Customer Referrals and Diverse Offerings Drive Continued Growth for Classic Litho + Design

Founded in 1988, Classic Litho + Design might have started off as a small offset printer, but the woman-owned business wasn’t content to stop there. It has continued to grow through the years and, since 2019, has doubled its business — despite the challenges of a global pandemic and all of the supply chain disruptions that followed.

Masoud Nikravan is Classic Litho + Design’s VP of sales. | Credit: Classic Litho

Today, the Torrance, California-based company (ranked No. 292 on the 2022 Printing Impressions 300 list) has 40 employees and does around $10 million in annual sales, with much of the new business coming from referrals. Masoud Nikravan, the company’s VP of sales, notes. “Cold calling is an age-old thing,” he says. “No one picks up the phone [now.] So all the new business is from referrals — I’d say 95% of it comes from referrals.”

Darioush Nikravan, director of marketing, adds that part of that success comes from not focusing on any one market segment too hard. “We have a very diverse client base,” he points out. “We’re not dependent on any one segment.” And it was that broad range of clients that meant Classic Litho didn’t suffer as much when the pandemic closed entire vertical markets overnight back in 2020.

That said, Darioush says the company has made a point of investing in new technologies to ensure it can continue to provide the services clients are asking for, with wide-format printing and fulfillment being the two offerings experiencing the most growth. “We always had digital technology, but those two areas have grown a lot,” he notes. “With our client base, when COVID came, we were already doing signage for a lot of them. So, we were the perfect fit to pick up additional work and signage as things rapidly changed.” In fact, the wide-format side of the business has quadrupled over the past several years, as the need for signage — and the need to change out signage as the messages have shifted — has only continued to grow.

But that doesn’t mean Classic Litho is ignoring the offset printing side of the business. Masoud notes that the work on those presses continues to grow as well, even if it’s “not as large of a percentage” of the business as it once was.

While the digital side of its business is growing at a rapid pace, offset printing continues to be an integral part of the company’s product and service mix. | Credit: Classic Litho

In addition to wide-format and signage work, one of the more recent additions being explored is packaging work. Masoud has also seen some growth in installation services, especially for all of its wide-format output. The end result is that while the shop is still technically a commercial printer, with strong offset roots, it has never let that designation hold it back from exploring new directions.

Getting Involved in Projects at Earlier Stages

To earn all of those referrals, Classic Litho has strived to ensure it is the kind of partner brands and customers not only want to continue to work with, but one they want to tell others about. One way it has done that, Darioush explains, is to get involved in customers’ projects earlier. “We brainstorm with clients as they’re still developing the projects. We’re coming up with unique ideas, which spans wide-format, offset, etc. We have projects now that go across all of the divisions.”

Some of Classic Litho’s success can also be attributed to taking the time to educate customers as to what the shop is actually capable of doing. “A lot of times, they don’t know what we do,” Masoud says. “They’ve been using us for one area, but when we re-introduce ourselves, it’s a lot of ‘oh, you do that too?’ We have to do a better job of making sure clients understand our full capabilities.”

To help do that, he reaches out and offers to bring them in for plant tours, or by giving customers presentations that at least touch on all of the services offered so they are aware Classic Litho can do more than just a single element of a project. That approach, Masoud notes, “has brought in new revenue,” prompting existing customers to move more of their full breadth of work to Classic Litho.

Another thing Masoud and Darioush both credit their continued growth through the pandemic to was the foresight to stock up on paper. “We invested heavily in paper inventory,” Darioush reveals, “so when the shortage hit, we were able to keep things going. We had a pretty solid inventory.”

That said, they are seeing the paper supply chain starting to ease up. During the height of the pandemic, Classic Litho had to rent additional space just to store all the paper, but as it gets easier to find the stocks they need, the printer is looking to deplete excess inventory to the point where it won’t need the extra space any longer.

Looking to Fuel Future Growth

So how does Classic Litho intend to keep growth moving in the right direction? By continuing to focus on the departments that are seeing the most demand.

“We will continue to see more growth in wide-format printing,” Masoud reports, “and we may end up investing in larger, more capable machinery to get bigger output, in both quantity and size. We currently have an HP Latex R2000 hybrid printer, and we are looking at something larger than that.”

Classic Litho + Design continues to invest in new technology every few years, ensuring it always has the best quality and the latest efficiencies to better serve its customers. | Credit: Classic Litho

Another growth area he is watching is the packaging side. “It’s tough to get clients to come on board with packaging, “ he admits, “because we’re not a packaging company, primarily. We have a few clients, but not a lot across the board.” The company plans to introduce this service to more customers, and make them feel more comfortable coming to it for this type of work.

“Where we are able to get in on the packaging side is when they give us the product, and we come up with the whole package,” Darioush points out. “That’s a value-added service they like, which allows us to get [deeper] into their projects. We’re also doing a lot more specialty turned-edge boxes, which are really high-end. One customer put a package on Amazon and sold it there — it utilized offset, wide-format, turned-edge, and case binding — all the different arenas came into that one package.”

In the end, Masoud notes that Classic Litho’s growth can be traced to its philosophy of being a “one-stop shop. Rather than having to go to different places, we can handle most things in-house, which is a big help to our clients. It also helps when it comes to time-sensitive projects, where you have to have something on a certain date. Our deliveries are 95% on time, and achieving on-time delivery is a big deal for our customers.”

In addition to diversifying both clients and technology, Masoud advises other printers seeking steady growth, year after year, to make sure the quality is good, and then service the heck out of the client. “Also, don’t try to be the least expensive,” Darioush adds. “And always be consistent.”

“Another key element of continued growth is to remain progressive,” according to Masoud. “There is always going to be new, state-of-the-art equipment. Change up your equipment to stay abreast of the industry. You will hardly ever see old equipment in our facility — we upgrade every few years, because, at the end of the day, the better quality and efficiencies will save us. You must have that kind of mindset — growing with the times is the key to success.”