If you look close enough, you probably can still see some of the ink stains under Bill Henderson’s fingernails. After all, he started as a typesetter’s apprentice. But rather than succumb to the demise of his typesetting craft, he has gone on to create a successful computer age graphic arts company in Chicago.
It took a series of gambles to get the Winthrop Harbor resident to the leading edge of the graphic design field, though Henderson, 63, prefers to call them spur-of-the-moment decisions. It also required a willingness to change with the times in a tradition-steeped industry that has undergone a revolution in the last 20 years with the introduction of sophisticated computer equipment and Web page design.
The Henderson Co. is only 13 years old, a relative infant in a business that has seen families hand down the typesetting business from one generation to the next. It has annual sales of $1.5 million and counts as its clients Chicago Title & Trust, Motorola, the Chicago Board of Trade, the University of Chicago and the John Hancock Observatory Web site.
Henderson’s big move came at an age when most people are starting to think more about retirement than another career. “I was 50 years old when I decided, quite on the spur of the moment, to go out on my own and start my own business,” Henderson recalled. “It was a hell of a week the week of Aug. 4, 1985: My grandson was born, I quit my job and started this place. All in the same week.”
It wasn’t even that simple. Henderson had talked with a salesman friend about going out on his own after working for a Lake County company called Black Dot Group. The decision was typical of many of Henderson’s major decisions in life.
“We were having lunch one day, and he says to me, `Let’s go out and start our own business,’ and I said, `Fine, let’s do it, and what should we order for lunch?’ It was that quick,” he said. “However, the night before we were to sign the papers, my friend had a heart attack and had to drop out. I went ahead anyway and was fortunate to have people support me and go ahead with the company.”
So the Henderson Co. began one block away from its current location on Huron Street in Chicago. It was quite a jump for a high-school dropout who began driving a car as a messenger for the Detroit News.
An admitted “terrible” student in his native Detroit, a restless Henderson was sitting in civics class one day, talking to a fellow student instead of paying attention to the teacher.
“This guy is telling me he had this great job where he drove a car and someone paid him to drive it. I asked, `How do you get a great job like this?’ And he told me to go to the Detroit News,” Henderson recalled. “I remember to this day that on the application they asked if I had any special talents, and I wrote in, `I have a driver’s license.’ “
Two weeks later his friend got into an accident, and Henderson got the job. Eventually he went to work in the composing room of the News, and his love affair with setting type began. Little did he know it was probably in the genes all along.
“I dropped out of school and scored well enough on the test to become an apprentice. One day in my travels I had to go over to the rival Detroit Free Press and went into their composing room. I looked up and there was a picture of my grandfather, who I hadn’t been that close to. It turns out he was a makeup foreman for them for 40 years.”
It has continued to be passed on to Henderson’s three children. His son, Jack, “runs the shop” for the Henderson Co.; daughter Tonya Kirk works for a graphics services company in downtown Chicago, and daughter Jennifer Henderson works for a graphic services company in Northbrook.
“Just a coincidence,” Henderson said.
Son Jack agreed, saying there was no pressure from his father to join the family business.
“I was working somewhere else when he asked me about joining him. We have a good enough relationship where father and son can work together,” said Jack, 36, who lives in Chicago.
But it was the senior Henderson who created the company. In 1962, having grown weary of working in a town tied so closely to the fluctuations in the auto business, he took a typesetting job in Chicago. He spent the next 23 years learning more about a business that was gradually changing from using hot metal type to relying heavily on computers.
“It was gradual, and I have seen the business change. Honestly, in the old hand-set days, people cared a lot about quality,” Henderson said. “Then, when the `Mac’ (Macintosh computer) revolution took place and companies and individuals got computers, they started to think they could do all of the typesetting, printing, etc., themselves. Quality started to slip. Fortunately now, and since we’ve started this business, I’ve noticed a change back to where people in small and large companies alike realize if they want it done right, they will send the work out to professionals like us rather than gambling on doing it themselves.”
When Henderson started the company, he made two key decisions. One was to bring in young, talented people who knew computer technology, and another was to move his residence from Rogers Park to Winthrop Harbor. Both were necessary to keep things “afloat.”
“When I got my first big order, I immediately went out and bought a boat. I thought, and maybe it was a gamble, `What the heck. I’ll spend the money.’ At the time, you had to know someone to get a mooring in Chicago (where he lived), and someone told me about this area in Lake County around Winthrop Harbor. My girlfriend (and later his wife, Janon Zordan) and I looked at the area and loved it.”
On the spur of the moment, he ordered a house built. But once he started living in Winthrop Harbor, he realized that he really didn’t need the motorboat anymore. The community offered him the peace that he was seeking from the boat.
Just as easily as he made the decisions to get what he wanted out of his personal life, he made the decisions that would keep his company up to speed with the industry.
Hiring the right support staff — the Henderson Co. has 20 employees — was critical.
“Many of the people are in the 34-to-40 age bracket. But Bill makes sure he has an open door and gets everyone knowing they can come in with an innovation or an idea and he will listen to it as long as the facts back it up,” Jack Henderson said.
Henderson is willing not only to listen but also to share in the operations of the company, according to Kathi Wilson, who heads up the desktop publishing portion of the firm and who now also is a partner.
“Bill does something that is unique,” Wilson said. “If you do a good job, he is going to let you know about it, but more than that, he is going to let you know about it in front of everyone else. He’s that type of individual where people know if they do a good job. If they spend the extra hours on a big project, the boss is going to notice.”
Among the corporate adjustments Henderson has made was adding Web page design, which promises to be one of the fastest-growing businesses into the 21st Century. Though big-budget agencies can afford to have their own staff design pages, most other companies are looking for assistance, and many have turned to Henderson.
Gino Whitaker and Steve Tolin, both also about half of Henderson’s age, head up that growing end of the business. They had been working on CD-ROM and video game design as a separate business when Henderson bought their operation and integrated it into his own company.
Still, it is the typesetting that still drives the company’s profits. The annual reports, mailings and business brochures represent the majority of the firm’s profits, according to Henderson.
And on that score, Harry Mecartney, owner of Discount Printing Inc. in Highland Park, thinks the results from the old Detroit typesetter are impressive. “What struck me is it is clean, neat, easily read, which is vital in our industry,” he said. “The materials I’ve seen that they’ve done are very professional. Not a lot of tricky stuff, which can often clutter things up. That’s what’s impressive about it.”
Bill Johnson, vice president of Pressley Jacobs Design in Chicago, has known Henderson for 10 years. “He has always come through for me; he is always on your side,” said Johnson, whose company has used Henderson’s firm for graphics work. “It is always a team effort when you work with Bill.”
