www.stouse.com
www.stouse.com

“Not just printers. Partners.” That’s premier printer Stouse’s secret to success.

But it’s not the award-winning specialty supplier’s only secret. Although Stouse manufactures and markets a robust range of more than 3,000 digital, flexographic and screen-printed products to clients across the US and Canada, most of the actual end users of its labels, folding cartons, magnets, signs, decals and other specialty products have never heard of this trade-only wholesale printer.

“For more than 40 years, we’ve built our brand around providing great service to our customers and helping them grow their business,” says Nikkie Freeman, chief commercial officer of the New Century, KS company, which has a customer base chiefly comprised of resellers in promotional products, marketing agencies, commercial printers, and specialty suppliers serving specific end-use markets.

“Our customers are putting their reputation on the line with us, because their end users don’t necessarily know that Stouse is doing the manufacturing,” Freeman adds. “We take this responsibility seriously, and we are grateful to receive customer accolades about the service and the level of care that we provide.”

Stouse’s roots reach back to the early 1950s, when Merle Stouse founded Stouse Sign Service, a one-man enterprise offering sign painting and billboards to the Kansas City community. When he sold his business in 1977, the new owners shortened the company name and shifted its primary focus to screen and flexographic printing. Since then, the company has relocated and dramatically expanded, most notably into digital printing and finishing equipment. In late 2019, the company also acquired Magna-Plus, Inc., a Kansas City-based producer of labels and magnet products.

“It takes a long time to build the team and the reputation that we have,” says Clay Davis, who joined the company in 2019 as CEO. “Our customers place their trust in us to collaboratively provide solutions that give them peace of mind and make running their businesses easier.”

Helping customers provide printed solutions often involves significant complexity for Stouse, not only in the product, but also throughout the entire process.

“We just have to get it done, find a way to say ‘yes,’” Davis says. “That’s very much embedded in our culture and our team, more than one-third of whom have been with us more than 15 years. We’re proud of our service and reliability, which has resulted in what we think is an impressive 14% compounded annual growth rate over 40-plus years.”

The Stouse production facility covers about 180,000 square feet, roughly the equivalent of two city blocks.

“When customers visit, they are often surprised by our size and scale,” he reports. “We take it as a source of pride that many customers view us as a ‘small shop’ because of the personalized level of service we deliver.”

Stouse’s customers serve a diverse mix of industries, spanning food, beverage, beer and wine, cannabis, sporting equipment, food service, hospitality, schools, automotive, manufacturing and equipment labeling, political campaigns, healthcare facilities, and other organizations.

“Our specialty is developing partnerships that help our customers create value,” Davis says. “Whether that’s with a specialty beer can label that helps a craft brewery stand out on a shelf, a folding carton that gives a beauty product a new look, or a paper label that seals and secures a restaurant to-go order, we’re committed to carefully managing and overseeing each aspect of the manufacturing process to ensure a product our customers will be proud to sell.”

To that end, Stouse provides its customers with printed samples, catalogs, brochures and sales sheets, and also manages a comprehensive traditional and digital marketing plan, including social media, trade shows, and industry affiliations. Business development on behalf of its customers is the main objective.

“We rely on our customers to sell our products into their end-use markets, so we try to make it as easy as possible for them by providing turnkey marketing solutions,” Freeman notes.

The latest such solution is a customizable white label e-commerce platform Stouse developed. It offers an online channel for customers’ end users to order Stouse products.

“It gives our resellers the flexibility to sell custom-printed products with a single click, then automates those orders directly to our press floor for quick turn times,” Davis says. “It’s completely hands-off for them.”

That production environment at Stouse encompasses more than 100 machines across sheeting, slitting, printing, finishing, and packaging, with formats including sheet-fed, roll-to-roll, wide format, and folding cartons. Nearly half of the company’s 38 printing assets are digital, with state-of-the-art machines from leading brands such as Domino, Inca, Xeikon, and HP.

“We invest in the latest digital press assets, finishing equipment, facility upgrades, workflow automation systems, and other platforms to afford our customers the highest quality printing combined with the best economics,” Davis says. “Increasingly, our customers are focusing on shorter-run, high variability and customization, which has driven us more and more to digital platforms.”

In the past two years alone, the company’s digital printing investments have included six presses, most recently two HP Indigo 6K roll-to-roll label machines installed in February 2021 to service a sharp increase in demand for roll labels primarily for food, beverage, and consumer products. Not content to stop innovating in the digital space, though, the team also recently purchased a Xeikon 3500 high-definition, 4-color digital folding carton press and launched a paperboard folding carton line with more than 30 market-driven designs.

“Many of our customers provide labels for products that are merchandized in a box, so we saw an opportunity for a complementary product line of short-run, digitally printed custom boxes so our customers can offer more to their end users,” Freeman explains. “We invested in a new digital press and put a lot of marketing around the product line, and the response from our customers has been tremendous.”

Folding cartons are popular in the brewery industry for beer in four-packs and six-packs, and within the growing specialty beverage industry. They’re also commonly used for food products, cannabis, health and beauty items, and even electronics and automotive merchandise.

Even understanding the ubiquitous nature of folding cartons, the Stouse team has been surprised at some of the new business that has arisen. “We received our first-ever order for cartons used to distribute horse wormer paste,” Freeman recalls. “The uses for folding cartons are virtually unlimited and growing.”

The company clearly does not shy away from taking on the big challenges.

“We knew that we wanted to participate in the exploding demand for custom, digitally printed short- and medium-run folding cartons, but first we had to select the right equipment and teach our team to work in an entirely new product category,” Davis says. “Our team relished the challenge and rose to the occasion, and it has been very successful. We are quite proud of that.”

Teamwork is a cornerstone at Stouse. Its 370 employees have built a strong culture of engagement through Stouse’s core values – such as “Be Customer-Focused,” “Act with Integrity and Be Trustworthy,” and “Communicate Openly” – which are definitely more than just words on posters and flat-screen displays throughout the facility.

“Every 30 days, we conduct StouseChat town hall meetings with all of our team members in small group settings,” he explains. “It takes a full day. We share company results, talk about our core values and projects, recognize team members and allow folks to ask questions.”

The core value of “Provide Solutions” helped keep the team on track through a two-year, $2 million project of converting the company’s nearly half-century-old paper-based production system to a fully digitized process.

“Just two years ago, only about eight people had laptop computers, we didn’t have wifi, and every job was accompanied by a thick, paper-based job jacket,” Davis says. “We invested in custom workflow automation software and completely re-engineered our IT infrastructure.”

While the immediate goal was to improve speed, efficiency and accuracy, the transformation also enhanced the work experience for members of the Stouse team.

“We have a sizable team in customer service, or customer success, as we call it,” Davis says. “For almost the whole history of the company, those folks were stuck at a desk with paper and a desktop computer. Now they’re able to work from home one or two days a week. The work-life balance impact for them has been fantastic, and their productivity has increased as well.”

The timing turned out to be fortuitous, as the conversion had started just before the Covid-19 pandemic hit. “As an essential business, we kept working through the whole pandemic,” Davis notes. “It has certainly caused a shift in demand – less for products geared toward in-person events but far greater for safety-related products, such as social distancing floor decals, as well as labels for food and beverages consumed at home. As the pandemic has continued, enabling our customer success team to work remotely has been invaluable. Outside of our production floor, we could run our business remotely if we had to.”

For a custom shop like Stouse, converting a high level of order and product variability into a digital workflow was no small undertaking.

“It was probably 100 times the complexity that we saw from the start,” Davis says. “But ultimately we’re at the point where we can confidently say the journey has been worth it.”

Freeman has advice for other companies planning for the future, too. “Do your homework, understand the full cost of operating your new equipment, visit sites of other print providers and be efficient,” she says. “But don’t be afraid of the investment. Digital presses generally pay for themselves in about 12 months.”