A Portrait of Success in Wide-Format: Serigraph

Ann Marie Lentz, COO of the Specialty Graphics Division, Serigraph

One company that has been on the Top 150 — and near the top at that — for the past few years is Serigraph. We sat down with the COO of the Specialty Graphics Division, Ann Marie Lentz, to talk about their path to success.

One of the things that stands out was the emphasis on the people — both on cultivating and providing opportunities internally, as well as developing strong partnerships with their customers, and letting that guide the company as to how they continue to grow through the years.

Wide-format Impressions: Tell us a bit about Serigraph. Who are you, and what markets do you serve?

Ann Marie Lentz: Serigraph is a privately held, family-owned, full-service print, injection molding, and fulfillment provider. (Whew – that’s a mouthful.) With more than 75 years of experience, we specialize in plastic decoration, including printing, forming, molding, finishing, and fulfillment — all executed in-house across three facilities in West Bend, Wisconsin. We have two very distinct divisions of Serigraph — Industrial Graphics and Specialty Graphics. In our Specialty division, which I am proud to lead, we employ 92 full-time and 188 flex-time employees to accommodate our peaks in demand. Our division specializes in promotional and POS print, and complex campaign management.

We have a combination of offset and digital presses that allow us to serve our customers, big and small. Our pressroom has two Heidelberg 40” presses and a 64” KBA. In our digital print department, we are rockin’ a Nyala 4 from swissQprint, three Vuteks (Q3r, Q3h XP, and H5) from EFI, and two dye sublimation presses from Panthera. Our finishing processes are varied as well, ranging from clam shell die-cutting, to high-speed Bobst and digital cutting from Summa and Kongsberg. Our operations team pairs each technology with our customers’ needs to execute with a commitment to quality and on-time delivery.

WFI: What applications or services do you believe make you unique?

AML: Each month, we proudly deliver promotional products to more than 20,000 QSR franchise locations across North America. We specialize in managing both corporate and franchise relationships, simplifying complex rollouts with our ezPOP system and Call Center support. Many relationships have lasted decades due to our reliability and trust built with our customers.

Much of our business is built on referrals, which we earn through consistent performance and exceptional customer service. We work hard to get our name out into the industry through social media and print forums, but nothing written on LinkedIn or in a trade magazine can take the place of experiencing our full-service model firsthand. There’s something amazing that happens when two business come together to build something special.

WFI: What growth strategies do you use to ensure you stay ahead of the competition?

AML: The best intel we get, to inform our future strategies, comes from our customers. Long-term partnerships lead to innovations that make both parties stronger. We appreciate learning about the strategic plans of our customers so we can understand their growth path and determine where best to support them.

Our counterparts, in the Industrial Graphics Division of Serigraph, serve the automotive, appliance, power sports, and medical industries. This gives us cross-industry exposure, alerting us to trends other POS printers may not be privy to. We also gain real-time market intelligence through AI-driven software connected to our CRM.

WFI: What is your company culture? How do you attract and retain top talent?

AML: We take pride in authenticity, initiative, teamwork, and practical problem-solving. Those that are most successful here understand the challenges we face, yet find a way to ‘get to yes’, for our customers and for Serigraph. We evaluate employees on our core values, having direct conversations about fit on a regular basis. Our monthly newsletter, the Serigraph Snapshot, calls out specific individuals for living out our core values. There’s a reason people stick around here for their whole career…it’s the people.

It is not rare for us to celebrate 35, 40, and 45-year service anniversaries. Many dedicated employees spend their whole career at Serigraph, enjoying multiple different roles during different chapters. The magic happens when you pair this dedicated, long-tenured crew with incredible new team members. Bringing the two groups of employees together honors our past and lights a spark for the wonderful things to come.

We have a fantastic internship program, and several interns have joined us full-time after graduation. This program gives the students real-world experience in departments from IT to Accounting and Engineering to Marketing. The projects they champion, under the guidance of their manager, are purposeful and bring great value to the organization. I experienced Serigraph as an intern 22 years ago, and the career path I’ve travelled since then has been totally unpredictable and extremely rewarding.

It is in our nature to develop great leaders internally. Many employees have experienced several different careers while working at Serigraph. I was hired as a chemist, spent time in Project Management, Inside Sales Management, Continuous Improvement, and now I’m managing one of our two divisions as COO. There are many stories of team members starting off in one area, enjoying some lateral moves to try new things, and then earning a promotion or two. If you smash your day job, great opportunities present themselves at Serigraph. You just have to be ready to say ‘yes’!

WFI: How do you define differentiation vs specialization? How do you plan accordingly for the future?

AML: To me, differentiation is having a product or service that stands out amongst the rest as being superior, and specialization is when you become an expert in one area of the industry, catering to the needs of those people within that market. I think Serigraph does a bit of both with more focus on the latter. We are great printers, like many other printers are, however, I think our greatest value is when we focus on serving the quick service restaurant and retail markets. High-quality, brand consistent print and on-time delivery is table stakes, but our complex campaign management and end-to-end customer service sets us apart.

We follow the Entrepreneurial Operating System (EOS) to guide our planning and execution. This format leads us through setting a 3-year vision, annual goals, and then very discrete quarterly rocks to achieve our target condition. This process, along with accompanying scorecard metrics, has served us well for the last four years and has become an integral part of how we run the business.

WFI: What advice would you leave your fellow printers with to build a successful business long-term?

AML: Focus on your people and build a great team. Regardless of what products or services you offer, a great team will take care of your customers and elevate your business to the next level. Great people bring fresh ideas, develop the next generation of leaders, and make the workday fun.