RoArk Wrangles Regional Business

In the warehouse of The RoArk Group Inc. in Rogers, Tyler Garman showed off a mock commode the size of a walk-in closet.

“It was a great photo op,” he said.

The thing is built of construction-grade plywood and white Formica. Garman’s company made it for a client specifically for Wal-Mart’s shareholders meeting in June. People were encouraged to stand in the bowl and have their picture taken.

Now the toilet is shrink-wrapped and palletized, being stored until the client needs to use it again. Or decides to dress it up differently. Or just flush it.

Custom-built booths for corporate events is just one segment of business the 32 year-old commercial printing company has entered in recent years to hedge its bets in the topsy-turvy world of printing and marketing.

Garman is president of the company his grandfather, Dean Garman, founded as a two-man printing operation in 1974. Tyler Garman said the business is owned by the second generation, his father Ron Garman and his uncle Don Garman. The two owners basically retired from the business in the spring, Tyler Garman said.

The family declined to disclose the company’s annual revenue, but Tyler Garman said it’s in the “tens of millions of dollars.” Industry estimates based on regional competitors put RoArk’s revenue in the $11 million to $15 million range.

Garman said the company’s revenue increased “double digits” (meaning 10 percent or more) during the 1990s, not bad for an industry that’s had flat growth between 2 percent to 3 percent annually in those same years.

In 2000, the firm diversified into the trade show and events furnishings business, and in 2002 it moved into its current 100,000-SF location. Within the last year, it has brought the custom built booth shop in-house.

Printing

RoArk’s core business is high-quality sheet-fed offset printing of everything from business cards to full-color catalogues.

“Sheet-fed” refers to the paper going through the presses, meaning the machines take sheets of paper rather than giant spools. “Offset” refers to how the press applies ink to a metal plate, which is then transferred to a rubber sheet before it makes a final impression on the paper.

In printing, size matters. All of RoArk’s three presses accept up to 40-inch wide sheets of paper stock. This can be important to a client who may be trying to trim costs by having two, four or eight pieces printed on one sheet of paper.

The company has a room dedicated to samples of its work. A visit to the room is a visual onslaught of colors, slick paper and the faint smell of printer’s ink.

RoArk stays busy, Garman said. The three presses are only shut down for about 49 hours out of a typical week, and when its crunch time for clients the presses run ’round the clock.

The printing process is so complicated — up to six different colors of ink to juggle, infinite density to tweak, stray dust to eliminate — that Garman describes it as “custom manufacturing.” That includes any number of different types of binding, from staples to stitches.

“It’s like baking a cake each time,” he said.

One of RoArk’s largest groups of clients is ad agencies and designers — possibly one of the most persnickety groups of clients a business could hope for. Creative directors frequently stop by for press checks and scan pages for minute defects.

Garman and his crew happily oblige.

And RoArk apparently does good work. Tim Walker is co-owner of Doxa Total Design Strategy of Fayetteville, a design agency that “buys or influences printing in the millions” of dollars.

Doxa also operates a satellite office in Seattle. Walker said his company purchases printing services around the country and even in Canada, depending on its needs.

“Quality-wise and service-wise, they compete with any other [comparable printer] in the country,” Walker said.

RoArk does a significant amount of printing for Doxa, and Walker’s been very pleased with its work.

Doxa will fly employees to press checks just about anywhere on behalf of its clients, but it’s nice when he can send someone up the road to Rogers rather than Minneapolis, Walker said.

Amber Savage, vice president of brand management with New Creature, a Rogers brand development company, said RoArk competes on a national level in terms of quality.

RoArk has printed work on behalf of New Creature for Fortune 500 companies, she said.

“I’m a stickler for quality,” she said. “They have always exceeded our expectations.”

But that’s the point, Garman said. Any competitor can come along and buy larger presses, but the customer service a client gets on a regular basis keeps them coming back.

Fulfillment of material is a natural progression for all printers, Garman said, and that ties into customer service.

As a client needs it, RoArk will print, then store, then mail or deliver materials. Clients can even track their inventory in RoArk’s warehouse via the Internet.

Special Projects

At a trade show, say the Northwest Arkansas Home Builders’ Expo, did you ever wonder where all the chairs, tables, carpet, booth drapery and the steel pipe infrastructure that holds up the drapes came from?

Chances are they didn’t come from the convention center or the hotel hosting the event, but from an events company like RoArk’s special projects division.

The special projects division of RoArk began in 2000, Garman said, partially as a way for the firm to diversify and hedge against leaner times.

The division now produces between 16 percent and 18 percent of the company’s total annual revenue.

No cash cow, but the business provides ample opportunity to expose RoArk to potential clients for the core printing business — exhibitors need brochures, catalogues and coupons after all.

The division is headed by Dave Erickson, vice president. Erickson oversees both the event furnishings side of the business as well as custom trade booth construction.

The company owns about 7,000 linear feet of pipe, nine different colors of drapes and six colors of carpet to furnish most event needs on the busy circuit, Erickson said.

He said his group of 10 full-time and up to 40 part-time and contract employees furnish about 20 to 30 events annually. The events are typically from 30 booths to 275 booths each, which is the largest Erickson remembers handling.

In years past, most of the company’s furnishing business has been in the Hot Springs and Little Rock markets, he said, but with the late summer opening of the John Q. Hammons Center in Rogers, that model is about to change.

The group sets up and tears down and will travel as “baby sitters” with its custom-built booths if a client wants them, too, Erickson said. Surprisingly, a lot of the custom booths are for one-time uses, he said.

Erickson, who has worked in the events business since 1995, said he loves the work.

“It’s always the same, but it’s completely different,” he said.