(Watch the film here.)

For every successful company, there comes a fork in the road. For Thysse, a third-generation family business based in Madison, WI, it was when Jason Thysse, now owner and CEO, took the helm.

Thysse’s grandfather started the business in 1941 as a small letterpress shop. When Thysse’s father got into the business in 1973, the company added offset. Even as the company grew its offset business and transitioned away from letterpress, it remained a small operation.

In 1994, however, Jason Thysse entered the business at the age of nineteen, and things were about to change. Jason was employee number four. But having grown up with printing in his blood, he knew that the company wouldn’t be able to stay that size. “I started looking at the future and quickly realized that I wasn't going to be able to keep the business as a four-person operation,” Thysse says. “We had to grow.”

Grow Thysse has. Today, the company has just over 100 employees in a 95,000-square-foot facility that offers branding, lead generation, direct mail, wide format, retail packaging, and more. Clients range from education to corporate to government and everything in-between.

Big Company with a Small Company Feel

While Thysse has grown, one thing hasn’t changed—its small company feel. In fact, when J. J. Giese, director of account management, was hired 11 years ago, one of the ways he knew he was in good hands was that Jason Thysse could still run every piece of equipment on the floor.  

“I felt that I was getting in on a really good thing,” says Giese. “I could see the owner [Jason Thysse] was very much invested in the future of the business.”

That small-company, relational focus has been key to Thysse’s growth. It gets to know its customers, spends time with them, and walks them step by step to meet their larger goals.  “We dig down deep,” explains Jana Woodhouse, vice president of creative services. “We get into their history. We get to know them. We take the time to make sure we really hit the spot of what they're looking for.”

Building Culture Around Relationships

Relationships are just part of the Thysse company culture—inside the company as well as outside of it. Many of its employees have been with the company for years. As a result, Thysse’s employees care about each other not just professionally, but personally.

“When you come to work every day, it's not the dreaded: ‘Ugh, I have to go to work,’” says Woodhouse. “It's more like, ‘I get to go see my friends today.’”

This level of relationship also breeds collaboration and trust. “When I hand off a job to someone, I know it’s going to get done,” says Beth Hamacher, business development manager, facility branding. “Not only this, but I know that it’s going to get done well.”

Time for Another Change

As the company has expanded its capacities, including its direct mail, it became clear that it needed to make another transition, this time to high-speed inkjet.  

“In 2022, we saw an increasing demand (particularly for mailing and variable data) that outpaced our equipment,” says Tony Smithson, vice president of operations. “We started looking at the HP PageWide A2200, which offered us the opportunity to provide the high quality we're known for, plus variable data. It did this at the speed of our offset press.”

But the transition wasn’t automatic. For Thysse’s leadership team, it took seeing the press in operation at Printing United in 2022. “When I saw the prints off there, I was really surprised how good the quality was,” says Smithson. “That's what got us looking at the technology more deeply.”

Ultimately, Thysse chose the HP PageWide A2200 for its print quality, production speed, consumable printheads, and upgradeability. It installed the press in the summer of 2023.

HP has been by the company every step of the way. “HP has been coming in and out of our business and helping us understand the applications and how to make the technology work for our customers,” says Dean Bott, president of Thysse. “They have also helped our operators become super-efficient at using the technology.”

Love Affair with Print

As Jason Thysse watches his company grow and change, whether through the addition of new technologies or new capabilities and services, his love and passion for the printing industry never seems to wane.

Why would it? “I was born into this business,” Thysse concludes. “As I have watched the technology change, it continues to excite me. From film to silver master to direct-to-plate to inkjet and wide format, there is always something new. How could I help but love it?”