In the1960s, Glen Taylor was offered a job by Bill Carlson, owner of the Carlson Wedding Service, a company in North Mankato, Minnesota, that specialized in engraved wedding invitations. Taylor was a natural at the business, listening to his customers, developing ideas to improve efficiency and marketing new products to the wedding industry. In 1975, Carlson, reaching retirement, sold Carlson Wedding Service to Taylor. This was the foundation for what now has become Taylor Corporation.

Today, Glen Taylor serves as Chairman to this prospering organization and is active in other business endeavors such as the Minnesota Timberwolves and Lynx. Taylor’s daughter, Jean Taylor, President and CEO, now runs the company which has evolved from a successful, niche print business to a second generation innovative communications, marketing and interactive solutions provider.

Today, Taylor Corporation is a global operation with 9,000 employees spread across Canada, Mexico, France, the United Kingdom, China and 21 states. Taylor Corporation prints greeting cards, direct mail inserts, promotional posters and products, corporate id materials, gifts cards, labels and provides a broad range of technologies and services for business, which include data management services, ecommerce services, one-to-one marketing materials and e-based communications to name a few.

“Our passion for understanding the evolving needs of our customers and facing new challenges with fresh ideas is a true cornerstone of our success,” states Jean Taylor.

“Every day we’re uncovering new value in the markets we serve, and new ways to deliver that value to customers. And we’re identifying powerful synergies within our companies – and leveraging those synergies in unique and beneficial ways,” adds Taylor.

“People describe us as a holding company, but we view ourselves as a development company,” adds Ron Hoffmeyer, an Executive Vice President for Taylor whose specialty is expanding the company’s footprint aboard and on the Internet. “We invest in businesses and entrepreneurs. We buy businesses to grow them and expand the solutions we can provide our customers.”

Anyone who is familiar with the printing and paper products world knows many of the companies now under the Taylor Corporation umbrella. Current, Navitor, Carlson Craft, IGH Solutions, Amsterdam Printing, Optima, and Curtis 1000 are just a few of the companies Taylor has acquired over its short but impressive run to the top.

“Our core purpose is to create opportunities and security for our employees,” says Hoffmeyer who emphasizes that Taylor has a deep respect for the significance of all its businesses and all its workers. And at Taylor, creating opportunities is a process of learning, achieving and continuing to grow.

Midwestern values

Hoffmeyer’s history with Taylor Corporation is similar to Glen Taylor’s own story. While he was studying biology at Minnesota State University - Mankato, he landed a summer job with Carlson and realized pretty quickly that the business world was his second home.

“It’s been a fantastic ride for me,” says Hoffmeyer who has racked up 30 years with Taylor Corporation. “Sometimes you get lucky. I wound up with a company that mirrors my core values. I’ve never had a shortage of opportunity.”

Hoffmeyer says that despite Taylor’s size, it is still a company with traditional values that reflects its home base in Minnesota. The company was built on a group of products that are all about people and family. And while Taylor Corporation’s acquisition growth was fast, Hoffmeyer says it was also organic.

“We are similar to farmers who know what they are good at,” Hoffmeyer says. “When they expand, they don’t want all the land, only the land next to theirs. In comparison, Taylor keeps focused on its core capabilities and looking for opportunities that bring value to its customers.

Natural evolution

Some might suggest that Taylor’s decision to bring its considerable resources into the office technology arena isn’t exactly organic, and Hoffmeyer understands the puzzled looks.

“It sounds like a long way from wedding invitations and printing but it’s actually a natural evolution,” he says.

The wedding invitation business was great but very seasonal. “There was always a very steep climb up in March, April and May,” says Hoffmeyer adding that it was always so busy the company would call in temp workers.

The company discovered early on that when you have a lot of expertise in paper and printing and some time on your hands in the fall, moving into the holiday card market made simple sense.

“We started doing business-to-business printed holiday cards,” says Hoffmeyer. Today, Taylor Corporation has the highest penetration for that particular niche.

As the company expanded into the greeting and holiday card market, doors opened in other areas where printing, marketing and communications were the foundations of the business. Promotional products, commercial printing, direct mail and data management all became, as Hoffmeyer says, the “farm land next door.”

Tech services

As Taylor Corporation was growing, printing technology was rapidly changing and the company embraced each development. Once they had made their mark in the business world with print products it was, again, just a natural step to start offering tech products that catered to the online communications for business.

The company’s portfolio now includes, NowDocs, which offers software for digital printing and document distribution, and Soligie, which provides integrated manufacturing solutions for printed electronics. In addition, a variety of Taylor companies build personalization ecommerce engines for some of the world’s largest and most visited ecommerce brands.

Taylor has also developed services that cater to the needs of the country’s 5.9 million small businesses. In addition to direct mail products and personalized items like business cards and corporate identity packages, the company also offers promotional products, marketing strategies, communications services, human resource and tax-related products. Taylor also puts its years of experience with analyzing data and predicting sales to use for its small business clients and channel partners.

The youth market is also part of Taylor’s core business. School spirit products, prom packages, yearbooks, awards and fund raising products are part of the company’s catalog geared toward the 55 million high school students in the United States.

As for their more traditional lines of printed products, the opportunities have multiplied there also. Taylor can print on all type of products and surfaces, with all sorts of new effects like 3-D movie posters and new types of ink that promise amazing applications.

And if you still want classic wedding invitations, Taylor does that too. “We still do engraved invitations with copper and hand-etched plates and they are unique,” says Hoffmeyer. “We see it as an advantage that we can give both ends of the product life cycle our attention.”

Personal touch

Hoffmeyer says one of the biggest challenges for the company today is finding the message and medium that strikes just the right chord with people. “You’ve got to cut through the clutter,” he says. “We are in a race for relevancy.”

For Hoffmeyer, keeping current on the way people communicate and display aspects of their personalities is part of the challenge, and a big part of the fun in his work.

“I try to hang out with young people to stay up with what’s going on,” he says.

Whether the product is wedding invitations, business stationary, a new Web site or gift cards, Taylor’s challenge is to make that mass-produced product somehow unique and personal. People want and need items that create a sense of connection, and Hoffmeyer says the company is committed to helping them do just that.

And they are committed to helping other companies interested in new opportunities and security. “We are a value-based company and we respect and attract other companies with similar values,” he says. “We have really driven the company on that idea. We really listen to our customers and we really listen to our employees and with that, you really can’t help but win.”