Business Spotlight: Pelco Press Inc., dba Creative Printing & Design

Owner: Paul Lear

Founded: 1986

Address: 139-B Industrial Park Drive, Hollister, MO 65672

Phone: (417) 337-5450

Fax: (417) 337-5448

Web site: www.creativeprintingonline.com

E-mail: paulear@creativeprintingonline.com

Services/Products: Color offset printing, digital prepress, graphic design for print and Web, mailing and fulfillment

2007 Revenues: $2.8 million

Employees: 30

The imaginative folks at Creative Printing & Design live up to the company’s name, but they do have limits.

The Hollister company’s trusted tag line says it all: We print everything but money.

Owner Paul Lear has directed a 22-year run of print jobs and graphic designs from multiple offices in multiple cities. At this point, he’s settled his nearly $3 million company in a Hollister industrial park.

From there, 30 employees – led by Lear and General Manager Ken Smith – crank out up to 500 orders per month. Among its 800 clients in southwest Missouri and northwest Arkansas are chambers of commerce in Branson, Eureka Springs and Hollister, as well as Landmark Historical Hotels in Eureka Springs and IMAX and other theaters in Branson.

Doubled up

Lear describes the last four years of his operation as “a lot of chaos sprinkled with a little success.”

The chaos began in 2004 when Lear’s 18-year-old Reeds Spring business, known as Paul’s Printing, was bursting at the seams.

The print shop was located in what was originally a 1,000-square-foot house that Lear had quadrupled in size over the years.

Lear intended to add a larger shop in Reeds Spring. He searched for two years before buying Creative Printing & Design at 139 Industrial Park Drive in Hollister from Ken Barth in January 2004.

“It was a good physical location and had the capabilities for expansion,” he says of the 8,000-square-foot building.

Lear called Creative Printing “distressed” financially when he bought it.

“(Paul’s Printing) had half of the square footage and twice the volume,” he says, comparing the two businesses.

During the first seven months as Creative Printing’s owner, Lear managed both businesses simultaneously. In August 2004, Lear hired GM Smith. “My forte was turning companies around,” says Smith, who runs the day-to day operations.

Lear and Smith began to repair or replace equipment beginning with the acquisition of a new direct plate system, which eliminated film as a prepress step.

Another purchase was for new software that could streamline customer job entries and job tickets. Running two separate operations, however, began to takes its toll.

“I found the redundancy was very expensive,” Lear says.

By summer 2006, Lear had moved all of his equipment to Creative Printing and permanently closed Paul’s Printing in Reeds Spring, where he serves as mayor. Lear and fiancée Flavia Mirat recently opened Reeds Spring Pizza Co. in the former Paul’s Printing shop.

A new identity

In January 2007, Creative Printing doubled its Hollister space with leased space next door. The company remodeled the space, adding a 12.5-ton air conditioning unit, 600 amps of electricity and a concrete pad to accommodate a new 40-foot Heidelberg SpeedMaster SM 102. The six-color press features double-sided printing in a single pass and inline coating capabilities, which reduces handling by the pressmen.

Smith says Creative Printing has worked on rebranding itself to emphasize its services from concept to completion.

About 90 percent of orders are print jobs, and free delivery is offered within a 50-mile radius.

Another 7 percent of work is in graphic design, Smith says, while the company also offers mailing and storage services.

Service and quality of work is the main reason Jeremia Froyland has continued doing business with Lear since the Paul’s Printing days. Last year, Froyland, marketing manager for Branson Tourism Center, ordered 100,000 brochures and business cards, and more than 1 million pieces of letterhead, vouchers and envelopes from Creative Printing.

“They (do) 99 percent of our printing stuff,” Froyland says.

Creative Printing recently hired account representative Melissa Evans to work in Springfield.

“We are committed to that market,” Smith says. “We see that as our (new) growth.”

Creative Printing employees can participate in a profit-sharing plan that pays 20 percent of net profits to all staff, regardless of tenure or position.

Employees were paid dividends for three out of the last five quarters. [[In-content Ad]]