Black Dot Group

Sonny Nardulli has been an executive with Black Dot since 1966 and President and COO of Black Dot Group since 1992. Under his leadership, the company has become the nation's largest fully integrated strategic/creative through pre-media services provider focusing on the retail, book, catalog and publication markets. Recognized industry-wide as a visionary thought leader and astute executive, Nardulli is the impetus behind Black Dot's evolution to a full-circle, solutions-based steward of branded visual communications. From its beginnings in 1963 as a composition and pre-press business with revenues under $1 million and one location in Crystal Lake, IL, Nardulli has been instrumental in growing Black Dot Group both internally and through acquisition to a national powerhouse with multiple locations and revenues in fiscal 2002 of over $ 146 million. To realize his vision of Black Dot as a full-circle solutions provider, Nardulli moved Black Dot's service offering upstream in the early 1990s, acquiring agency-quality creative businesses, world-class photography studios and a company that develops educational and textbook creative and editorial. Two business units were created to handle total creative outsourcing for large, national retail clients. Another Black Dot company provides creative services directed to ethnic and multicultural audiences. An additional hallmark of Nardulli's leadership is that company growth always anticipates customer needs, often via leading-edge technology and process-improvement innovations. Nardulli has invested in the largest IT and technical solutions unit in the industry and was an early adopter of web-based solutions for his clients. Such constantly evolving and improving services cement Black Dot's leadership position within its several key market segments and with its base of clients, which includes national retailers, major consumer and educational book publishers, and Fortune 500 brand marketers. Nardulli's record of innovation and success resulted in the 1998 acquisition of Black Dot Group by Applied Graphics Technologies.