BRINGING IT TOGETHER: Growing Heritage Printing, Signs & Displays from the family garage to three locations required finding the right people and making the right financial moves.

• Position: CASE STUDY: FINANCE

One of Joe Gass' biggest responsibilities as president and CEO is creating a culture that supports the core values of his company, Heritage Printing, Signs & Displays.

Its description reads: A veteran owned sign company of Charlotte, NC that seeks to honor God by serving others. "What we're doing [as a company] is taking our talents and blessing other people," he says.

Gass' parents started Gass Printing Service in the garage of their Leonardtown, Maryland, home 45 years ago. At age 13, he was a cameraman, hand-feeding film. He and his brother Steve purchased it in 1988 and branched out in 2005, when Steve remained in Maryland, where the company now has a location in Waldorf, along with one in adjacent Washington, D.C., and Gass ventured to Charlotte. "Our business had been in a Ben Franklin [five-and-dime store], and we were probably doing $800,000 a year. So, we wrote a five-year business plan, changed the name to Heritage and accomplished the five years in 14 months."

Heritage's 18-person Charlotte office creates custom signs; wall, window and storefront graphics; banners; canvas prints; and business illustrations. It also builds trade show displays and prints brochures, manuals, direct mail and self-published books. Gass says all he and his brother had was a good reputation when they started in 1988. Since then, it has been constant bootstrapping, reinvesting, and finding and encouraging the right employees. "Everything is done for the client," he says. "We don't buy it somewhere else and mark it up."

Working remotely with the company's seven-member team in Maryland, Gass shared his first Charlotte location with other businesses. "My office was empty--no desk or phone--because I was always out in the community networking," he says. He opened a small production plant off Harris Boulevard near Northlake Mall and hired two employees in 2009. Three-and-a-half years later, it moved to a 5,500-square-foot space at its current address. "And I was wondering, what are we going to do with all this space?" he says. "And in 2017 the space next door became available, and I talked to the landlord, and he said just take it all. So, we took a step of faith and have 14,000 square-feet, and it's to where it is now. It built up."

Among Heritage's investments are printing presses, large format printers, laser cutters and fabrication machines. "It's one of those things where you can say you're always falling forward, Gass says. "You can allocate your...