Big Business Blast-Off

Terry Fulwiler has kept WL Group grounded in family roots, while leading its trajectory into the package printing stars.

By Jessica Millward

ROCKET SCIENCE isn't exactly a prerequisite for most label converters, but Terry Fulwiler's aerospace engineering background has probably come in handy in his role as CEO of Wisconsin Label Group. The company, comprised of seven employees when Terry joined in 1972, has witnessed a meteoric rise in size and scope, joining tag and label luminaries in the upper brackets of packagePRINTING's annual converter ranking.

Though a new alliance with Superior Label Systems will send the company even further into industry heavens, Fulwiler maintains the employee-emphasis he fostered in the early days. For achieving a rare balance between big business and family business, Terry Fulwiler has been selected packagePRINTING's 2000 TLMI Converter of the Year.

Lift-off

Ray Fulwiler, Terry's father, provided the prototype for his son's future success. Wisconsin Label Corporation was founded as a pressure-sensitive label printing firm in Algoma, WI, in 1966, by Ray Fulwiler and his partner, Frank Knipfer. The co-founders' wives rounded out the employee roster.

Terry Fulwiler, born in 1950 in Algoma and raised there, didn't take a direct route to the family business. He attended the University of Michigan and received his B.S. in aerospace engineering, only to find, upon graduation, the United States' space race at a standstill. He joined his parents and the five other employees at Wisconsin Label in 1972. Through his first years with the business, he performed various functions: typesetter, head of scheduling, general manager, and eventually president and CEO.

In 1986, when Ray Fulwiler retired and Terry took over as president, Wisconsin Label enjoyed healthy sales of almost $5,000,000 in the pressure-sensitive label market. Soon after assuming leadership of the company, Fulwiler set his sights beyond the Algoma borders.

"The decision to grow was easy," explains Fulwiler. "We had many mouths to feed—Wisconsin Label is a family business, and there were big families." Fulwiler's first move was to start Label Graphix, a pressure-sensitive label firm based in Heath, OH. After purchasing a minority interest in WI-based Victory Graphics, Wisconsin Label diversified its interests with the formation of Wisconsin Screen Graphics in 1989. And that was just the beginning.

Fulwiler believed growth was "a good way to protect the business from fluctuations and sales cycles." He continued Wisconsin Label's rapid expansion with additional start-ups and acquisitions. By the close of the century, WL Group, as it is now known, would project annual sales of $100,000,000, with 80 percent of that figure stemming from internal growth. In the process, Wisconsin Label's workforce grew to include over 800 employees, and company capabilities spanned labels, cartons, commercial offset printing, specialty packaging, and application equipment.

Wisconsin Label has sustained its approach to employee benefits through that catapult into converting's hierarchy. The Share the Profit (STP) plan in place today was a brainchild of Fulwiler's uncle, Stan Fulwiler, and was initiated in 1975.

Under the plan, employees attend monthly meetings in which company revenues are announced for the previous month, and collect monthly bonuses if profits were produced. Fulwiler notes it is the ideal way to reward "the team of people that makes it happen." All WL Group companies have their own STP programs in place. In addition, Wisconsin Label is one of the few companies left in the country that offers 100 percent medical coverage.

Over the moon

Lest the company get too comfortable at the $100 million mark, Fulwiler and WL Group's management have put into motion the company's largest leap forward to date. Effective this month, WL Group will merge with Superior Label Systems (SLS), of Mason, OH, creating a new converting company, the W/S Packaging Group.

The alliance will result in a new superpower in the label industry, boasting 14 manufacturing facilities, over 60 sales offices, and projected annual sales in excess of $150 million. Fulwiler will act as chairman of the board, while Ken Kidd, the CEO of SLS, will keep that title in the W/S Group.

Kidd, who has known Fulwiler for over ten years, reports the merger will "make two good companies into one stronger and better company." He observes, "As large a company as [WL Group] is, they pay such attention to their customers." That renewed commitment to excellent customer service, he says, will be the heart of the new organization.

Satellite system

Suzanne Zaccone, president of the TLMI, attributes WL Group's great fruition to Fulwiler being "an astute businessman," who has "purchased a lot of companies that fit well into Wisconsin Label's niche."

Fulwiler led the WL Group into the TLMI in 1992, because, as he attests, "we needed to be part of the national industry." He served on the board of directors from 1996 through 1999, and was chairman of 1999's annual meeting in Aventura, FL.

In such a booming industry, Fulwiler feels the association effectively serves as the "eyes and ears" of its member companies, providing technology, management, and market resources to individual companies who might not have the time to stay on top of every development within the industry.

Kidd maintains Fulwiler's success as a TLMI board member was due to his interest in market segments outside of pressure-sensitive labels. "Because he diversified, and knew so much about different areas of the industry, he represented all of us well."

WL Group's success, in large part, is due to that broader vision. Fulwiler himself looks forward to the merger with SLS because "we will be positioned to serve our customers with more capabilities and more locations."

Sorry for the loss, NASA.

Terry Fulwiler showcases the past (a California job case for typesetting) and the present (recent pressure-sensitive label work) of his company.