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Date: August 16, 1995

Title: Top 20/Cunningham Graphics

Michael Cunningham, president of Cunningham Graphics, a Jersey City printing company, entered a bright spotlight this spring. He became the Small Business Administration”s 1995 New Jersey Person of the Year. Now, with this latest Top 20 award, Cunningham admits, “What a year!”

Cunningham Graphics” honors aren”t blarney. In the past six years, the company has grown from 11 to 215 employees and increased its revenues some 1,500%. In 1989, revenues were $981,586. By the end of 1990, they had skyrocketed to $3.7 million, climbing significantly each year to reach $21 million for 1994. “Stop the presses!” won”t be rolling off Cunningham”s tongue anytime soon. Says he: “I”d like Cunningham Graphics to become a $100 million company in five years.”

A lofty goal? Yes, but reasonable. Since it was started in 1983, Cunningham Graphics has specialized in printing for the financial-services industry. Cunningham boasts having clients from the top brokerage houses on Wall Street. Jobs include everything from equity research reports to marketing brochures. Through what he calls his “elaborate distribution network”, thousands of financial reports destined for as far away as Tokyo are printed at Cunningham Graphics in the dark of night and arrive on the desks of portfolio managers by dawn. While 65% of its work is financial, Cunningham Graphics is exploring publishing and music printing.

For Cunningham, 35, everything has moved very fast. After graduating from the University of Massachusetts in 1981 with a business degree, Cunningham went to New York City to pursue a printing career. Growing up in Bayshore, L.I., he had worked for Gibson Graphics, a local printing firm. Cunningham knew even then that though he came from a long line of city firefighters and policemen, he preferred to take his risks in the printing industry.

Once back in the Big Apple, he started selling printing in downtown Manhattan. Soon Cunningham began selling for a second printing company. Simultaneously, he opened Cunningham Graphics as a printing brokerage in 1983. During the next six years, while running Cunningham Graphics on the side, Cunningham sold more than $48 million of financial printing.

On May 5, 1989 he decided to risk it all and opened a printing plant. “I took out a $1.5 million loan for my first piece of equipment,” Cunningham recalls. He opened the doors with a 40-in., four-color press, 11,000 sq. ft. and 11 employees in affordable Jersey City. After a slow start, the presses picked up speed in the next four years, and Cunningham Graphics expanded to three floors and 120,000 sq. ft.

Today Cunningham Graphics is again bursting at the bindings, but that doesn”t stop Cunningham from investing in new technology. According to Joseph Truncale, executive vice president of the National Association of Printers & Lithographers in Teaneck, the industry is moving more toward desktop/digital printing, and “Cunningham Graphics is right up front in this area.”

The firm is also setting up six satellite facilities. The first opened in Hartford, Conn., and the next will be in Chicago. The plan calls for five plants in the U.S. and one in Britain.

Working toward a masters at New York University and contemplating teaching there, Cunningham maintains a frantic pace. The one-hour commute from his home in Tewksbury is a welcome reprieve. Cunningham”s last award before the SBA honor came in 1986, when he was chosen Irishman of the Year for Jersey City. As Irish luck would have it, some nine years later he seems to have found his pot of gold in Cunningham Graphics. s