Click here for Part I & Part III

Simplifying direct response marketing to achieve better results

Shaun Buss is the CFO of IBS Direct, a marketing and printing company in King of Prussia, Pennsylvania. Founded over 40 years ago, IBS Direct provides its diverse clients with high-quality campaign materials aimed at driving direct responses from consumers. Several years ago, the company hired new leadership and merged with multiple marketing organizations in the Pennsylvania–New Jersey area, tripling in size and doubling in revenue.

EDWIN WARFIELD: You mentioned that IBS Direct has grown, in part, through acquisitions. What kinds of companies have you acquired?

SHAUN BUSS: The first acquisition was Mars Direct, 2011. Ted and I had just recently taken over the business operations from George and we were looking to expand the offering that the company had. Mars Direct was a company out of New Jersey. They had recently been in bankruptcy and were coming out, growing very rapidly, but almost growing too rapidly, so they were under some duress. It kind of was a perfect marriage—we were looking to expand, and they were in need of a partner.

Fortunately, the geographic location was close enough that we were able to move everything into our facility in King of Prussia, and a large majority of the employees made the trip across the bridge—not everybody, but a lot did, and they’re wonderful. Many of those folks still work for us, and the key to success there was the gentleman who ran that business, Mike Smith, who is still an executive with the company and runs the business very, very well for us today. Acquisitions always rely on people who trust each other and can work together and we’ve been very lucky in all of our acquisitions.

In 2012, because of the press release about Mars Direct, we got a call from another gentleman who owned a company called Imtech New Jersey. He had been in discussion with Mars and he was looking to get out of his business, and we acquired that business. It was a technology fit with what we had acquired from Mars Direct, so it was this beautiful tuck-in. We were able to move them out of New Jersey and into King of Prussia as well. A good percentage of the employees also made the trip up to Pennsylvania, and work with us. That was a heat set technology similar to Mars, so that acquisition worked very well.

We primarily printed the TripTik for AAA—older folks will remember what the Triptych is: before GPS, you used to flip a map that you’d get from AAA. We were the worldwide producer of the TripTik until its recent demise in 2016 when they stopped printing them that way.

The third acquisition was Berkshire Printing out of Connecticut. Again, we did tuck that company into our King of Prussia facility. There was a good customer base there, and a good owner, who still works with our company today. They had two presses that were very interesting to us, and really the primary reason for the acquisition was to get a hold of those presses, and the gravy on top was the good customer base and the good folks who did make the transition into our company. The presses allowed us to print envelopes, and envelopes are a big part of what we do, and they’re uniquely built for that.

The final acquisition was in our marketing services group. We do outsourced work for marketing departments, and we wanted to expand it. We found an excellent company out of Detroit who works with one of the AAA groups—they handle the Midwest and South region—and we began working with them and liked them, they liked us. Culturally, it looked like a good fit. We completed that acquisition in October.

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Edwin Warfield, CEO of citybizlist, conducts the CEO Interviews.

If you're interested in reaching CEOs, please contact edwin.warfield@citybuzz.co

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