Changing with the times leads to growth, success

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C.T. Kruger

Robert Wendt heads Heritage Printing, which offers printing, marketing and e-commerce services.

C.T. Kruger

Robert Wendt heads Heritage Printing, which offers printing, marketing and e-commerce services.

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Once the primary means for businesses to reach customers, the printing industry now shares the mass communication provider spotlight with faster technological transmissions, such as Facebook, Twitter and email.

To keep pace - and better grow their clients' businesses - Heritage Printing recently shifted its focus from manufacturing to communications and marketing services.

"While printing is still a very effective channel for communications, business today revolves around driving customer traffic to websites," said Robert Wendt, president of the 39-year-old Brookfield company. "Social networking offers businesses so many communications options that printers can no longer be as successful by just offering printed products."

To that end, Heritage acquired an advertising agency and created a marketing wing: Cultivate Communications. Now, the company offers not only printing, but marketing strategic, creative design, web development and e-marketing services.

Heritage's recent expansion, Wendt said, is an integral part of the company's commitment to providing first-rate customer service.

"Being versatile allows us to convert our customers' marketing challenges into opportunities for them," said Wendt, whose clients hail from the nonprofit, healthcare, financial and manufacturing industries. "Heritage also offers a very personalized customer service approach, which helps to distinguish us from other printers. We spend a lot of time with our clients, getting to know their business - what works for them and what doesn't - soliciting their feedback and then developing new and innovative solutions that help them market their products and services, reduce costs and increase sales."

Today's printing landscape bears little resemblance to the one he encountered when he entered the industry in the early 1980s - a reality that he said Heritage has embraced and leveraged to its advantage.

"The printing business has evolved dramatically through technology, and we're grateful to be able to pass along to our clients our decades of knowledge and experience," he said. "We don't look anything like we did three years ago and that's fine, because change is normal and can represent growth if it's accepted and not fought."

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JUST THE FACTS

BUSINESS: Heritage Printing

ADDRESS: 3575 N. 124th St.

PHONE: (262) 790-5000

PRESIDENT: Robert Wendt

INCORPORATED: 1972

TYPE OF BUSINESS: printer

PEARLS OF WISDOM: "Business is changing and in order to keep up, you have to change with it."