Butler Color Press gets your message across
The team at Butler Color Press daily transforms gigantic rolls of paper into sales fliers and inserts that will find their way into newspapers, mailboxes — and, ultimately, customers' hands — across the country.
Butler Color Press produces more than a billion freestanding inserts a year for well-respected national retailers, including Macy's, Giant Eagle, Levin Furniture, Value City Furniture and Menards.
But that's a very abbreviated version of what goes on at the company's East Butler headquarters.
Visit the main facility, and you're likely to hear the words, “I'm proud of that,” from more than one employee with decades of longevity and industry experience.“Maine to Miami, Seattle to San Diego,” General Manager Ray Sielski said of the 100-employee company's delivery fingerprint, which includes insertion in more than 300 newspapers, including parent company and second press site: The Butler Eagle.The production process, Siel-ski said, starts when a client wants to get a message out.That company's advertising team works with the Butler Color Press team to design the best vehicle for the message, which can include details like paper weight and distribution model.
Bruce Ziegler, company process and supply manager, said selection depends on the “people they want to talk to. For example, if it's a luxury product, they might want a glossy paper. If it's something for contractors, they might select a light but durable product that won't rip easily.”Today, the design process maneuvers between the client and Butler Color Press through the digital world.But when Sielski and Ziegler started in the industry, each about 40 years ago, it wasn't uncommon to buy the design drafts a seat on an airplane.Time is intensely important.No one wants a holiday sales flier the day after the holiday, for example.Or, for some retailers like grocers, prices are dependent on outside factors that change rapidly.
“When I started in 1979, it may have taken four or five days to get customer approval,” Ziegler said. “Now, that occurs over a couple of hours for a product they want the next day. Technology has changed this industry, and that's an advantage to the retailers who can make better pricing and marketing decisions.”Butler Color Press officials also take pride in raw material handling, which Ziegler called, “critical … a slight error could cause a costly mistake.”Products include man-sized vats of ink in multiple colors and paper rolls up to 65.5 inches wide and 5,500 pounds.Some materials arrive by railcar, where the company relies on longtime clamp truck driver Norman Voelker to quickly and efficiently organize and transport to the production line.While the raw materials are being gathered on the main floor, upstairs the company's pre-press team, including Colleen McGarrity and Todd Cowoski, proof and transform digital products onto aluminum “plates” for the press to reproduce.“I think this is the most interesting part of the printing process,” said Cowoski, who also has about three decades of experience. “Lasers shoot pulses of light onto the plate, imaging it. The lasers know this little dot goes here, and that dot goes there while the plate is spinning.”Plates for each color guide the press, which Sielski called one of the “largest and fastest commercial presses available in the industry, driven with state of the art technology.”
Butler Color Press utilizes a “heat set” process, where ink is laid on top of a paper substrate and dried to remove solvents.The ink remains on the sheet, where chemicals and cold rollers set it to become permanent to the touch.This differs from the “affinity” process, used by most newspapers, which allows ink to absorb into paper.“Our press has excellent reproduction, gloss, resolution and fidelity,” Sielski said. “Add better paper to the mix and you have a superior product.”For many retail clients, like clothing, cosmetics and furniture retailers, reproduction quality must be extremely accurate.“If someone goes to buy a blue couch they saw in a flier, the blue of the couch better match the blue in the advertisement,” Sielski said. “You, as a consumer, rely on the process that the retailer is properly representing the product.”Another important production element is the shipping department, where the company counts on Logistics Manager Harry Sintz's 37 years of experience to make the product transition from Butler to all parts of the country, including Hawaii, smooth, clean and punctual.“The best part of my job is making it all happen,” said Sintz, walking between rows of pallets fashioned with hundreds of thousands of inserts prepped for shipment. “There's a lot of considerations to this job that people might not realize, like how many to put on the skid, and where that skid is going.”Ziegler said Butler Color Press' products have one purpose: get customers to the clients' doors.The effectiveness of a flier or direct mailer depends equally on content and message, quality, delivery and timing.“Just one of our clients is a large retailer who touches 9.1 million people a day in their stores. If a circular is not effective, and it only drives 8 million people a day to their doors, there's a problem,” Ziegler said. “We are proud to say our schedule is second to nobody, and our timing is 99.99 percent on time for deliveries. In 40 years, I cannot recall missing a deadline. I absolutely take pride in being on schedule.”
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