THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Monday, June 24, 1996 TAG: 9606220178
SECTION: BUSINESS WEEKLY PAGE: 10 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Cover Story
SOURCE: BY LON WAGNER, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: 110 lines
For most in the printing business, every picture and every image in the world consists of combinations of just four colors: cyan (greenish blue), magenta (a pinkish red), yellow and black.
At Teagle & Little printing in Norfolk, the world just got more colorful.
The small Norfolk printer with big-name clients ran its first job this week on its new, $2 million, seven-color press. Teagle & Little president Greg Jordan said that when the company decided to upgrade its four-color press - the industry standard - it figured it was time to add to its color capabilities.
``Every seven or eight years, to stay on the cutting edge you need to upgrade,'' Jordan said. ``We decided to pretty much go all the way. There are jobs in this area that require six or seven colors; then there are the national jobs.''
The 75-employee company with less than $10 million in annual sales shelled out for a Komori press, a seven-color machine touted as the only one of its kind in Hampton Roads.
In addition to the $2 million press, Teagle & Little expanded its warehouse by 6,000 square feet, added new folding machines, new paper cutters and a laser drum image scanner. All that added another $1 million to the bill.
While that may sound like big bucks for a relatively small printing operation, Teagle & Little has made a name for itself nationally. Jordan thought the high-fidelity press was a must to keep big-name clients happy.
Teagle & Little has printed brochures, annual reports, posters and the like for Lexus, Audi, Omni Hotels, Ralph Lauren and others. And Jordan credits local customers such as Sentara Health System, Children's Hospital of the King's Daughters and Kingsmill Resort in Williamsburg with launching Teagle & Little onto the national printing scene.
``If it wouldn't be for the local stuff, we'd never be doing the national,'' he said. ``Basically, the people here have given us the ammo to go national.''
Not that the company couldn't handle the complicated jobs without the new press. It's just that with a four-color press, those jobs would be all the more difficult.
In order to roll more than the traditional colors - or unusual colors such as metallics and varnishes - off a four-color press, a printer has to pass the paper through the machine twice or more. With each pass through the press, the balancing act of maintaining consistent colors gets tougher.
With the seven-color press, the printer can add colors to the four traditional colors without necessarily having to pass the poster or brochure through the machine more than once. Some complicated jobs will still require several passes through the press, but not as many passes as would have been needed with a four-color press.
An earlier job for a Canadian paper manufacturer that required reproducing a print of the Louvre museum had so many colors that it had to pass through Teagle & Little's four-color press six times.
Teagle & Little had barely installed its new press this week when a job came through for which the equipment came in handy - print a poster consisting of the winning pictures taken during BASF's 7th annual employee photo contest.
High-resolution and quality reproduction of the photos were essential since the employees of BASF are familiar with printing. Among the German company's products are printing ink and plates and color processing chemicals.
Kathy Howell, of Howell Design Inc. in Williamsburg, brought the job to Teagle & Little. It required four-color printing plus a glossy varnish, a dull varnish and a metallic color.
``I honestly believe their photo contest would not have grown from 200 entries to 975 entries if we couldn't reproduce posters that look like this,'' Howell said Wednesday while looking over the end results of the printing job.
Teagle & Little has bolstered its reputation in recent years with jobs like the BASF photo contest and the solicitation it was asked to do for S.D. Warren Co., a Boston paper company putting together a contest for printers.
Teagle & Little, which Jordan's father - Deck - bought in 1954, has won the Dillard Paper Co. award in Virginia four times since 1989. Nationally, the company competes for jobs like the Audi brochure with companies that have 10 times Teagle's sales.
Jordan, though, says the company's success couldn't have been bought simply by installing the newest in printing equipment.
``This guy right here,'' Jordan says pointing to a longtime employee, ``he's been here 35 years. He knows printing. Our clients sometimes can't believe some of the things he can do. Anybody can have the equipment. You have to have the right people.'' ILLUSTRATION: [Cover, Color photo]
PRESS GAIN
ON THE COVER
Greg Jordan, president of Teagle & Little, with the new press.
AT LEFT:
Jordan examines a page run off the press.
Teagle & Little printers in Norfolk paid $2 million for this Komori
seven-color press, which can print seven colors in one pass.
Allen Creasey, an electronic pre-press operator at Teagle & Little,
works at a laser drum image scanner that the company bought when it
got its press. The company also added new folding machines, paper
cutters and expanded its warehouse by 6,000 square feet. But
president Greg Johnson says that while the equipment is important,
it's people like Creasey who make the company successful. "Anybody
can have the equipment," Jordan said. "You have to heave the right
people."
JIM WALKER photos
The Virginian-Pilot
FOUR-COLOR
SEVEN-COLOR
A variety of colors can be created by overlapping the colors in
four-color printing. But some jobs need even more. by CNB