InnoMark Communications Expands Supplier Footprint

An Ohio-based printing and display manufacturing company is growing its presence in Northwest Arkansas.

InnoMark Communications LLC of Fairfield has long been a direct supplier of signage and floor displays to Wal-Mart Stores Inc.; now it is reaching out to the more than 1,200 supplier teams surrounding the world’s largest retailer.

InnoMark has hired four employees so far in the area as part of its outreach effort and is still seeking some permanent office space. In the printing business for more than 30 years, InnoMark has existed as a “one-stop,” vertically integrated shop with six divisions offering every service from design to manufacture to distribution since 1990.

Its Ohio operations employ more than 500 people within 400,000 SF of space. With the ability to manufacture displays in-house, turnaround times are much faster than design shops that outsource manufacturing overseas or to third-party vendors.

InnoMark is also the largest customer of FedEx in Ohio, giving it a shipping price advantage as well.

The company won four industry awards during 2008 — two silver and two bronze — for temporary and permanent displays. Its temporary displays for TurboTax and Talbots Kids won silver and its permanent displays for Bounty and Tempurpedic took bronze.

Tevian Rose, who represents the temporary promotional division, described a recent client who contacted her late in a Friday afternoon and had its product by the following Tuesday.

The most similar operation in Northwest Arkansas to InnoMark is Juiced Creative of Rogers, formerly known as Stribling Packaging & Display. A packaging manufacturer in business since the early 1980s, Stribling rebranded itself under the Juiced name in summer 2007 and hired a team of design and marketing staff.

“It makes us very unique,” said Ken Helms of InnoMark’s manufacturing capability. Helms works for the “GrowMark” division that creates semi-permanent or permanent displays combining multiple vendors for meal solutions or events like back-to-school or holidays.

“Where we’re located in the central U.S. allows us to ship at low costs to Wal-Mart distribution centers or direct to stores,” Helms said.

While many companies are holing up and trying to ride out the current economic downturn, InnoMark is growing through acquisition as well. Rose said the company recently purchased a large format printing company that will allow it to add capability and also preserve jobs.

“It’s a very people-oriented company,” she said.

InnoMark, which can print on any substrate including wood doors, will expand its capabilities in Northwest Arkansas as demand allows. Once it has an office presence, some design staff or a cutting table may be needed.

“If they [suppliers] dictate having a team here, we’ll do it,” Helms said. “We can ship quickly and it hasn’t been a problem. Our ownership will do what makes sense.”

Rose and Helms said it’s hard to get a feel for the state of the economy based on the suppliers they serve, but agreed the staples of life continue to sell well as the luxury items are sacrificed.