RR Donnelley, trading as RRD, is a global provider of marketing, packaging, print and supply chain solutions. The company employs more than 37,000 people and operates from over 175 locations across 30 countries, serving 92% of the Fortune 100. Its technical domains span commercial printing, marketing solutions, packaging, supply chain solutions, directory and Yellow Pages publishing, and communications.
Founded in Chicago in 1864, RR Donnelley began as a 19th-century printing operation and grew into one of the world's largest communications companies. Among its early work was the Lakeside City Directory of Chicago, produced in 1874 as a vehicle for advertisers and credited with giving rise to the Yellow Pages industry and, in time, online search. The firm printed Chicago's telephone directories from 1886 under a relationship that lasted more than a century, and in 1927 produced the literature for Ford's Model A automobile.
Today the company offers an integrated portfolio of marketing, packaging, print and supply chain solutions to clients worldwide. Its industrial footprint spans the printing, marketing and advertising, packaging, supply chain and logistics, publishing and directories, and communications sectors.
RR Donnelley pioneered the first apprentice school in the United States and has a long record of workforce training and internal development. The firm's history includes notable resilience: after the Great Chicago Fire of 1871 destroyed its plant without sufficient insurance, founder Richard Robert Donnelley secured a New York loan on the strength of his reputation alone and rebuilt the business, receiving printing equipment by rail on credit.
