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SHERBURNE - "Nothing gives me cardiac arrest anymore," says Robert W. Tenney, president and CEO of Mid-York Press, Inc., a printing and packaging firm located in Chenango County.
Tenney rolls his eyes as he thinks back to his first day as president of the Sherburne-based business in November 1982. At age 23, and just six months after graduating from Syracuse University (SU), Tenney was brought into the family business to rescue Mid-York Press, then generating annual revenue of $1.5 million. The balance sheet resembled a grade-B horror movie:
payables, $385,000; receivables, $80,000; cash on hand, $12,000; payroll due that week, $24,000.
Chemical Bank came to the rescue in the short term. Mid-York, which already owed the bank $500,000, received an additional $250,000 loan to keep the company afloat. "What did I know about running a company," says Tenney. "I wanted to be a drama major and ended up with a psychology degree. I washed out of the management school at SU three months after taking the helm [at Mid-York], our biggest customer, Norwich [Pharmacal], put our printing contract out to bid. At that time, Norwich represented 90 percent of our business. I told them if I lost the contract, Mid-York would be bankrupt. Norwich left the label and carton printing with us and gave another vendor the rest of the printing."
Tenney spent the next five years reorganizing the company and developing sales. "I lost 35 pounds juggling sales, operations, and keeping the customers and creditors...