Kase Printing:
Two partners take a conservative approach to building a successful enterprise
Together, and with the help of the company’s 35 to 40 fulltime employees, the partners have guided Kase Printing to gross annual sales between $5 million and $7 million. Kase Printing provides complete prepress, printing, and postpress services, from electronic imaging and prepress with a computer to plate workflow to a complete bindery. Kase prints on five different presses, all sheetfed presses ranging in size and design from a small format envelope press up to a four-color 40-inch press with coating unit. The company produces a variety of materials including brochures, pamphlets, direct mail pieces, book jackets, manuals, flyers, posters, newsletters, and more, but its sweet spot is printing medium-sized runs of books. The company logo of a book with the pages spread open is a clue that the majority of the printed volume moving through the plant is publication-related. “We knew everything: We were
in our 30s” Koumantzelis grew up in nearby Lowell, Mass., and graduated from the University of Lowell — now the University of Massachusetts at Lowell — and answered an ad for a job as a technical writer. He was hired an assistant print buyer, and over time he learned the printing industry through the vendors he dealt it.
Koumantzelis soon learned what characteristics constituted a “quality” printer. “I came to understand what I liked in a vendor and what I didn’t,” he said. The entrepreneurial seed had been planted. It only needed time to germinate. Connecticut native Arthur Glatt worked in software development. He spent time working on database management and eventually befriended Koumantzelis through the company in-plant. The two decided to go into business together. They understood basic business principles and felt the Merrimack Valley Region marketplace had room for at least one more printing company. Combined with Koumantzelis’ time at the in-plant, they figured they had enough knowledge to be successful. “We knew everything,” Glatt said cynically. “We were in our 30s.” They sounded out friends, and potential printing clients. They bought used equipment, rented 6,000 square feet of space in Hudson, and got to work. Glatt said one of their first pieces of equipment was a “mongrel duplicator,” fashioned from parts culled from various worn out machines. Becoming more selective about jobs
Perhaps the biggest challenge Koumantzelis and Glatt faced early on was their facility. The electrical service was spotty. The 6,000 square feet became cramped. The partners realized they had to upgrade their location, something they hadn’t figured on doing so soon. While making sales calls, Koumantzelis drove through the industrial park where the company is now located. In 1994, Koumantzelis and Glatt moved their company three miles down the road to a location that has served them well for the past 11 years. They have since expanded from 9,000 to 21,000 square feet with additional room to grow. They plan to be at their present location for the foreseeable future. Around the time of the move, Scott Wetmore joined the company as general manager and brought a few sales accounts with him. Wetmore is responsible for daily operations at the plant. Looking back, the partners never doubted their decision to get into printing, but they say the first two years were difficult times. “It was tough,” Koumantzelis said. “We tried to get a small business loan, but we couldn’t get anyone from the SBA (Small Business Administration) to even look at our loan application. We were maxing out on our credit cards and business was slow.
By the third year, business had begun to pick up a bit. Work was plentiful and by the time they moved the company, Koumantzelis and Glatt had a payroll of 10 to 12 employees. Several had started when Kase Printing was launched. The majority of the print jobs Kase handled continued to be one and two-color work. Another of company’s early accounts was an area hospital. The partners found comfort serving the publishing market. Koumantzelis said. “That appealed to us.” “We were trying to stay away from industries that we were high volatile industries such as high technology and the financial services,” Koumantzelis said. “We were in business to provide top notch basic printing services to people who we knew had steady work. Serving publishers turned out to be steady work.” Knowing what they knew from personal experiences in high technology, the men purposely avoided seeking printing work from that industry. They viewed it as a volatile and undependable market niche. They wanted the type of printing work that would likely exist and need to be printed even in a tougher economic climate. Over time, Kase Printing evolved. The partners began beefing up the bindery equipment to better serve the publishing industry.
“We wanted to focus on what we did best,” Glatt said regarding the deeper push to serve publishers. “We still are guided by that philosophy today.” Koumantzelis said 80 percent of Kase’s printing is publication related. “We have developed a niche in the publication market and we serve it well. We do short runs of books, one-color signatures for the text, and multi-color covers. The books are either perfect bound or saddle stitched.” He said a component of Kase’s business is trade publishers who
place small to medium-sized print runs for advanced reading copies of
books — a common practice in trade publishing. Book runs average
300 to 3,000 pieces. Kase gets involved in the larger runs of books
for other clients. Koumantzelis describes the remainder of the printing as typical general commercial work that is produced on the company’s five presses. The presses include a small format ABDick for envelopes work, a 26-inch four-color Heidelberg with two-over-two perfecting capability, a 29-inch two-color MAN Roland, a 40-inch two-color Heidelberg Speedmaster, and a 40-inch four-color Komori Lithrone with coating unit. Buying a new press and the “that
pit in the stomach feeling” Business had picked up in the third year. Sales had grown incrementally, and in 1995 they decided to buy a new MAN Roland press to primarily serve an important client that was a six-figure account. Soon after the press was up and running, Kase’s contact at the client company had left. Soon therafter, the client shifted its print buying elsewhere. Glatt said. “We got that pit in the stomach feeling once we learned the client was leaving, but what could we do? We focused on finding new work for that press. Sometimes, things happen that you have no control over.” Not threatened by the Internet “That’s not who we are, nor what we do,” Koumantzelis said. “Our customers need to print because so many of them are publishers.” Kase watched the e-commerce infatuation come and go.
“What got our attention for a little while was E-books,” Koumantzelis said. For now, it’s clear consumers haven’t embraced e-book technology in the same manner they’ve embraced the Internet for gathering information. Print, in book and magazine form, anyway, seems to be the preferred format readers want much of their information today. A complete and comprehensive workflow “Our customer base is very professional,” Glatt said. “They certainly knew about the upgrade and there was a real acceptance. We also saw a noticeable improvement in the color quality.” Prepress offers complete desktop publishing and scanning, and conventional imaging. Traditional offset printing is the preferred print process and the partners readily admit they are presently not thinking about installing any digital reproduction equipment. “It’s not part of our niche,” Glatt explained. In addition to the platesetter, Kase Printing recently installed a 16-pocket inline binder from Muller Martini, a needed capability for a printer that plans to do more book publication work. So far, Glatt is pleased with how the binder operates. On a recent tour, the inline system was operating flawlessly. Being service providers
“We’re service providers,” Glatt said. “We’re here to help our clients,” a common refrain from printers who understand the additional value their printing expertise is to someone from outside the manufacturing circle. “The strength of our company is the skills and dedication of employees here who take pride in their work,” Glatt said. Three people who began with the company are still working there. Others worked long enough to retire from Kase. As a growing company, Glatt said the biggest challenges are issues related to personnel and foreign competition. “We didn’t know there was so much stuff to know and be aware of,” Glatt said. “Now we’re trying to address those issues as we move into the future.” |
The future
looks just as bright due to their slow and steady approach to growth;
their daily diligence to print well and keep customer service as their
highest priority; and a commitment to build upon existing client relationships
and nurture new ones as they emerge.
At its
zenith, the computer giant was purchasing $20 million a year in commercial
printing with Koumantzelis involved in a lot of the purchasing decisions.
The company in-plant produced about $2 million worth of printing annually
as well.
One of
the early print jobs Koumantzelis landed was to print a weekly newsletter.
It was a big enough job that the partners bought a new Heidelberg GTO
14 by 20-inch format press, the company’s first new press. They
still print the newsletter today, however, the GTO is gone. The partners
eventually traded the press for new equipment.
“There
was really nothing else to do but tighten our belts and work through
it,” Koumantzelis said referring to the difficult first two years.
“By
investing in bindery equipment, it allowed us to get more deeply into
the publishing niche. We were able to produce perfect-bound books, saddle-bound
books and loose leaf trimmed on four sides, with three-hole drilled,”
the president said.
Koumantzelis
and Glatt feel fortunate that they don’t have a collection of
examples of bad business decisions that they can say they’ve learned
from, but together they recalled one unsettling experience.
The company
has its own Web site and utilizes and provides file transfer capability
for clients to speed up the movement of files and the proofing process.
The company
does very little marketing. Instead it relies on word of mouth referrals
from one satisfied customer to the next. Also, individuals seem to keep
Kase Printing in mind and in their telephone directories, palm pilots
or contact directories when they move from job to job.
