For Allen Printing, 2008 should have been a banner year. Sales at the family-owned printing business in Nashville, Tenn., hit an all-time high, but Paul Heffington, Allen Printing’s owner and CEO, wasn’t celebrating. “Our top line was growing, but the bottom line was not moving much and we had drawn down a lot on our bank credit line,” he says. When the slowing economy caused sales to drop slightly the following year, the company started “gasping for cash,” as Heffington put it. And when Allen Printing’s bank, facing problems of its own in 2010, suddenly called in its loan, the company was so strapped for cash that it had to file for Chapter 11.