To survive in today’s hard-nosed, competitive industry, it helps if everyone within a business is pulling in the same direction. The harness that holds the business together is its company culture.

Some companies lose track of this; history is littered with the remains of businesses that forgot that their staff are their biggest asset.

Wayne Finkelde is not one of these managers. The chief executive of Pegasus Print Group, based in the Sydney suburb of Blacktown, enthuses that company culture has been one of the pillars of this 11-year success story.

A third-generation printing family scion with a typesetter grandfather and letterpress machinist father before him, Finkelde is continuing the lineage with sons Joel, 24, and Shaun, 18, both active in the company. The company actively encourages staff to involve relatives to work alongside each other. This component of the company’s preoccupation with ‘culture’ has resulted in many family members in the 230-strong roster.

Finkelde, who took the top job at Pegasus in 2006, soon realised that growth would come not only by means of external components such as acquisitions and investing in high-end technology, but also an emphasis on superior service and its people ‘doing the right thing’.

Pegasus’ winged horse designation flew in from parent company AAB Holdings, which today operates three disparate manufacturing divisions (printing being one of these). Originally established in 2000 as a result of winning a bid for the printing and food packaging business for Woolworths, AAB has since acquired, among others, such diverse businesses as the labels and printers division from Avery Dennison USA, offset and mailing specialist Mapps Litho and the business and equipment of Teldon Print Media.

Until 2004, Finkelde managed the food plant and printing division at the operational level; however, acquisitions reached the point of needing designated management and he took over as group general manager, then print CEO in 2006.

So how does ‘culture’ fit into today’s $75m-turnover Pegasus? Its impact on the success of the company is a no-brainer for Finkelde. The company runs a scholarship scheme, which offers financial support to staff members to carry through worthwhile projects within the community. Over the years, up to 50 staffers have benefited from the initiative. The company also maintains an ongoing program of assistance to employees to complete courses that will boost their career development.

Community minded

Charity support is also high on the company’s priority list, including involvement in community and sporting projects, while a series of social functions helps bond the workplace into a feel-good environment. Finkelde says that “to build the culture in the company, it is sometimes necessary to change your people. It’s a two-way street. It’s more than merely measuring a person by what they produce in a given shift. It’s understanding that when they have a few hard times, we’re flexible with their work arrangements.

“This is what smaller companies do very well and what bigger companies need to focus on, which is what we constantly aim to do.”

But this has not been the sole success component that Finkelde has administered in his five-year tenure as Pegasus chief exec. He has implemented a flat management system to delegate responsibilities for the various activities undertaken by the company, which encompass offset, digital and label printing, packaging and the retail.

“Each of these requires a different approach and a different mindset,” he says, pointing out that the approach helped spread the risk in the difficult business climate of the past few years. While it might have been expected that one or other would have been adversely affected by the GFC, it appears they all managed to ride the rough times without dramatic declines. But the industry is not out of the woods yet, says Finkelde.

“Australia’s economy was really affected by the global downturn some 18 to 24 months after the rest of the world and I think we’re seeing more of it today than we did two years ago.”

Meanwhile, the past six months have seen major infrastructure upgrades at Pegasus in offset, digital and labels. There have been missteps, and it learned from mistakes by closing down one of its two retail outlets (Finkelde admits it was located in a poor position).

Retail therapy

That’s not to say he has turned his back on the retail concept. The idea is to decentralise the sales function by making available on-the-spot service to prospective customers in areas where particular potential business exists, such as the strong corporate and agency population of the North Sydney area.

The concept vindicates his strong belief in the value of face-to-face discussion between customer and supplier and underlines his stated intention of looking for more retail sites in more prominent locations in the foreseeable future.

“If a corporate client wants to see us, we’re there in 10 minutes,” he says. Finkelde is not a great fan of print ordered over the internet, though “we offer [online ordering] as a service, of course. But I still believe in the value of sitting across the table and talking about what a customer wants. Getting in front of the customer face to face is far better than a whole swag of emails.” (As a wry aside, he notes that the speed at which most of his sales staff type can sometimes be a hindrance
to rapid response).

Finkelde is a strong advocate of an active salesforce. The company has 20 sets of feet pounding pavements, having recently employed an additional four salespeople. This approach signals his conviction that there is growth in his various market segments, particularly in digital, as well as in the labels side of his armoury. While the company’s digital output today is a mere 5% of its total, he projects this will double by 2015.

Finkelde says one of the hurdles standing in his way of growing the business is the shortage of trained staff. To counter this, Pegasus pursues an active apprenticeship program, every year consistently taking on three or four young people for pressroom, bindery and labelling training. Finkelde actively encourages his divisional managers to interface with training institutions to bolster the firm’s ability to access promising candidates.

In the past, a great deal of the firm’s growth has been through acquisitions, but its future path will be built on organic growth (with the exception of labelling – “one area where we are definitely interested in looking to acquire a business”, he says).

The company’s position as a subsidiary of AAB helps, and Finkelde readily acknowledges the support he receives from the parent company’s board for the initiatives he wants to introduce.

One initiative – inherited with the Mapps Litho acquisition – is the company’s adherence to running all but one of its presses alcohol-free. This brings environmental benefits and keeps costs down, but Finkelde points to its drawbacks, particularly its drying ability, noting that “you have to be careful about the types of substrates on which you’re going to print”.

After three decades in print, Finkelde is a firm believer that the key to success lies in having good relations with your suppliers. He believes in sticking with a core of vendors because “you’re only as good as your suppliers”. The Pegasus offset fleet is all Heidelberg, label production is all Mark Andy and digital output comes courtesy of Fuji Xerox.

In an industry fraught with consolidation and pricing constraints, the next decade will sort the men from the boys. Professional managers and ethical operators of the Wayne Finkelde mould should rank among the men.

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