Blog
Empowering Founders to Chase New Dreams, Featuring Aleyant Founder, Greg Salzman
In 2018, Greg Salzman and his company, Aleyant, joined Lumine Group. Aleyant’s print automation software solutions create a solid foundation for growing print media businesses, and customer count, by automating daily print processes such as ordering, pricing, file correction, production, customer service, and more.
“Being an entrepreneur was not something I necessarily set out to do,” said Greg Salzman, founder of Aleyant. But in April 2005, Greg was working in the print media industry when he recognized a market opportunity. The path to digitization for print procurement and acquisition tools was becoming clear, and he saw an opportunity to create a solution that would be critical to businesses and printing organizations as this trend would develop.
From there, Greg created Aleyant, a web-to-print customer solution known today as an innovative leader in providing robust software services to the graphic communications industry at value-driven prices. For 13 years, Greg and his small team were embarking on an incredible journey with Aleyant, evolving its product and solution offering and growing globally. In 2018, Greg wanted to find a way to take Aleyant to the next level and began considering acquisition and investment opportunities. He was specific in his search – looking for an acquirer who would be able to provide capital to accelerate growth and gain access to a group of software industry experts to provide guidance and best practices.
“We hit a point where I knew we needed more expertise to help Aleyant grow to the next level," said Greg. "Plus, I was at a 13-year run of working 24/7. I was excited by the opportunity to bring on partners and advisors who could provide a sense of knowledge and stability. I saw it as a great opportunity to have a larger team behind me.”
In the first 18 months post-acquisition, Greg learned a lot about his business. With new reporting methods and access to the Lumine Group Playbook, Greg and his team began taking a more quantitative approach to managing and understanding the business. “Lumine does a great job of trying to distill the complication of running the business into understandable concepts and approaches,” said Greg.
Part of this process includes ensuring accountable project owners so that throughout the organization, teams are empowered to own, execute, and measure project initiatives.
“Before joining Lumine, I felt like I was the glue holding everyone together," said Greg. "Once I saw the changes to our organizational structure, as roles became more defined and we had metrics around those roles, I felt like my job became easier. I was no longer running interference, and I was seeing my team thrive.”
The goal to start another business after Aleyant was not part of Greg’s original plan. But once realizing his team and Aleyant were in stable hands and feeling confident that the business was positioned for a future of success, Greg felt ready to step away from Aleyant and pursue a new idea.
In January 2021, Greg launched Brand Wings. “The idea came through my experience with Aleyant. At Aleyant, we work with many channel partners, and I was always curious about how we could empower our channel partners with marketing content and tools to help them sell more effectively.” Enter Brand Wings, a through-channel marketing automation platform for brands to empower their sales through their partner networks.
While Greg was preparing to launch, he connected with his former Lumine colleagues for a branding and product focus group – speaking to a group of marketers to validate the product need and providing feedback and ideas for the marketing pitch.
“We will continue to empower Lumine business founders, even once they begin a new journey outside of Lumine,” said Tony Garcia, Group Leader at Lumine who led and oversaw the Aleyant acquisition and integration. Within Lumine, collaboration is encouraged. “We are lucky to have access to a group of domain experts who are always willing to exchange ideas and offer feedback.
“We are proud of founders and entrepreneurs who post-acquisition, choose to chase new dreams, and we will be there to support them.” —Tony Garcia, Group Leader, Lumine Group
As Greg continues to build Brand Wings, he takes with him the confidence of leading a business through a successful acquisition and growth period, and of course, the lessons learned over building Aleyant for 13 years.