By: Mark Micheli

Aquent president John Chuang likes to say he paid nothing for two million-dollar businesses his company acquired last year - two businesses that have pumped up sales significantly at his temporary-services company.

"Actually we were up about $40 million after purchasing Renaissance," Chuang (pronounced "shwong") says.

He is talking about Renaissance Worldwide Inc., a staffing agency for the information technology industry, which Boston-based Aquent bought last December.

He explains his calculations, saying he paid $110 million for Waltham-based Renaissance, which had $65 million in cash on hand. He adds that Aquent then sold a unit of Renaissance, GovConnect.com, for $49 million - which brought its cash level up to $114 million. Add another $6 million in tax breaks and another $30 million in accounts receivable, and you get $40 million.

The next company Chuang bought "for free" was a $1 million-dollar division of Norwalk, Conn.-based Kodak Polychrome Graphics (KPG) that provides systems integration services. That company is now a division of Aquent and is called MBT (Marketing and Branding Technologies).

"We heard about this from a client of theirs who said Kodak was planning on disbanding the company," Chuang said. "It didn't fit with their strategy."

He added that all he had to do was agree in writing that Aquent would keep the company's six employees and serve its existing accounts. Greg Oehley, KPG's assistant general counsel for the Americas, said the deal also required Aquent to reimburse his company for expenses it paid to handle some of those existing accounts. Although he would not say how much money they received, he did note that it wasn't as great an amount as one would associate with the acquisition of a business.

Oehley explained that KPG received this small division as a part of a larger acquisition it made. He said the division did not fit with its strategy and by selling it to Aquent, the company got out of its financial obligations.

Chuang said that with Renaissance and MBT, Aquent is now able to offer both creative front-end and technical back-end web services that should help grow its consulting business. However, its main business remains placing graphic artists, art directors, creative directors, illustrators and copywriters in temporary and permanent jobs.

The company has come a log way since it started as a typesetting service in Chuang's dorm room at Harvard in 1986. The staffing agency now has 69 offices in 13 countries.

The Renaissance deal alone added 15 offices and nearly 3,000 IT professionals to Aquent's pool of more than 13,000 creative talent.

And it also added to the company's revenue figures. In one year, Aquent's top line shot up 55 percent - from $193 million to roughly $300 million. According to Chuang, the combined revenue of Aquent and Renaissance at the time of the sale was $466 million. He said Aquent has since sold off more of Renaissance's businesses, and he now pegs the company's sales figures at closer to $300 million. Next year, he said, he expected that figure to grow to about $330 million.

While others are cutting back in this down economy, Chuang said his company is investing in a brighter future. "We're hiring and expanding. We're taking advantage of this downturn to solidify our position," he said.

Chuang said that although his permanent-placement business is down about 75 percent, he is looking to hire about 10 executive recruiters in Europe, Asia and the United States so they'll be ready when the economy bounces back. He added that Aquent is opening new offices within the next six months in Prague, Czech Republic; Barcelona, Spain; and Brussels, Belgium.

One way he plans to expand is by increasing the company's outsourcing business. Chuang said Aquent is currently working as the permanent creative departments of divisions of six major companies: Monsanto Co., Capital One Financial Corp., General Motors Acceptance Corp., Hewlett-Packard Corp., Amgen Inc. and American Express Co.

The company was also able to cash in on the Internet boom. By having a ready pool of web designers on hand to fill jobs, it became known as a specialist in this area.

Rochelle Seltzer, owner of Seltzer Design Inc., a graphic design and marketing communications company on Newbury Street, said Aquent helped her company during the Internet boom when it was nearly impossible to hire web developers and graphic artists.

"We were able to fill in the gaps while trying to find the right permanent hires," said Seltzer, who continues to use Aquent when she has a need. Seltzer said using temporary help is expensive, but "if we're going to spend the money, we go to people who are well suited to our need.