Incorporated: 1912
NAIC: 323116 Manifold Business Forms Printing; 541990 All Other Professional, Scientific, and Technical Services; 561431 Other Business Service Centers (Including Copy Shops)
SIC: 2761 Manifold Business Forms; 7389 Business Services Nec; 7334 Photocopying & Duplicating Services
The Standard Register Company is one of the leading providers of customized business forms for print and electronic formats, serving more than 14,000 middle- to large-sized manufacturing, financial, and healthcare corporations. Standard Register's primary business involves document design, printing, and warehousing and distribution. Services include document migration from print to digital formats, and conversion of documents at newly acquired companies or newly opened branch locations. Document-related products include papers and inks for document security and fraud prevention. Standard Register offers consultations on the development of efficient workflow processes that determine document design.
Standard Register's Print-on-Demand (POD) Services involve traditional document printing services, but employ new technologies for flexibility and efficiency. These services are provided through four regional facilities, where offset, long-run orders are handled, and at 21 STANFAST Print Centers, for digital, short-run document printing and everyday photocopying. All 25 POD locations provide warehousing, fulfillment, and distribution services, and the company's proprietary Smartworks enterprise document services platform provides customers with online access to inventory information for document supply management. POD Services include a variety of marketing solutions, such as software for marketing collateral materials development and flexible printing options for customized communications materials.
Standard Register's labeling operations involve identification and bar-code labels for document management, inventory control, hospital patient wristbands, equipment registration, and other materials tracking requirements. Instructional, product warning, and vehicle stickers are just a few of the labels produced with special environmental conditions in mind. Standard Register's label manufacturing operations are located at seven regional facilities, all located east of the Mississippi River, and one facility in Monterrey, Mexico.
Founder's Innovative Device
Standard Register was founded upon an invention of Theodore Schirmer. It was a fairly simple, yet revolutionary adaptation of the autographic register, which had been devised in 1883 by James C. Shoup. Shoup's machine featured two separate rolls of paper--one printed with lines, the other blank--interlayered with carbon paper. When a user wrote on the top document, for example, a sales receipt, the machine made a copy for record-keeping. The user turned a crank, thereby propelling the finished set of handwritten records out of the machine and advancing a fresh set to the frame. Although a significant advance over the alternative, writing out copies in longhand, the autographic register's primary drawback was that the layers of carbon and forms often slipped, becoming misaligned.
Schirmer applied the concept of the chain and sprocket to the autographic register. His "standard register" featured a wooden cylinder with sprocket wheels at either end. The pins corresponded to holes punched down the margins of a continuous roll of paper. His idea earned a patent, but Schirmer could not attract enough start-up capital to begin production. In a last-ditch effort to get his idea off the ground, he contacted John Q. Sherman's real estate brokerage in the hope that Sherman would lend him the necessary funds.
After initially rejecting the idea, Sherman asked Schirmer to build a prototype. Together they refined the machine so that it would produce up to eight copies of a document at a single writing. Keeping the multiple documents aligned allowed all the layers of paper to be preprinted with lines, check blocks, and other organizational formats, thereby vastly increasing their utility.
Convinced that the idea was feasible, John Sherman liquidated his real estate firm and called on business associates, including his brother William C. (W. C.) Sherman, to contribute the necessary start-up capital. Standard Register was incorporated in 1912 with Thomas Schirmer as president and John Sherman as a director. They founded the business in rented space with some machining equipment and two printing presses bought on credit. Sherman traveled to the West Coast to set up sales operations there.
Early Struggles and Success
Although the fledgling company's second floor office saved it from the Great Dayton Flood of 1913, the firm nearly went under in a flood of debt and backlogged orders. With Standard Register slipping into receivership, W. C. Sherman began to take an active role in its management. He summoned John back from California, and together they devised a plan to save the business. They borrowed against their own life insurance policies in order to raise enough money to buy out Standard Register's primary investors, including Thomas Schirmer. John assumed the duties of the office of president, and William became vice-president and treasurer. In order to fill past-due orders and revive cash flow, the brothers borrowed to create their own power source, doubled production, and freed the company from receivership within seven months.
Standard Register had entered a market dominated by Moore Corporation, the Canadian company that had founded the business forms industry in the 1880s. Moore and other well-entrenched competitors derided Standard Register's documents as "mutilated," "ventilated," and even "smallpox" forms. Nevertheless, Standard Register's innovative machines and documents gained a following. By 1916, the company had generated enough capital to erect a purpose-built factory.
In the early 1930s, it occurred to John Sherman to apply the pin-feed concept to machine-written documents in order to speed up the process with continuous forms. He designed a cylindrical rubber platen equipped with sprockets at either end that could replace the friction feeder in virtually any business machine. Called a "registrator platen," the invention helped broaden the potential market for Standard Register's specialized forms.
In spite of the Great Depression, Standard Register's annual sales reached about $1 million in 1933 and quintupled to over $5 million by 1938. This rapid growth was fueled in part by international licensing agreements. The company authorized R. L. Crain Limited, a Canadian firm, to produce its patented forms in 1934, and affiliated with W.H. Smith & Son (Alacra) Ltd. in England a year later. William Sherman succeeded his brother John as president upon the latter's death in 1939.
Expansion of Customized Business Forms, Postwar Growth
At the outset of the United States' entry into World War II, Standard Register was stunned to learn that it had been pronounced "nonessential" by the federal government and was slated to be shut down for the duration of the war. However, the government and the military soon discovered that the business forms that Standard Register provided were vital to many operations. In fact, an arsenal actually shut down because of a lack of forms and documents. Standard Register wound up winning awards for its efforts on the home front.
Standard Register's Paperwork Simplification program intended to save paper by producing customized business forms. Launched in 1940, the program facilitated the creation of more efficient record-keeping systems, and it comprised an industry innovation that furthered the company's growth. Moreover, Paperwork Simplification was a harbinger of the evolution of the business forms industry from strictly manufacturing and marketing forms to selling custom-made information gathering and retrieval systems. It became vital to Standard Register's continued success in the postwar era, particularly at the advent of the computer age, when threats to paper business forms compelled the transformation of the industry.
William Sherman served as Standard Register's president until his death in 1944. At that time Milferd A. Spayd, who had joined the company in 1933, advanced to Standard Register's presidency. His ascension coincided with a period of rapid growth for the business forms industry overall and Standard Register in particular.
During the 1950s, Standard Register added factories in Pennsylvania, California, and Arkansas; licensed new overseas affiliates in Cuba, Venezuela, and Sweden; and created distributorships in Peru, Nicaragua, Guatemala, and Haiti. Sales volume nearly quadrupled, from $11.4 million in 1946 to over $43 million in 1956. The company went public in 1956, but the Sherman family (and by marriage, the Clarks) continued to hold a controlling stake in the company through the early 1990s.
Automation drove the business forms industry's growth in the 1960s. The boom in computers and optical scanners helped make business forms one of the fastest-growing industries in the United States, expanding at twice the rate of the gross national product, from $530 million in 1962 to $1.4 billion in 1972. Standard Register's sales more than quadrupled, from $24.4 million to $107.9 million, during that same period. By 1966, the company had added international affiliates in Australia, Brazil, Finland, France, Ireland, Japan, and South Africa. On the domestic front, new factories in Pennsylvania and Vermont added production capacity and increased distribution flexibility. Under the direction of President Kenneth P. Morse beginning in 1966, the Paperwork Simplification Program evolved into a forms management program that not only helped clients slim their record-keeping systems, but also helped manage clients' inventory of forms. David Henwood of Prescott, Ball & Turben (Cleveland) would later call Standard Register's forms management program "the Cadillac of the industry."
Adapting to Maturing Business Forms Industry
The business forms business started to show signs of maturity in the 1970s, when its annual growth rate slowed from double-digit percentages to 9 percent and down to 4 percent by the early 1980s. After having solidly held the number two spot in the industry for decades, Standard Register slipped to number three in 1973, when rival UARCO Inc. slid past it. Under the leadership of D. F. Whitehead during the 1970s, Standard Register refocused its customer base from the large, but cyclical companies it had traditionally targeted (automotive, steel, and tire companies) to more stable markets, including the financial, healthcare, direct-mail, and service industries. Revenues from healthcare clients increased from $5 million in 1970 to more than $60 million by 1982. Printing personalized letters and contest forms for the rapidly growing direct-mail segment multiplied from $1 million in 1970 to $32 million by 1982. Serving these new target markets helped Standard Register regain the number two standing in the business forms industry, as its annual sales nearly tripled from $107 million in 1972 to $319.6 million in 1981.
Standard Register adjusted to changes in its industry by diversifying into compatible businesses. In 1975, Standard Register acquired Universal Tape and Label. This entry into the labels business coincided with increasing adaptation of bar-code labeling, and the company took advantage of those opportunities by offering bar-code technology. The company opened its first STANFAST Print-on-Demand center in Dayton, providing customers with a variety of printing services using the new, relatively compact, computerized copying and printing machines for short-run printing. The entry into on-demand, short-run printing services anticipated changes wrought by digital imaging technology, particularly as many companies implemented flexible, just-in-time inventory controls to reduce warehousing expense.
Adaptive Strategy During Recessionary Times
Its emphasis on service enabled Standard Register to maintain profit margins in spite of an early 1980s recession that shaved competitors' profits. In fact, from 1981 to 1985, the company's profits doubled from $15.4 million to $31.8 million, while revenues only increased by about 27.5 percent, from $319.6 million to $441.05 million. That trend reversed in the latter years of the decade, however, as Standard Register's sales increased by over 60 percent to $708.9 million, while its net income grew at less than half that rate to $40.4 million by 1989. The recessionary period of the late 1980s and early 1990s took its toll on the forms industry, which found itself burdened with overcapacity, rising paper prices, weakening demand, and intensifying competition. When its profits were nearly halved from 1989 to $21.8 million in 1990, Standard Register was forced to close plants and furlough 5 percent of its workforce.
Notwithstanding the economic slowdown, the company continued to adapt to new technologies, both within its own operations and in its customer-oriented services and products. Internally, Standard Register adopted automated manufacturing resource planning (MRP) software that helped it decrease waste, manage its inventory of over 13,000 items, and generally become more productive. Externally, Standard Register surprised some analysts by adopting electronic data interchange (EDI), an electronic ordering system that was proclaimed an important factor in the long heralded "paperless office." The company subscribed to an outside EDI network in addition to its own proprietary service, AccuServ. It was a classic example of the firm's adoptive strategy: Brent Rawlins, a specialist at Standard Register, pointed out that the EDI terminals installed at client sites served as a "constant reminder to do business with Standard Register." Instead of allowing the new technology to reduce its markets, the company used innovation to its advantage.
Standard Register furthered its efforts in this area through strategic alliances with electronic forms imaging and software firms, combining their longstanding customer relationships with the software companies' document management applications. Partners included Computer Sciences Corp., Saros Corp., and F3 Software Corp. in systems that coordinated ordering, pricing, and design of business forms.
In addition to initiating the transition to digital document management, Standard Register entered areas of business that closely augmented existing business operations. In 1986, Standard Register entered the document security forms market with the acquisition of the business forms division of Burroughs Corporation. In 1992, the company introduced the Positive Patient Identification System to hospitals. The device utilized a bar-code system to identify patients and to track the care they received. For its direct-mail business, Standard Register introduced the Image Seal machine, which folded and sealed a document as it passed through the equipment, thus preparing the document for mailing.
The company also boosted its direct-mail operations through the 1994 acquisition of rival UARCO Inc.'s 22-year-old direct-mail division, Promotional Graphics. Combined with Standard Register's own COMMUNICOLOR Division, the Kansas-based entity expanded the firm's geographic reach westward, added $20 million in annual revenue, and broadened its product offerings.
These various activities helped increase Standard Register's revenues by an aggregate of about 7 percent from $716.4 million in 1990 to $767.4 million in 1994. Net income more than doubled from its recession-battered low of $21.8 million to $43.9 million during that same period. While this result established a new record for earnings, it was only 8 percent more than 1987's net, when annual revenues stood at only $666.7 million. Nevertheless, forms management services generated more than one-third of Standard Register's annual revenues, nearly as much as its traditional lines, including custom continuous forms, unit sets (multicopy sets of individual forms with or without carbon), and stock forms. The segment upon which the company was founded, document processing equipment, chipped in just over 11 percent.
John Darragh retired as president and chief executive officer after just over a decade of leading Standard Register and was succeeded by Peter S. Redding. Paul H. Granzow, who had served as chairman since 1984, continued in that capacity through the mid-1990s.
Transferring from Print to Electronic Format
Standard Register continued to parlay its expertise in custom business forms to the digital environment by offering new products and services to existing customers. Through its earlier alliance with software developers, Standard Register developed the Smartworks suite of document management software. Launched in 1995, Smartworks allowed customers to create new business documents for paper or online usage, to reorder printed documents, to request documents from stock, and to distribute electronic documents through the Internet. Another innovation, Teller-Select, worked with Windows 95 to produce custom documents onsite, on-demand.
In 1997, Standard Register expanded its customer base and digital imaging and document management capacities through the $245 million acquisition of UARCO, a major competitor. The consolidation of printing and warehouse facilities would provide revenue growth with the advantages of economies of scale.
Standard Register capitalized on its nationwide customer base to support the expansion of its network of on-demand, digital print centers. Standard Register planned to open STANFAST centers in every major metropolitan city, relying on the referrals from its sales network to provide a base of business. During the late 1990s, the company opened several new STANFAST locations, including Memphis, Charlotte, Portland, and Indianapolis, for a total of 35 stores by the end of 1997. The STANFAST network provided the company with a mechanism for efficient customer service, as Smartworks allowed documents to be printed near customers' local offices through Internet distribution of image files to various STANFAST locations.
Dramatic Change in Business Structure
By 2000, automated documentation resulted in a steep decline in the demand for paper business forms. To maintain profitability and viability in the face of change and new competition in digital printing, Standard Register reorganized and reduced its operations. Under new CEO Dennis Rediker, the company divested low profit businesses while it leveraged new growth opportunities in new technologies. The flexibility of local printing through STANFAST print centers allowed the company to close 21 production facilities and 21 warehouses. The company also reduced overhead by closing 110 of its 200 sales offices as customers increasingly relied on online inventory management of print documents through Smartworks or required no business forms inventory due to paperless workflow processes. The changes resulted in a workforce reduction of 1,600 employees.
Standard Register intended the introduction of new technologies to offset loss of paper-based business. In June 2004 the company introduced Design on Demand, an Internet-based technology for custom development of marketing communications, such as brochures. The company's new ExpeData Digital Solutions introduced a digital pen for filling out digital forms. The company expected the technology to be particularly useful in hospitals. Technology in development at Standard Register's labeling services involved usage of radio frequency identification labels to locate a pallet, container, or box of goods from a distance; the radio chip would include information about the contents of the shipment as well.
The difficult transition to profitability took longer than expected, prompting further organizational restructuring. Standard Register divested its equipment services business in early 2005. Several STANFAST locations closed, reducing the number to 21 print centers by the end of 2006. Workforce reduction of another 1,400 employees involved administrative positions, including several high-level executives. Standard Register consolidated domestic labeling operations and opened a new facility near manufacturing customers in Monterrey, Mexico. With investment in short-run label production equipment and computerized manufacturing, Standard Register sought to create quality label products with fast, flexible, efficient systems.
During this time profitability fluctuated wildly as the revenue stream shifted with the transition from analog to digital products and services. Nevertheless, the extent of Standard Register's success in a decades-long adaptation to electronic processes promised a brighter future. The year 2006 marked the fourth year in a row in which InformationWeek listed Standard Register among its top 100 technology innovators and the sixth year among the top 500. In 2007, Standard Register signed two high-profile partnership agreements with Hewlett-Packard (HP). In the first agreement, Standard Register provided management for HP's outsourced print marketing materials. In accordance with the second agreement, HP offered Smartworks through its Managed Print Services division, giving Standard Register access to HP's primary customers. The partnership was expected to contribute significantly to Standard Register's profitability for years to come.
Principal Subsidiaries
SMARTworks.com.
Principal Operating Units
Digital Solutions; Document and Label Solutions; Print on Demand Services.
Principal Competitors
FedexKinkos Office and Print Services, Inc.; R.R. Donnelley & Sons Company; WorkflowOne; Xerox Corporation.
Further Reading
"AccessPlus Joins Forces with Standard Register," Print Week, March 16, 2006, p. 28.
Breakey, James, "New Directions for the Forms Industry," Office, January 1979, p. 169.
"Business-Form Makers Return to Form," Financial World, November 12, 1975, p. 14.
"Business Forms: Riding Computer Boom," Financial World, November 26, 1969, p. 20.
Degnan, Christa, "Standard Register Widens Services with Procurement," PC Week, August 23, 1999, p. 36.
"Electronics: Threat to Paper?" Pulp & Paper, August 1976, p. 17.
Flax, Steven, "Win on Price, Lose on Price," Forbes, November 8, 1982, p. 108.
"Forms Meeting Functions," InformationWeek, August 7, 1995, p. 28.
"Forms Printer Reports Restructuring Progress," Graphic Arts Monthly, August 2001, p. 24.
Gubser, Jay, "Paper Will Not Be the Way of the Future," Office, January 1979, p. 162.
"In Brief: Standard Register to Offer Payment Software," American Banker, August 6, 1998, p. 14.
King, Julia, "Printer Turns Service Apps into New Business," Computerworld, July 31, 2000, p. 30.
Montgomery, Christopher, "Dayton, Ohio, Digital Information Company Rewriting Future," Dayton Daily News, February 21, 2004.
"Mounting Demand Puts Operations of Standard Register in Top Form," Barron's, November 7, 1966, p. 28.
"Ohio Concern Acquires Select PlanetPrint Operations," Finance and Commerce Daily, July 16, 2002.
Olson, Thomas, "Families Fight While Standard Hopes," Cincinnati Business Courier, February 25, 1991, p. 1.
"Patient Wristbands to Carry More Data Than Ever, As Vendors Push Bar-Code Use," Hospital Materials Management, June 2004, p. 11.
Robbins, Susan, "Business Form Makers Grow at Record Pace," Commercial and Financial Chronicle, March 10, 1975, p. 1.
Robertson, Jason, "Will a Digital Pen Write the Next Chapter for Standard Register?" Dayton Daily News, February 6, 2005.
Schied, John P., "A Brief History of the Forms Industry," Office, May 1973, p. 57.
Skolnik, Rayna, "Standard Register Sells in Top Form," Sales & Marketing Management, October 11, 1982, p. 49.
Spayd, M. A., "A Business Built on Holes in Paper," Industrial Development and Manufacturing Record, April 1960, p. 12.
------, A Business Built on Holes! The Standard Register Company, New York: Newcomen Society in North America, 1957.
"Standard Register Acquires UARCO Direct Mail Division," Printing-Impressions, August 1994, p. 5.
"Standard Register Closes Indiana Plant, Plans Mexico Opening," Label & Narrow Web, May-June 2006, p. 8.
"Standard Register Has Sold Its Equipment Services Business to Pitney Bowes," Purchasing, February 17, 2005, p. 52.
"Standard Register Offers Web Marketing Service, New Solution Allows Clients to Design and Order Jobs for Delivery Within 24 Hours," Graphic Arts Monthly, October 2002, p. 24.
"Standard Register Signs Accord to Buy Uarco for $245 Million," Wall Street Journal, December 2, 1997, p. 1.
"Standard Register to Shrink in Renewal Plan," Graphic Arts Monthly, February 2001, p. 26.
Tanzillo, Kevin, "EDI Becomes Standard," Communications News, November 1990, p. 22.
Trembly, Ara C., "Standard Register Agrees to Acquire InSystems Technologies," National Underwriter Property & Casualty-Risk & Benefits Management, July 8, 2002, p. 21.
"Two Printers Form Alliance," Graphic Arts Monthly, June 2000, p. 34.
"Watch Out for Big Brother," Forbes, May 1, 1967, p. 44.
Williams, Geoff, "The Paper Chase: Standard Register Company Evolves in the Digital Age," Inside Business, November 2004, p. OB40.
— April Dougal Gasbarre; Updated by Mary Tradii
