Darrell Moore Keeps Family Legacy Alive

Darrell Moore spent 30 years of his career running Modern Litho in Jefferson City, Missouri. Throughout his career, the one person who inspired him the most was his mother, Jeanie Moore.

The story of Moore’s illustrious career goes back even further into Modern Litho’s history—to the time when Darrell Moore’s mother was Modern Litho’s office manager.

Discovering Modern Lithography

Moore said his family moved to Jefferson City when he was in ninth grade after his dad, Dick, was appointed to the Missouri Board of Parole. His mom, Jeanie, always had a job, but said she hoped to stay home more after the move.

“After two months, my sisters and I were begging her to come back to work—she kept us busy!” Moore chuckles. “So she went to work for the Missouri Department of Public Safety, where one of her jobs was to oversee a print order that Modern Litho was about to start production on. She managed to successfully complete that project despite never having any printing experience, no college degree, and no one who could really guide her. She was just a super intuitive business person.”

After the project was completed, Moore says the owner of Modern Litho went to Jeanie and asked for feedback on her design. While Jeanie thought the project turned out great, she noticed glaring pain points along the way. The proofs were incorrect. Changes weren’t being made. Invoices were incomplete. She warned the owner that if he didn’t change these things, she didn’t think his business would survive.

Moore says that after that conversation, the owner tried to convince Jeanie to come and work for him, but she refused—over and over. The turning point for her came one Sunday at church.

“My family has always been a family of faith, and one Sunday at church, God spoke to her heart, ‘You’ve been praying for change, and I’ve been putting it right in your lap, and you keep saying no.’ She called the owner the next day and said she was willing to talk about coming to work for him. They had lunch, and he hired her as an office manager,” Moore says.

At first, Jeanie had only two people reporting directly to her, but over the years she rose to CEO and then president. She ran the show while the owner enjoyed retirement in Florida.

“It’s funny,” Moore says, “my mom went to all the major print shows, but she took my dad with her. All the men there would try to talk to my dad about print, but he would just smile and point at my mom and say, ‘You have to talk to her; she’s the boss.'”

Becoming a family business

After becoming president, Jeanie’s final dream was to take complete control of the company.

“She was having lunch with her mentor one day. He asked her what her dream was, and she told him it was to own Modern Litho,” Moore says. “He asked her, ‘Well, does anyone know about it?’ and she said no. His next statement really caught her attention—‘Well, if no one knows about it, how is it going to happen?’”

The next day, Moore says, his mother called the owner and asked if his family would ever consider selling Modern Litho, so she could make sure she was the first person he called.

Moore says his parents eventually got a call, but by then they were in their 50s. He had already gone to college and had a successful career in engineering for several years. But Moore’s parents knew that for the company to be successful in the long term, they would eventually need a successor. When the purchase of the company was finally finalized, Moore joined the company as vice president. His sister, Darla, later joined the sales department and eventually built up the human resources department and served as president of Brown Printing, a subsidiary of Modern Litho. Both brothers followed in Jeanie’s footsteps—always striving to treat people well and produce high-quality prints.

Developing Modern Lithography

Fast forward 30 years, and Modern Litho today is almost unrecognizable from the company Jeanie joined as office manager and Darrell years later as vice president. The company’s strength is embodied in its 380 employees and six manufacturing locations. Darrell Moore has led the expansion both organically and through acquisition. He has established long-standing business relationships that have allowed Modern Litho to thrive.

What really helped Modern Litho get to where it is today was a merger that Moore initiated with Brown Printing, a company in the same city that was Modern Litho’s biggest competitor at the time.

“I became friends with Greg Meeker, who had joined the family printing business about a year before I did. They were the second-largest printing company in our town and our number one competitor,” Moore says. “The way we described it to people was that we were fighting for customers Monday through Friday and playing cards with our wives on Friday nights.”

Moore explains that at the time of the merger, both printing businesses were “maxed out” and needed more space, so they joined forces to make the necessary investments and grow as one entity.

And that’s exactly what they did. By combining with Brown Printing as a sister company, both companies were able to streamline workflows and invest in more equipment.

“That was our first acquisition, and it was the single most important thing that kick-started our growth,” he says. “By allowing Modern Litho to really focus on national and regional work, and allowing Brown Printing to focus on mid-Missouri work, we were no longer the competition. That, along with Greg Meeker’s exceptional ability to lead our sales and marketing efforts, has allowed us to get to where we are today.”
That was just the beginning. Since 2000, Modern Litho has made 10 acquisitions. If you ask Moore, a key reason the acquisitions were successful was because the companies trusted Modern Litho.

Moore believes the source of the goodwill of smaller stores is simply a good reputation.

“Our company worked closely with all the industry leaders: the paper companies, the trusted players like Kodak, EFI and Heidelberg. We built a reputation through all those interactions,” he says. “You know, ‘Hey, these guys are good businessmen. These guys do what they say they do, and they have integrity,’ so that momentum was already there when we were talking to companies about potential partnerships.”

Moore isn’t the only person who can speak for Modern Litho. Clarence Penge, vice president of sales, market and product management for Heidelberg North America, has known Moore for more than a decade and credits Moore’s down-to-earth nature with helping to solidify Modern Litho’s strengths.

“I think what’s special about Darrell is that he lives by that golden rule. He’ll treat you the way he wants to be treated and he’s a pragmatic man,” Penge says. “The best way I can describe it is that he’s got a ton of common sense. He’s as sharp as a sailor, but in a calm, collected, very composed way that resonates with a lot of people. When you’re fair, open and honest, that means a lot.”

Realising the legacy

When Moore looks back on his career, he says he’s most proud of the fact that he’s helped create a solid foundation through his legacy that will sustain the company for many years to come — keeping a long-standing promise he made to his parents.

Following in the footsteps of Jeanie, who trained him and gave him more and more responsibilities over the years, Moore became a leader who was not afraid to delegate responsibility and to train and motivate his employees.

Jeff Davidson, Moore’s nephew and now the new owner of Modern Litho, has taken up the torch to keep the family business going, and Davidson says his uncle has been a mentor to him over the past 15 years, giving him the space to grow and become a leader for this new generation.

Davidson joined Modern Litho out of college, following an early career in commercial banking. While Davidson was recruited into the family business, he notes that he still had to prove himself.

“Darrell has no problem delegating,” Davidson says. “So when he finds bright, even young, or maybe a little unproven, people, he’ll take that leap of faith and let that person take on a project and flourish. I don’t know who could teach me more about this business.”

As Modern Litho transitions into its third generation of family ownership, Darrell recalls a conversation his parents had with him and his sisters before they purchased the business.

“My dad told us, ‘We’ll buy this business, but only if you promise us it’ll never break up the family.’ And we kept that promise,” Moore says. “My sister Darla told me this weekend that she’d like to be there when I retire because I’m the last male in our family, so they can see that we’ve kept our word—my sisters and I are close.”

Moore’s parents passed away in 2021, so they were looking forward to Darrell’s retirement, but many co-workers, friends and family members were there to help him celebrate the start of a new chapter in his life — a chapter that will be filled with a lot of golf.

“He worked a lot of long hours as a young man, as a young father and a young husband who sacrificed a lot of time that he could have spent with his wife and kids — but he was here building the company and taking care of our employees,” Davidson says. “I’m so proud of him and so happy to see him enjoying making new memories with his grandchildren and spending more time with his wife and grown children,” Davidson laughs. “And you know he’s a golf nut, God bless him. If that’s how he wants to relax now, so be it.”

In memory of Dick “Daryl” Moore and Jeanie Moore.