Laurie Carr and Julie Mavis, co-owners of Cats Media (Toronto and Port Hope, Ontario), restructure a small family printing business into a marketing services provider and become role models for the U.S.-based National Association of Quick Printers (NAQP) and Canadian Kwik Kopy franchisees.

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2. F
or the past couple of decades, printing prophets have
forecasted doom for printers who do not extend
their services beyond traditional reproduction. At
the same time, there has been a frustrating scarcity of
information about role models and action plans to help
small printers expand into new services to improve
their odds of long-term survival. This column will in-
troduce you to Laurie Carr and Julie Mavis, co-owners
of Cats Media, a small Ontario company, who have re-
cently emerged as role models intent on helping other
small independent operations convert to new business
models and revenue streams.
In 1986, Carr’s mother, Nan Carr, and stepfather,
Gary Fishlock, started the business as a quick-printing
franchise in the Don Mills district of Toronto. (They
can’t name the franchise company as a condition of
their termination agreement.) For 20 years, they main-
tained the franchise, with Fishlock driving outside sales
as Nan managed in-house operations.When their fran-
chise contract expired, rather than renewing, they de-
cided to continue in the same location (where they still
operate today) as an independent business.
During the last dozen or so years of the franchise,
Laurie Carr entered the family business, after she had
already built a 20-year career of her own as a comptrol-
ler in the automotive sector.“Initially, I came in just to
help them out part time, because they were struggling
a bit. It was the early ’90s, and they were just starting to
take on things like floppy-disk work, which they didn’t
understand. They only understood hard-copy kind of
work,” recounts Carr. But because market demand for
computer-generated production escalated, Carr ended
up staying with the family business.
Independently, Julie Mavis had built her own career
with the Hudson’s Bay Company, where her progression
from store manager to senior executive gave her ample
opportunities to hone her skills in marketing and busi-
ness strategy. After 17 years with HBC, she felt it was
time for a change, so she left, ran for political office, and
in 2000 was elected municipal councillor in Port Hope,
the municipality where she and Carr both live (an hour’s
drive east of Toronto, population 16,500).
Carr and Mavis join forces
While on council, Mavis was responsible for the Eco-
nomic Development and Tourism portfolio and had
the opportunity to work with Carr on a mutual project.
Their collaboration proved so successful that Carr in-
vited Mavis to join her family’s business in 2001.
Fishlock, who was intent on retiring at the end of his
20-year franchise contract, stepped back and let Carr
and Mavis co-manage the operation for a couple of
years, until eventually he and Nan sold their stake in
2006. Now, as co-owners, Mavis looks after the strategic
vision and creative side of the business, while Carr over-
sees the numbers. Although Fishlock has since retired,
Nan still works in the business two days a week, focus-
ing on administration and print-related specialty jobs.
“She doesn’t have any understanding of the new serv-
ices but is a great resource on the traditional print side,”
says Carr.
Steps toward change
When Carr first arrived, the prepress side of the busi-
ness was completely manual.“The company had a cou-
ple of major clients at the time: A communications
company and a financial-services company. Once we
started doing their artwork on a PC, both were so de-
lighted with the opportunities and the quality of our
product that our business with them expanded expo-
nentially,”she recalls. For instance, one new job they ac-
quired involved archiving all the data for one large
company’s training manuals, plus printing and ship-
ping the manuals all across the country.
Next, Carr and Mavis expanded into mailing, fulfill-
ment, and IT services, such as database management,
all of which they felt were a natural extension of their
existing post-print operations.“Our existing clients un-
derstood these services, they needed them, and were
happy to let us take care of them,”Carr continues.“The
new services didn’t bring in a lot of new clients. Rather,
it was usually people who were print clients first who
moved into purchasing them. We grew through print
contracting for our existing client base.”
At present, the mailing and fulfillment part of the
business mainly serves two major clients: One that pur-
chases legal printing for the condo industry and the
other an international hotel chain. In total, Cats Media’s
current Toronto operation consists of seven staff (plus
Carr and Mavis), two Risos (one inkjet and one dupli-
cator), one colour and four monochrome toner-based
machines (mostly Ricoh), plus bindery and mailing
equipment.
VICTORIA GAITSKELL
Creative Cats
12 • PRINTACTION • OCTOBER 2012
Top photo (L to R): Tracy Kerr, Designer; Julie Mavis,
Owner; Aaron Sawyer, Marketing; Laurie Carr, Owner;
Jay Robinson, Creative Director; Jeff Shadwick,
Designer; and Rick “Big Data” McMurray, Web/IT
(along with Jay’s dog, Bandit, Studio Greeter).
Inset: Cats Media’s Port Hope studio sits under the
CP Rail viaduct, overlooking the Ganaraska River.
Continued on page 24

3. New-media service
Their next big leap was into consultative
marketing services, including business
branding, logos, graphic design, digital
photography,videography,andWeb devel-
opment, design, and hosting. “The move
required us to hire new people with new
skills,and required big changes in the mind
set and culture of the company – but it has
also been a lot of fun!”recounts Mavis.
The milestone occurred in 2008, when
Carr and Mavis opened a second location
in Port Hope,equipped with desktop Macs,
laptops,an arsenal of software,and six cre-
ative staff to produce all creative work in-
house. In addition to bindery equipment,
the Port Hope studio also houses a colour
copier for proofs and odd quick-print jobs
that clients need right away; but“the main
investment is people and intellectual prop-
erty, not hardware,”says Carr.
“The reason we have two locations is
that a creative brain doesn’t do very well
in a busy, noisy manufacturing environ-
ment,”explains Mavis.“If you go to all the
expense of hiring creative experts, you also
need to provide them with a creative en-
vironment. So we built them a cool space
with a funky interior design and a variety
of work areas where they can create indi-
vidually or collaborate by spreading them-
selves out and bouncing ideas off each
other and the clients.
“Formerly, we tried and tried to bring
the creative department into our Toronto
production facility, but it didn’t work out.
It took a totally different environment to
make it work. The two facilities are both
awesome, but they’re too different to work
in one space.”
Mavis, who currently serves on the
board of directors for the Port Hope
Chamber of Commerce, says she finds it
easier to recruit qualified staff in Port
Hope because, unlike Toronto, other local
employers pose less competition. She says
another advantage of operating there is
that their staff’s community involvement
has made the company well known in the
smaller municipality, whereas in Toronto,
where the population is so much larger
(5.5 million in the Greater Toronto Area),
interactions with people are less frequent
and more impersonal. Their Port Hope
clientele include non-profits in the
health-care field, small retail, major in-
dustry (especially the nuclear sector), and
government at all levels.
“Since we can’t just rely on print sales
any more, we must also sell creative serv-
ices, and for this process we’ve gone from
doing individual sales to team sales,” she
explains.“The people with the right skills
go out and talk to the client. One person
can’t sell the whole thing.” Both she and
Carr make sales calls along with other staff
(“As owners, we never stop selling”), but
most of their sales calls are done by cus-
tomer service reps in each location who
each have their own accounts. Sometimes,
because in some quarters businesses still
remain somewhat patriarchal, they delib-
erately send male staff to visit certain
clients because they’re the gender the per-
son on the other side wants to see.
24 • PRINTACTION • OCTOBER 2012
Gaitskell
Continued from page 12
Cats Media’s design team works within an open studio.
(L to R): Maggie Peacock, Manager; Laurie Carr; Julie Mavis; Katy Caines, Print
Production; Issac Williams, Production Supervisor; and Tim Yu, Admin Systems
(not pictured, Nan Carr and Gary Cormier).
Continued on page 26
TRADE PRINTING

4. Staying informed
To stay current, Carr and Mavis try to at-
tend a lot of conferences, especially the
National Association of Quick Printers
(NAQP) Owners Conference in Chicago,
held this year in October immediately be-
fore the Graph Expo trade show. NAQP
provides programs,studies,discussion fo-
rums,and products specifically focused on
the interest and concerns of small com-
mercial and quick printers. Since 2005, it
has been part of the National Association
for Printing Leadership (NAPL), based in
New Jersey.
This year Carr and Mavis also attended
the June InHOWse Managers Conference
in Boston, a multi-part conference for cre-
ative freelancers, designers, and managers
of creative environments, because they
wanted to get a handle on how to manage
a creative team.The previous year they sent
their Creative Director to the same confer-
ence to learn about design trends.
“Historically, the U.S. market has been a
bit ahead of the Canadian market,” says
Carr. “We used to be able to look at them
and see what services are taking hold there
that would subsequently move into the
Canadian market. I don’t think their mar-
ket is as prominent as it once was, but it’s
still very important for us to keep an eye on
what’s happening south of the border, es-
pecially the creative side. Nowhere in
Canada can hold a candle to California or
Texas where a lot of creative information is
coming from.”
Mavis continues:“Our staff are self-mo-
tivated and passionate about technology
and design, so they often use the Internet
to make sure they’re ahead of [the sector’s
standard] skill level. Because the industry
changes so quickly, the challenge is staying
on top of it. At the InHOWse conference
they told us that when people are being
trained, what they learn when they first
start out is obsolete by the time they’ve fin-
ished school!”
Keeping watch over your stats
Carr says one of their biggest challenges
was learning how to be profitable. “Over
the last few years we’ve worked especially
hard to keep paying the bills and monitor
where our profit is going. Although, as a
whole, the industry is reducing in size, our
company has continued to do about the
same year over year.”
She attributes their financial stability to
knowledge obtained from annual statistical
reports published by NAQP, including the
Financial Benchmarking Study, Quick
Printing Wage & Benefits Study, and
Hourly Cost Studies-Print Operations for
Up to 20 Employees. She and Mavis en-
countered NAQP around the same time
they were buying the business.They hadn’t
seen anything like those reports before and
concluded that they needed to obtain more
information in order to initiate change in
an informed way.
“The statistical reports we received from
NAQP in the first year were invaluable to
us because they gave us the ability to com-
pare our numbers against other businesses
of similar size. It’s great information that
allowed us to streamline our original busi-
ness and make it more cost-effective,much
leaner and more profitable,”explains Carr.
“Once we did that, because we became
more profitable, we were able to start tran-
sitioning and able to take the risk of adding
new services.”
Carr says NAQP also provides informa-
tion on how to move into marketing serv-
ices, but one of the biggest problems is a
printer’s own resistance to making those
changes.“TheAssociation takes away some
of the fear by providing support and advice
on how to do it. They are treading slowly
on the transitioning, because I think a lot
of members are still afraid of changing
from being a print or commodity producer
into a service provider, but they’re defi-
nitely going in the right direction – .”
“– Although, we’d like to see them do a
whole lot more,”interjects Mavis.
Constant learning
Mavis laments that one of their challenges
on the creative side is that they haven’t
found a source of statistics comparable to
NAQP for benchmarking yet.
She says one thing they learned when
launching new services was the importance
of costing everything out in advance. “For
instance, we had no idea how much more
expensive our insurance would be once we
started doingWeb development,”she recalls.
“You also have to learn how to bill ap-
propriately for work on the creative side
when all you have to offer is time and a ton
of skills. You have to get used to thinking
along the lines of: ‘It will take my Project
Manager this many hours to understand
your requirements and pass them along to
the Web Developer, who will take this long
to custom-build your Website.’ It helps if
you hire designers with experience,because
they know what other companies are
billing, so you can learn from them.”
Evangelists for change
Two years ago,the fact that no organization
in Canada provided statistics and services
comparable to NAQP’s prompted Carr to
join NAQP’s Advisory Board as its sole in-
ternational representative. She and the
Board plan to launch an initiative to bring
the association’s products and services
from the U.S. into Canada in the near fu-
ture.With Mavis,she is emerging as a lead-
ing advocate in both countries for the need
to support other small independent print-
ers as they transition to new business mod-
els. The Kwik Kopy Printing Canada
Corporation franchise (Richmond Hill,
Ontario),with 62 locations across Canada,
has invited Carr and Mavis to present a ses-
sion called“Transitioning from Traditional
Print to Multimedia”at its October confer-
ence for franchisees in Guelph,Ontario.At
the same conference, Carr and Mavis are
also scheduled to speak at a roundtable dis-
cussion on industry trends.
As for their own company, Carr says:
“Since we’ve just added mobile Websites to
our offerings, the number of services we
offer is where we want to be – for now. At
present we have enough irons in the fire or
balls in the air or however you want to put
it. We’re happy to continue developing
those and our staff.”
She predicts: “But 10 years from now,
there are going to be things we have to offer
that we don’t even know about yet. And if
that’s the way the business is changing,then
that’s the way we have to change.”
Victoria Gaitskell is keen to exchange ideas
with readers at victoria@printaction.com
Gaitskell
Continued from page 24
26 • PRINTACTION • OCTOBER 2012
TRADE PRINTING
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