"Design2Print" is an ambitious tagline for a company with a singular focus on customer service. Established in 1948, Southern Gravure Systems (SGS) had been a part of Reynolds Metal Co. since 1958, later becoming its wholly owned subsidiary with Alcoa's purchase of Reynolds in 2000. The company has pursued an aggressive strategy of growth through acquisition, having rolled up 21 acquisitions, most of them independent trade shops, since 1999. In the early- to mid-1980s, SGS recognized that a majority of the gravure cylinders it manufactured for printers were intended for relatively few consumer product companies (CPCs). Consequently, the company determined that there was a need to migrate upstream to where the value proposition for CPCs lay in brand management across various substrates and print disciplines. Previously, it had participated very little in the flexo market (the fastest-growing packaging segment at the time). With the acquisition of Wilson Engraving in the 1990s, however, the company launched itself into flexo. As a result, a majority of the acquisitions made by the Southern Graphics (nee Gravure) Systems since the mid-1990s have been trade shops with a mostly flexo, instead of gravure base.
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