unfortunately later on, led to our undoing...never forget our Holy Trinity - Franz, Dick and Jim (to be continued)! ...and thanks for those who read this complete (rambling) post.
Posted on: Mon, 07 Apr 2014 22:01:31 +0000
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