d office products include markets, highlighters, notebooks, three-ring binders, fasteners, business forms, tickets, tags, imprinting equipment, and self-sticking stamps. Avery Dennison produces the self-adhesive postage stamps used by the United States Postal Service and sells it school products and office products through retailers (Hoover's, Inc., 2004).
Avery Dennison Corporation is headquartered in Pasadena, California. The company operates manufacturing facilities and sales offices in many global locations. International operations generate almost one-half of the company's total annual revenues (Hoover's, Inc., 2004). The distribution of the company's 2003 revenues by global market region is summarized in Exhibit 2, which may be found below on this page.
Exhibit 2 รน Avery Dennison Corporation 2003 Revenues: Distribution by Global Market Region
Revenues (% of total exclusive of adjustment)
Source: Avery Dennison Corporation, 2004b
Avery Dennison is the outcome of a 1990 merger between Avery International and Dennison Manufacturing. Avery (under one name or another) operated as an independent company from 1938 until the 1990 merger with Dennison. Avery shifted into products other than adhesive papers when the company lost the patent on self-adhesive labels in 1952. Dennison began in 1844 as a maker of jewelry boxes. In the 1850s, Dennison expanded its product line to include tags, labels, and tissue paper. In the mid-twentieth century, Dennison expanded into office machines (printers primarily) and pregnancy test supplies. In the mid-1980s, Dennison followed the In Search of Excellence dictum to "get back to the basics", as the company divested all operations except stationary, control systems, and packaging (Hoover's, Inc., 2004).
Company revenues were $4.8 billion in 2003. Revenues at Avery Dennison Corporation have increased each year since 1998. Over the most recent five-year period, the company's...