Technical Articles

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Seaboard Bindery:  A Specialist's Specialist

Published in New England Printer & Publisher

by Frank Shear

   

 

Although Seaboard Bindery was founded in the 1920s, president Frank Shear traces the company's modern roots to 1955 with the adoption of its current name.  Two decades later, Seaboard Bindery was still a tiny company with sales hovering around the $250k mark.  Then Frank's father, Harold Shear, bought the business in 1977 and installed professional management systems for the first time.  During the next sixteen years, Seaboard Bindery grew five-fold.

   

In 1994, Seaboard Bindery was at the cusp of a significant decision.  The highly profitable $1.2mm company was operating in a small production facility in Chelsea, Massachusetts.  Frank Shear's difficult choice was this: Either play it safe and keep the company where it was or bet the proverbial farm by moving it to nearby Woburn while simultaneously buying a state-of-the-art Kolbus Ratiobinder perfect binder.  Although risk averse by nature, Frank was still in his 30's and decided to go for it.  Instantly, Seaboard Bindery entered the big leagues.

  

With the move successfully behind them, Frank made another decision that altered the history of the company.  He believed that the key to long-term value creation and profitability lay in product specialization, not in trying to be all things to all people.  With the raw horsepower of the Kolbus rapidly transforming his company, he focused squarely on book manufacturing and offered new services only if they complemented the company's core competencies.

  

Another fortunate event occurred in 1998 when Frank successfully wooed younger brother Jim Shear into the family business.  "Of course I wanted Jim on board," says Frank.  "Sure he's my brother, but the company really needed his RIT background and fifteen years experience with two leading printers in California and New York." 

 

Services

Seaboard Bindery offers three main bookbinding products: Adhesive binding, mechanical binding and saddle stitching.  Today, about half of company revenues derive from adhesive binding.  Shortly after the Kolbus was installed, Seaboard Bindery took a chance and became the first New England company to license the patented Otabind™ and RepKover™ layflat adhesive binding technologies.  Under the marketing slogan, "Sometimes It Just Has To Layflat," Seaboard created a market niche for these user-friendly, cost effective adhesive bound products that allow glue bound pages to lie flat without spine breakage.

  

However, layflat wasn't enough.  To further strengthen the company's adhesive binding hand, in 1996 Seaboard invested in yet another gluing technology; this time PUR glue binding.  Strategically, PUR makes sense because it doesn't melt or crack, even when exposed to the most torturous environmental conditions.  With its user-friendly Otabind and RepKover, super-strong PUR and traditional perfect binding capabilities firmly in place, Frank Shear completed his long awaited adhesive binding "triple play." 

  

Armed with an arsenal of more than a dozen pieces of Wire-O™ binding (Wire-O is a trademark of James Burn), plastic coil binding and automatic punching machines, Seaboard's second strength is in mechanical binding.  As in adhesive binding, Seaboard specializes in mid-quantity Wire-O runs and easily handles difficult jobs with fold outs, mixed stock, single sheets, odd sizes, etc.  The company's two full-size saddle stitching lines round out the company's core service offerings.

  

With its specialty binding technologies and first-rate equipment, Seaboard Bindery's image in the marketplace quickly fell in step with its stated mission of being a world-class bookbinding company.  Seaboard offers other post press services, such as laminating, folding, cutting, drilling, single sheet collating and shrink-wrapping, intended to support the company's core bookbinding manufacturing processes.  On occasion, they will accept a non-book binding job that involves fold-only or laminate-only work, but these instances are increasingly rare.

  

"In our early days, I'd never turn down a job," says company chairman, Harold Shear, who holds an MBA from Harvard University.  "But, Frank has convinced me that we'd help our customers more by sticking to our knitting.  He focused us on our book binding niche and we are much better off because of it."

  

Markets

Seaboard Bindery is a regional player with New England as its major marketplace.  There are competitors with broader product lines, but the northeast graphic arts market is large enough to accommodate both the specialists and the generalists. 

  

Even though 1999 was a great year for many New England printing companies, the area still lost two stalwart trade binderies: One permanently shut its doors and the other was acquired.  "These changes significantly affected our competitive landscape," says Harold Shear.  "We put some expansion plans on temporary hold to evaluate market forces.  But, at this point, we're full steam ahead for 2001."

  

Recent Improvements

When asked about changes in his company, Frank Shear points to management systems and customer service before equipment.  Although he acknowledges that machinery is important, he insists that companies go nowhere without knowledgeable people and good communication.  Three months ago, sales service team leader Jim Shear invited Cheryl Palmerino to join the company as customer service representative.  "Early this year, we knew we needed a second CSR, but finding the right person takes time," says Jim.  "It took us several months because you can't train a good attitude.  It has to come with the person." 

  

Another service enhancement came last February when the company launched its website, www.seaboardbindery.com.  Contained on it are all of Seaboard Bindery's "Helpful Hints" technical tip sheets and published trade articles.  Seaboard's management believes that arming customers with as much useful information as possible makes for better communication.  "Our website and "e-tips" program is just another education tool," explains Jim.  "Anyone who wants to receive our monthly "e-tips" only has to ask."  (To subscribe to this complimentary opt-in service, send an e-mail request with "SUBSCRIBE" in the header and your contact information to jim@seaboardbindery.com.)

   

On the machinery side, three months ago, the company installed a one-sided D&K laminating machine capable of laminating virtually any substrate.  Not surprisingly, this versatile machine supports the company's core bookbinding niche by efficiently laminating book covers.  Moreover, Seaboard installed a single sheet collating system twelve months ago, allowing the company to compete in the growing on demand adhesive book binding market.

  

Upcoming Improvements

In early 2001, Seaboard Bindery will add another shift, enabling them to accept longer production runs.  For the past few years, the company has focused on the 2,000- to 50,000-book quantity range, but after the new shift is up and running, customers will notice that this maximum quantity will start increasing.

  

During the course of the year, Seaboard will focus on productivity enhancements to equipment that already exists on its production floor.  Likely additions in the gluing arena will include folder produced hot-melt seam gluing, spot fugitive gluing and pasted booklet making.  Another anticipated upgrade is in the cutting department with improved joggers and off-loading systems.  Although Seaboard Bindery has no definite plans to expand into die cutting, it is frequently mentioned as a possible expansion area.  "One thing holding us back is that we enjoy terrific outsourcing relationships with local finishing companies," explains Frank Shear.  "It would take a very persuasive deal for us to jeopardize the goodwill of our existing suppliers."

   

Management Style

When walking through Seaboard Bindery's doors at 10 Linscott Road, visitors are quickly put at ease by the company's friendly style.  To ensure that everyone knows the issues of the hour, customer service, estimating, management and two support personnel share an open air office without partitions.  "We make our living getting communication right," says Jim Shear.  "Good news or not, our customers deserve knowing what we know, when we know it.  Our physical work environment helps us do this."

  

The company has a strong team focus and an information-first attitude toward customer service.  "Our guiding principle is honesty," says Frank Shear.  "This means telling when we've made a mess and cleaning it up as best as possible.  The funny thing is that once we learned to open up, we became far more successful at retaining clients in difficult situations."

  

According to Frank, "If we go to the marketplace 'telling' instead of 'listening,' we'd be like everyone else.  Our customers know that we won't take on a job if we think we won't be able to make the deadline.  Trust must be a given."

  

Although Frank Shear believes that his strategy of buying the best available equipment has worked well in the past, it is more important now than ever.  Very low local unemployment rates have made it difficult to find good employees to fuel future growth.  Since it's nearly impossible in today's business climate to increase production by adding labor, growth must come from improved automation and better management processes.  Consider six pieces of equipment the company installed in the past two years: A laminating machine, folder, collator, Muller Martini perfect binder, semi-automatic Wire-O binder and automatic Wire-O punching machine – all purchased brand new.

  

Jim Shear's title is officially Vice President, but he describes himself as "Chief Bottleneck Remover."  Upon his return to the company in 1997, Jim quickly began improving operations through better process engineering.  Some of his contributions occurred in these areas: workflow, shipping, plant-office communication, waste disposal, purchasing and mechanical retrofits to improve productivity.  Even though he's in charge of customer service these days, he's currently working on improving an existing semi-automatic Wire-O machine so that it can outpace the company's fastest operators, thereby removing a current production bottleneck.

  

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Since 1997, Seaboard Bindery's sales have averaged a remarkably steady 14% growth per year for the past four years and 2000 should end up with revenue in the $2.25mm range.  Frank, Jim and Harold Shear all believe that the company's rock steady growth wouldn't have been possible without its relentless focus on bookbinding core competencies and a few difficult, but ultimately good decisions.  Seaboard Bindery's phone number is 781-932-3908.

 

  

Frank Shear is President of Seaboard Bindery, a service-oriented trade bindery located in Woburn, Massachusetts.  His company specializes in offering high quality perfect binding, PUR and layflat adhesive binding, saddle stitching, Wire-O, plastic spiral, and other bindery solutions.  Call Frank at (781) 932-3908 or e-mail him at frank@seaboardbindery.com.