The Top Five Enjoy Continued Success

By Maggie Dewitt

Proforma serves more than 50,000 clients through approximately 650 member offices in North America.

For more information, visitwww.proforma.com.

3 American
Solutions for Business

Glenwood, Minnesota

Established 1981

2006 Sales $239.8 million

2005 Sales $231.2 million

Most profitable products: Promotional products (28.1 percent); forms (27.6 percent)

Manufacturing capabilities: No

Typical order size: Average order sale last year was $608, while largest order dollar amount was $375,000.

Human Resources: Sales, customer service and administrative staff have been added.

Health-care, financial, manufacturing and government are successful markets for American Solutions for Business, and President Larry Zavadil said the company will continue growing sales associates—including 31 former Global DocuGraphix sales associates and support personnel—and relationships in these different areas.

The company is also specially focused on packaging, and exit strategies for small- to medium-size distributorships grappling with marketplace changes and their limited resources.

One business operations challenge has been finding an efficient technology tool that can function as a national, fully integrated system. “There are [systems] out there, but the [companies] refuse to allow a source to make the adaptations in order to make them work,” Zavadil commented. “We’re constantly evolving our E-commerce to the customers’ satisfaction. Internally, our accounting function and structure is very robust and flexible, but it continues to be a challenge for us to plug in the remote sales associates and offices. Our plan is to have this resolved in the next two years,” he continued.

For more information, visit www.americanbus.com.

4 GBS

North Canton, Ohio

Established 1971

2006 Sales: $90.1 million

2005 Sales: $84.8 million

Most profitable products: Labels and tags (28 percent); forms (21 percent); envelopes, folders and stationery (21 percent).

Manufacturing capabilities: Yes

Typical order size: From $1,000, with the largest order being $675,000 last year.