An American Success StoryAt nearly 80 years old, family-owned Boyd Brothers Inc. is an example of good old-fashioned hard work and ingenuity. By Wendy O. DixonWith today’s struggling economy heading ever so slowly up from financial crisis, it’s easy to forget that there once was an even worse financial climate. The year was 1931. Investors were still suffering from the stock market crash of 1929. The Great Depression was hard on a majority of companies. Most people wouldn’t dare (or couldn’t come up with the cash) to start a new business. It wasn’t easy, but Alton Beauregard Boyd scraped up $175 to start a small printing shop. From there, the second and third generations of the Boyd family have turned it into a multimillion-dollar business in Panama City.
The first phone number for Alton Boyd’s print shop was 45. His bank account at Commercial Bank was No. 8. And his post office box at the downtown post office was 18. Shortly after the completion of the Hathaway and DuPont bridges in 1929, opportunities for development opened the area. Boyd took advantage of those opportunities; Boyd Printing, as it was first known, opened in 1931 as one of the first small businesses in Panama City. Boyd’s family moved to Panama City from Eufaula, Ala., in 1921, when he was 11 years old. A crippling childhood illness led to his decision to get into printing. “He had polio and had to wear a brace on one leg,” says Jim Boyd Sr., the son of Alton Boyd and current chairman of the board for Boyd Brothers Inc., the modern incarnation of his father’s business. “So he had to have a trade he could do sitting down.” Alton Boyd went to a typesetting school in Alabama to learn how to use a Linotype machine, the newest invention in typesetting at the time, which revolutionized the printing industry. He then worked for Lillian West, wife of late publisher George Mortimer West, who is credited as being Panama City’s founder. George West, and later Lillian, upon his death, owned the city’s first newspaper, the Panama City Pilot, as well as the St. Andrews Bay News and the Lynn Haven Free Press. “In 1931, when the Depression was terrible, (Mrs. West) told my father that she would have to cut his pay from $25 to $15 per week,” Jim Boyd Sr. says. “He said, ‘I don’t think I can make it on that.’ A printer (in a nearby county) had recently passed away, and his wife sold a small printer to him for $175, which he had borrowed from friends and family.” Alton Boyd used brown paper scraps he collected from his friends who worked at the paper mill as the paper on which he would print. A flyer advertising a dance at the Dixie Sherman Hotel in 1932 is now framed on the wall in the main office at Boyd Brothers Inc., along with an old photo of Boyd with his first Linotype machine and a certificate of sale for the printer. From the small printing shop he opened as Boyd Printing, Boyd later partnered with his brother, John. They expanded the company by opening an office supply retail section, which Alton ran while John took over the printing shop. The business grew with the town. Years later, the second generation — Jim Boyd Sr. — took over. Several years after that came the third — Jim Boyd Jr., who is the current CEO and president.
Born in Lisenby Hospital on 11th Street, Jim Boyd Sr., now 64, is a true Panama City native. He was groomed to take over the family business from the start. “I’ve never worked anywhere else,” he says. His only time away from Panama City was in college, majoring in graphic arts at the Carnegie Institute of Technology in Pittsburgh (now Carnegie Mellon University), where he met his wife, Nancy, on a blind date. They married and had Jim Boyd Jr. while he pursued an MBA at Emory University in Atlanta. Although his formal education armed Boyd with valuable accounting skills, it was Alton Boyd’s wisdom from the school of hard knocks that helped him run a successful business. The young Boyd family moved to Panama City in 1968. “(Nancy) was from New York, so this was culture shock for her,” he says. Boyd preferred working on the printing side of the business rather than in the office supply retail department. “I like making things,” he says. “At the end of the day, you’ve produced something you’re proud of.” The company was still small when Jim Boyd Sr. came on board. “We did a little work in Fort Walton Beach, Tallahassee and Pensacola,” he says. “But not enough to count.” Over time, the company expanded its service capabilities by adding presses and a sales staff.
Jim Boyd Jr. never planned on joining the business. Although he spent his high school summers making deliveries, taking orders and doing anything else his father and grandfather instructed of him, he had his sights set on being an attorney. After earning a bachelor’s degree at Emory University and a law degree from Villanova University in Philadelphia, Boyd practiced law for four years until his father, as he puts it, “made me an offer I couldn’t refuse.” “I had spent so much time and effort solving other people’s problems,” the 41-year-old president and CEO says. “I decided to focus that effort on working to solve my own problems.” As both father and son tell the history of the company in Jim Boyd Jr.’s office, it’s easy to see that the focus of this family business is family. Photos of the younger Boyd’s wife, attorney Cecilia Redding Boyd, with their children — daughter Fisher, 6 and son J. Alton, 5 — are scattered throughout, revealing fun times and touching family moments. Jim Boyd Jr. met his wife, “Cille,” as everyone calls her, at Schooner’s restaurant. “They both grew up here and went to different schools but didn’t meet until 1994,” Jim Boyd Sr. says, leaning back as if he’s told this story a hundred times. “They were both lawyers; their grandmothers were best friends and talked all the time. Her mother I’ve known all my life.” As if the stars were aligned, Jim Boyd Sr. says, it was fate. “The same weekend he met Cille, his sister, Robin, met her husband,” he says. “And the same girl introduced both of them.” Both couples were married three years later, just 11 weeks apart. Alton Boyd and Jim Boyd Sr. ran the company together until Alton died of a heart attack in 1990. “My dad got off work one day at 5 o’clock and died at 7 p.m.,” Boyd recalls. “He was 80 years old.”
Since Jim Boyd Jr. came on board as president and CEO in 1996, the company has grown from being an $8 million company to what it is today, worth around $21 million. Look around at the Boyd Brothers facilities and you’ll see that ink runs through the family’s veins. Most of the printing jargon would go right over a layman’s head. But as Jim Boyd Jr. gives a tour around the pressrooms, terms such as “Heidelberg 8-color Speedmaster with Cutstar roll-to-sheet feeder,” “Muller Martini Bolero perfect binder with cover feeder and in-line trimmer” and “polyurethane reactive binding” roll casually off his tongue. In addition to their sheet-fed facility, Boyd Brothers expanded by purchasing an adjacent 5 acres and investing in a 50,000-square-foot web press facility, which became operational in May 2008. It houses a 24-page magazine format web press that produces up to 65,000 impressions per hour and a robotic plate-loading system that doesn’t even require a person to be in the room while it operates. The massive web press facility is in pristine condition. One lone scrap of loose paper lies off to the side, which Jim Boyd Jr. fetches off the floor and tosses in a recycling bin. Storage cabinets are labeled with photos of perfectly placed equipment, ensuring that things are put back in their proper place. All are efforts to maintain quality control and efficiency, which are paramount to the survival of the company. “We do everything,” Boyd says as he points out an in-flight magazine for Bahamas Airlines. “Design work, print, fold, bind and ship. We produce around 65 publications, some of which are from Bermuda and Puerto Rico.” Less than 2 percent of Boyd Brothers’ printing work comes from Bay County. The company’s biggest customers are in Atlanta, Jacksonville, Orlando and Mobile, Ala. “One publication from Connecticut could come in at 6 o’clock on Thursday afternoon and we could ship it out the following Friday,” Boyd says. The Boyd Brothers facility is running 24/7 and continually purchases new equipment to maintain safety and efficiency. “We work hard on ergonomics to keep people from having to bend over and make each individual as efficient as possible,” Boyd says. “We need to be able to produce as many sales dollars as we can per employee we have.” Though it serves clients in Panama City for short-run publications and small projects, the company seems out of place due to its size and customer base in larger cities. Its biggest competitors are in Jacksonville, Orlando, Miami, Atlanta and Macon, Ga. “This print shop would not be here to service Panama City,” Boyd explains. “It’s just where Grandpa started the business.” Of course, the way things get done at Boyd Brothers has changed quite a bit. The Linotype machine gave way to newer technology. Printing machines are faster and more efficient. Clients can now send files over the Internet. Most of the equipment was purchased over the past seven years. “My oldest press is a 2002; everything else is newer,” Boyd says. “That’s what allows me to do more. Our goal was to grow my business with my employees by becoming more efficient.” But the company’s formula for success hasn’t changed in the 78 years that Boyd Brothers has been in business. More than new technology, both Boyds value their employees, resulting in a low turnover rate and loyal workers. “Some of our employees have worked for us for 40 years. We don’t have turnover,” Jim Boyd Sr. says. “We didn’t lay off anyone during this depression. The most important thing we do is take care of our 110 employees and their families — making sure they have a job for as long as they want.” There is even a bunker the employees and their families can use for shelter from hurricanes. Customer service representative Jessica Sanders has worked at Boyd Brothers since 1978. She remembers that Alton Boyd and John Boyd, and now Jim Boyd Sr. and Jim Boyd Jr., showed her, as well as all of their other employees, concern and kindness when she was a part-time file clerk. “They were very personable, easy to talk to,” Sanders says. “They entered from the back door to greet the employees. They’d ask, ‘How is your day?’ and ‘How’s your family?’ They care about you and realize that family is very important.” Sanders met her future husband at Boyd Brothers during a company Christmas party. They have been married for 30 years. “Once you’re here you never want to leave; it’s a great place to stay,” Sanders says. “Most of the people here I have worked with for 31 years.” Pre-press manager David Flynn, who has worked at Boyd Brothers for 33 years, agrees. “They’re great people to work for,” he says. “If you have any problems, they’re available. I’ve seen people quit to go to greener pastures, but they always seem to come back.”
From the Great Depression until today, with several economic downturns in between, Boyd Brothers Inc. has persevered. What keeps the company from becoming another casualty of the recession? Thinking outside of the paper box, for one. “The downturn affected us,” Jim Boyd Jr. says. “We lost several real estate publications. We lost some high-end advertising pieces. But we firmly believe in the publication business.” According to Boyd, more publications are still being produced than are being closed down. “They tend to be short-run publications focused on local interests, hobbies and specialties,” he says. But then, the company’s bread and butter, so to speak, comes from such publications. “We’re not here to print 5 million copies of Time magazine,” he says. “We print 500 to 200,000 copies, that’s our range.” Boyd sees a fundamental shift in the budget people have for print and admits that he doesn’t know if it will ever come back. So he has taken advantage of the opportunities that have risen as a result of the Internet era. “In this day and age, it’s not just printing,” Boyd says. “It’s also the integration with other forms of communication — the Internet, texting and being able to drive marketing campaigns for our customers where they can have a personalized text message on their ad, such as lottery chances, coupons or additional mailers, so they can get feedback on how well they’re doing. That’s part of the future of the industry. Printing is not dead. It will always be part of our communication.” It may seem counterintuitive to think of printing as a “green” industry. After all, the magazines, pamphlets, brochures and books all come from trees. But recent reports indicate that the remains of old televisions, obsolete computers and other electronics containing lead and other toxic materials are building up in landfills, causing environmental damage. Jim Boyd Jr. points out that trees are among the most recycled materials on the planet. “Printable materials are all recyclable,” he says. “We plant trees, grow them, cut them down and plant again. What we’ve done a poor job of, as an industry, is promoting how green printing actually is.” A giant bailer sits outside the buildings to collect and compact recyclable materials into manageable sizes. “We’re very green,” Boyd says. “We recycle all of our plates, all of our paper, our chemistry, everything that possibly can be recycled. We use special soy inks. We emit no chemicals into the atmosphere. And of course, paper itself is green because it’s all recyclable.”
It’s too soon to tell if Jim Boyd Jr.’s children will carry on the family business. For now, Fisher and J. Alton enjoy coming to see the machines run while under the watchful eyes of their father and grandfather. Their handprints are cemented in the floor of the recently completed web press facility. Jim Boyd Sr. spends fewer days at the office now and says his son is the one who really runs the company. The elder Boyd hopes to return to his love of traveling the world when the economy allows. “I’m doing the exit strategy,” he says with a laugh as he shows off a gallery of framed photography on the walls of his office. Photos of his grandchildren rest on his desk and shelves. A photograph from a prison cell in the Auschwitz concentration camp, taken by Boyd, hangs on a wall, as well as pictures from his travels to Venice, Madrid, Peru and Greece. “But I’ll never retire,” he says. His son jokingly responds, “I can’t get rid of him.” |
