WFI Interview: Michael Duggal on Acquisition of CSI

In recent acquisition news, Duggal Visual Solutions (New York) has acquired CSI Printing & Graphics (Alexandria, Virginia). To gain a deeper understand of the acquisition and its goals, Wide-format Impressions spoke with Duggal CEO Michael Duggal.

Michael Duggal, CEO, Duggal Visual Solutions

Wide-format Impressions: Let's start with the basics about Duggal’s acquisition of CSI. What was it about CSI as a company that made it an attractive company for Duggal to acquire?

Michael Duggal: So Duggal is in the process of wanting to do quite a few acquisitions and we've met with quite a few companies already. What stood out with CSI is that they had a good team in place and also good technology. A lot of the companies that are sometimes for sale have aging equipment and we'd have to replace all of it.

In this case, they've kept up to date with technology that's cutting edge like our own, so that none of our customers would feel any kind of drop off if work was done at the CSI facility versus the Duggal facility.

WFI: Were there any key capabilities or markets that CSI operated in that Duggal didn't, or is the acquisition more about wanting to get more production capacity and expand geographically?

MD: Largely it is for increased capacity and expanding geographically to definitely get more involved in the Washington DC market. We do work down there, and this will obviously increase our presence. An important part of why we wanted to do this is because they were so complimentary to us in that, again, they were not necessarily adding new capability to us, but continuing with our tradition of excellence in terms of print quality and service.

WFI: One of the reasons for the acquisition, which you mentioned already, is a stronger presence in the Mid-Atlantic, the Washington DC area. Do you also see this also as a stronger reach into government focused marketing and events, or is it more about what happens in the DC area, outside of the government?

MD: I think it's a bit of both. As a company of our scale, we didn't do very much with the government. So now this will increase our involvement with government related work. But I think a lot of it is just the work that occurs. A lot of it is what's called “government adjacent” work that's going on in the DC area.

WFI: There is a whole bunch of that going on in the DC area, no doubt about it. And do you see it mostly focusing on events? And or will it be also marketing efforts in experiential or retail?

MD: I think there is definitely a part of this which is event focused, but it's also, for general corporate needs, general retail, and a mix of different customer groups, which are attractive to us. One of the things we liked was there wasn't a lot of overlap in customer bases. Sometimes we've been concerned that we were talking to someone who had a lot of customer overlap [with us]. With CSI, we had virtually none, which was great. It helps lead to a seamless integration, of course, and a net gain in terms of customers too.

WFI: So, as a company, I know Duggal has a strong offering of services either before or after print — whether it's creative, whether it's execution, Does this acquisition enable the company to provide additional value-adds that it didn't offer before?

MD: What this does, is it allows CSI to offer our full breadth of services now. Where they were doing the wide-format printing and installation services, they can now offer our expanded services to their same customers. Our creative, our fabrication and display division can offer the custom built displays we do. Our light box division could offer UL-listed custom light boxes.

Our digital signage division can offer the digital and interactive services for them. And so now, their team just has so much more to sell because of this acquisition. What was really important is they had good people, and I love the ownership group. They're all staying on and, Sean Haley, Rob Harris, and Brian Murphy are great people. And that was important. I wanted to know that I was gonna be partnering with people that I liked and respected, and they liked and respected me and my team and, 'cause it's a marriage and you want it well.

It's so important that the fit has to be there, and so we're really excited that we feel like we have good people we can work together with, who understand quality and service. And now we can just offer them more tools because they are a part of the larger, extremely innovative organization.

WFI: Will CSI continue under its own name in any way, or will it become fully branded under Duggal now?

MD: The plan is to keep it as CSI as a division of Duggal. So the logo now is as CSI, a division of Duggal Visual Solutions. That's how we're gonna keep it for now. They've established themselves in their market, and that's our plan for the foreseeable future.

Our aim is not to change too much. They've been doing a lot of good things and now we wanna just allow them to offer even more. So that's what's exciting: there's no reductions. We're not coming in here and saying 'hey, we're gonna cut labor force' or anything like that. We're looking to invest and grow. Duggal has a growth mindset.

We grow every year. We were just in [Wide-format Impressions'] top growing companies list a few months back. And that's our whole vision: to continue to grow and offer boutique service with industrial firepower. Because Duggal has, 13 facilities now, we're able to service the whole nation and even global markets effectively, while some companies just don't have the capacity or diverse capabilities to handle some of the projects that we handle.

WFI: I know you've done other acquisitions. In terms of this one, how long do you think it will take for — you said you were hoping for a good, seamless transition. How how long does it take usually for everything to settle in?

MD: One of the things is, I've seen people do it where it never settles in. And so that's why it's so important to lay the good groundwork at the beginning before. We've been working on this for nine months, and we established that rapport and those relationships and built upon them.

And so we have a great relationship. So, I think it's relatively quickly. We're already, doing work together. We're already fulfilling projects for them out of our Brooklyn and Long Island facilities for some capabilities that they don't currently have, but we do. I think, at times, we will send work down there.

They've got a really good strong dye-sub fabric capacity and sometimes ours gets hit at the same time and then we'll be able to share some of that work with them. So I think work will go back and forth, but principally they'll be sending us work, like, we have that Landa 40-inch digital press, and we're able to now leverage that for their benefit.