Printing companies almost never make big headlines in the general media, but that’s not to say that printers never make news. Here’s a roundup of print-related stories we thought worth sharing: • When he visited Wythken Printing of Richmond, VA, a blogger for a Richmond city guide got the printing services he was looking for—as well as an object lesson in why it makes sense to choose local independent printers over giant national chains. He writes, “As soon as I walked in, I was hit in the face with the warm smell of ink and paper—what I considered a good sign that Wythken was ‘the real deal’...Not only were Wythken’s cost per copy prices already 1 cent cheaper than Kinko's beginning price...they ended up dropping their price by almost 4 cents per copy lower than Kinko’s.” Blasting what he regards as the soullessness and inefficiency of big-box stores, he concludes: “Sometimes, as I found at Wythken, you actually end up saving when you quit bargain hunting.” • Does the last major recession—the dot-com bust at the turn of the millennium—seem like a stroll in the park compared with what we’re going through now? Maybe, but Peter Rinnig remembers it as the slump that convinced him to strike out on his own as an apparel printer. The Boston Globe saluted the entrepreneurial spirit of the founder of QRST’s in an article that also urges small firms to look into recovery financing that may be available from the U.S. Small Business Administration. • “If you talk to local executives these days,” writes David Robinson in The Buffalo News, "one of the words you’ll hear an awful lot is hope.” His article cites the optimism still prevailing at Mod-Pac, a Buffalo packaging and commercial printer that took a hit to its profits in the first quarter of the year despite a strong increase in custom folding carton sales. “The extravagance seems to be off the American economy,” Daniel G. Keane, Mod-Pac’s president and CEO,” is quoted as saying. • At The Print Source, Inc., a 62-year-old trade printer in Wichita, KS, points that employees earn for safety and longevity with company can be used to buy various products. The company’s enlightened approach to human resources management is among the reasons why the Wichita Metro Chamber of Commerce recently named The Print Source one of two Small Businesses of the Year. The other winner was Eberly Farm, a banquet and event facility whose co-owner taught English in middle school to a co-owner of The Print Source. Read all about it in The Wichita Eagle. • Another award winner, The PressRoom of Ballston Spa, NY, was cited in a Times Union story headed, “Small businesses make it big.” The company was purchased last year by its former plant manager, Eric Butler, who accepted a Small Business Excellence Award on its behalf at a luncheon sponsored by the U.S. Small Business Administration and the New York Business Development Corp. “We are doing OK,” Butler is quoted as saying. “Things are looking up. "The economy's tough, but it's nothing we didn't expect from the get-go." With he company since 1984, he now manages 31 employees in a 25,000-sq.-ft. plant serving the New England – Mid Atlantic region. • $100,000 would have been nice—but $10,000’s not too shabby, either. That’s the cash value of the second-place award taken by Scribe Printing Technologies Inc., Cochranton, PA, in the Big Idea Business Plan Contest sponsored by Ben Franklin Technology Partners and other Pennsylvania business promoters. Scribe’s prize-winning innovation, as reported by the Erie Times-News and other regional media, is the Scribe Velocity360 Digital UV Inkjet Printer, a small-format system that can imprint variable data in full color on plastic parts and other items at up to one linear mile per hour. The $100,000 first-place award went to PSI Medical, LLC (Erie, PA), a developer of solutions that make intravenous catheters easier and safer to use. Want to see more roundups like this at A Printing Office? Let us know. If your company has made news locally, please tell us where to find it, and we’ll post it here for all to read.