Customer Service Behind MU's Growth

"That kind of evolved into being offered a job at a different newspaper in Columbia," he says—The Columbia Daily Tribune. "I had several different functions at this new job, and one of them was to develop a small print shop."

The publisher, something of an entrepreneur, charged Wise with firing up an old A.B.Dick 360 and getting a business going, using the camera and composition equipment owned by the newspaper. For the next 18 years, Wise managed that shop, Waters Printing Co., growing it into a 12-employee operation with four presses, a bindery and its own 6,500-square-foot facility.