2025 Innovator of the Year: Walker360 Leads with Cutting-Edge Technology

Editor's Note: Innovation takes many forms. Whether by leveraging new technology, building smart investment plans, initiating strategic acquisitions, placing a focus on workforce practices, or refining processes, industry leaders set themselves apart as true innovators.

Each year, we ask printing industry experts and consultants to nominate the print service providers they believe embody the term “innovation.” Our five Printing Impressions' 2025 Innovators of the Year are recognized for pushing boundaries and shaping the future of the field. It’s our hope that their approaches and philosophies may spark ideas to help other businesses reach new heights.

The summary of Walker360 that follows shares what makes this company innovative, interesting, and exceptional.

Montgomery, Alabama, is home to Walker360, a PRINTING United Alliance member company and general commercial printer that serves many verticals, ranging from insurance to automotive. The company, which has been in business for more than 75 years, is led by Taylor Blackwell, president and CEO. Under Blackwell’s leadership, the company has thrived.

“Taylor Blackwell is an innovator who challenged long-held assumptions and made bold moves when others were sticking with the status quo,” Bill Farquharson, sales expert at The Sales Vault, says. “Today, he sells more in less time and does more work with less people. What he did, others only fantasize about doing.”

Walker360’s efforts have earned it its status as a 2025 Printing Impressions Innovator of the Year.

Walker360’s production floor is vibrantly decorated — from the walls to the machines. Pictured here is Pearlie Davis. | Credit: Walker360

Technology Investments

About 4 1/2 years ago, Walker360 had one digital inkjet machine, but after attending Inkjet Summit and Hunkeler Innovationdays, as well as talking with several different vendors, Blackwell realized he “couldn’t see a path where it made sense to buy another offset press that I was going to have for 15 years, when the technology was obviously making a big change.”

So, Walker360 went all-in on digital presses and, importantly, finishing equipment. Some of the shop’s equipment includes a SCREEN Truepress Jet520HD+ and a Canon varioPRINT iX3200 — among other production copiers — as well as a Kirk-Rudy inkjet envelope printer.

“We bought a roll-fed inkjet and we bought a sheetfed inkjet, and we bought a-million-and-a-half dollars’ worth of finishing equipment,” Blackwell says. “We dove in, and I told everybody, ‘This is going to be a hard year; it’s going to be a steep learning curve. We’re going to have to relearn everything we always knew about printing.’ And it was. It was hard but it was good, and everybody now would tell you it was worth it. The quality is better, the speed is better, our efficiency is better than ever.”

With the efficiency gains in production, Blackwell says the company is doing more jobs than it did 10 years ago. To keep up with the demand, Walker360 is updating its front-of-house software systems, including MIS, CRM, accounting, and more. All that new software, Blackwell says, uses artificial intelligence to streamline processes.

“We’re doing the same thing in the front office that we did with inkjet,” he says. “So this is providing tons of efficiencies in estimating the job, invoicing the job, accounting-wise, reconciling the bank accounts, and reconciling payroll. … And it’s going to do as much for the front office as the inkjet did for us in production.”

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Beyond technology, Blackwell believes in having pride in your workplace — and he makes sure his team of about 60 has full bragging rights.

“We spend a lot of effort and money in having a really nice place to work,” he says. “I’ve had tons of peer-group guys and other companies in my shop, tons of vendors in my shop, and hands down, they will all tell you it’s one of the nicest shops anywhere. I mean, most people will say it’s the nicest shop they’ve ever seen.”

Part of that is the decor: bright lights, vibrant artwork on the walls, and a colorfully painted production floor. But it’s also the energy people bring to work every day (there’s even an employee who brings a home-cooked meal for everybody once a week). Blackwell says that energy stems from the care they give to each employee, including high salaries, a laundry list of benefits, and on-the-job support.

“Nothing bugs me more than to hear somebody who’s like, ‘Something is broken,’ and they haven’t told anybody about getting it fixed,” Blackwell says. “So if somebody needs something — if they need another monitor, if they need something fixed on the machine — I want to get it for them.”

Janice Strength and Samantha Robinson review job details. | Credit: Walker360

Blackwell also encourages all employees to give feedback regularly.

“Once a year, I do a thing called Start, Stop, Keep,” he explains, “and it’s a form that we give out to everybody in the company, and we require them to fill it out. We want to know what we should start doing, what we should stop doing, and what we should keep doing. And then we take that list every year and I distill it down into things we want to accomplish for the year, and we come out with a goals-and-incentives [booklet].”

As goals are achieved throughout the year, Blackwell checks them off the list.

“I want their input … so to me that’s kind of the base because if that base is not a good foundation, then it doesn’t matter how good [the] equipment you have [is] or how good of customers you have,” he says. “If your employees aren’t happy and can’t do the job well, then the rest of it is not going to work.”

This philosophy has led to low turnover, which has been especially helpful for Blackwell, who, during the COVID-19 pandemic, moved three hours away to the Florida Panhandle. Initially a remote-work skeptic, Blackwell would commute every week in the first year after his move; now, he only goes in every six weeks or so.

“I started thinking, ‘Well, heck, when I’m at the office, I spend the majority of my time in my office, on my phone, or on the email, so what’s the difference where I am?’” he says. “You just spend an enormous amount of time talking with vendors and talking with your accountant, or your lawyer, or your HR person, or signing stuff — oh my gosh, you sign stuff all the time — and those kinds of things, you don’t really have to be in an office to do.”

But he doesn’t worry about work getting done in his absence.

“I just have a really good team of people that have been there a good while,” he says. “They all know what to do. The leadership is all type-A personalities, get-it-done. You don’t have to say, ‘You need to work overtime.’ They just come in and do whatever they got to do to get stuff out.”

New Facility, Same Strategy

Another work in progress for Walker360 is a second production location in Chattanooga, Tennessee, which entered the fold through an acquisition. While it’s not the company’s first acquisition, it’s the first time Blackwell decided not to move all operations into the original Montgomery facility.

Blackwell says that, for him and his employees, going to the Chattanooga plant was like traveling back in time — the facility was all offset — so everything is being converted to inkjet. Additionally, between the Montgomery and Chattanooga facilities, about $600,000 in labels was being outsourced each year, so Blackwell made the decision to buy a Screen inkjet label press and a GM 320 diecut finisher.

Another big update to the Chattanooga plant includes $2.5 million in renovations to transform it from “depressing” to “a nice place to work” — just like the Montgomery office.

Blackwell was able to keep most of the Chattanooga employees onboard, and he says they are buzzing about how their facility is transforming.

“Most of the people have been down to Montgomery and they’re like, ‘Oh my gosh, this place is so nice,’” Blackwell says. “And so they’re excited about getting a new place, and they’re excited about all of it: going to inkjet; they have loved doing the label stuff. Actually, my pressman that runs the [40" Komori] has run some of the label stuff and he goes, ‘Oh my gosh, this is fantastic. This is so much easier than [the] offset press.’ And I’m like, ‘Yeah, wait till you get on the other press. It’ll be easy, too.’”