The Story of Success at PrintingForLess.Com of Livingston, Montana

Primary Service: Online Commercial Printing

Year Established: 1996

Primary market: Nationwide

Location: Livingston, MT

Founders: Andrew Field, Boyd Badten, Michael McNicholas

Web Address: http://www.printingforless.com/

General business description:

PrintingForLess.com (PFL) is the leader in the sale of commercial printing through the Internet. PFL pioneered a new category of business-to-business E-commerce by addressing a lucrative niche with the $120 billion per year printing industry. In addition, PFL has developed proprietary technology that allows it to aggregate the $20-$30 billion in annual excess capacity in the commercial printing industry, something previously thought impossible. Located in a stone’s throw fro the Yellowstone River in scenic Livingston, Montana, 50 miles north of Yellowstone National Park, its high quality work and great service have earned it over 60,000 satisfied customers. With over 185 employees, PFL has been recognized as one of the fastest growing privately held companies in the country and been featured in many national publications including the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Inc. Magazine and the Harvard Business Review.

List two (2) reasons why operating in Montana is important to the business:

* Access to great talent, people that want to work and live in Montana.

* Lower labor costs

How can Montana improve the business environment?

Three primary areas: taxation, legal environment and access to capital.

* Taxation – eliminate the business equipment tax, pass capital gains reductions on employee owned stock in corporations headquartered in Montana, lower corporate income taxes.

* Legal environment – enact employee at will legislation, support and continue to improve our workers compensation reforms, resist the urge to legislate and regulate industries. Montana is ranked the 48th worst state in the nation for regulations relating to businesses!

* Access to capital – encourage investment in MT with incentives for job creation, loosen the reins on the MBOI.

What technologies are important in the business?

Depending on the business, all companies can benefit from increased focus on all aspects of technology. Higher paying jobs can only come from higher productivity. Higher productivity requires more sophisticated tools and technology. In our company, world class MIS and IT systems are used for leverage to increase productivity and profitability.

Describe business philosophy:

Hire great people. Give them great tools and technology. Market Nationwide.

What makes the business successful?

The people. We follow a theory of hiring called “Top grading.” We only hire the top 10% of everyone available for any given job for the amount of money we can afford to pay. A typical position here requires sifting through approximately 50 resumes to get one hire. We spend an average of 40 man hours per hire and rely on an extensive screening process (skills, personality, reference checking, credit & criminal) prior to the actual interviewing for final hire. To do so, we spend a tremendous amount of money on recruiting and hiring. We have four full time HR employees dedicated to recruiting and spend $30-$50,000 per quarter on recruiting efforts. Future growth and outlook: We hire an average of 12-15 people per quarter and grow organically at 25 – 30% per year. We anticipate that this rate will increase over the next 5 period.

Special Thanks to Dan Rice [email protected] , VP Corporate Affairs for providing the information found in the profile.

Dan Rice

VP – Corporate Affairs

PrintingForLess.com

100 PFL Way

Livingston, MT 59047

p. 406.823.7075

f. 406.222.4990