We hope you all enjoyed your holiday weekend. This month we decided to switch things up with our customer of the month. We have been highlighting all of our trade contractors the last few months but wanted to show you that they are not all that we work with here at Segreve and Hall. This month we are happy to introduce to you LaPlume and Sons Printing, Inc of Lawrence.
The pictures are set up in a time line of sorts to your right. The first picture is the original press that was given to Gabriel J. LaPlume in 1935 (while he was running a bike shop) and set this whole company in motion. The original Chandler & Price company letterpress worked as the wheel turned it would press the inked imagine onto the paper that was set to be printed on. It is made of cast iron and weighs in over 500 pounds! Today it serves as a relic greeting you as you walk through the front door of LaPlume’s office.
The second image is that of a traditional offset printing press. It is where the image is offset on to a rubber blanket which rolls the desired image over the paper which is fed into the machine in large sheets, then cut accordingly to fit the desired display. Whether that is a large poster or flyers for the local school event. The machine uses very large amounts of electricity to run and the shop is currently undergoing some renovations in the offset printing room in order to make everything run more efficiently.
The third image is a more modern day digital press. Customers send their desired displays to LaPlume digitally where with the help of their machines figure out if the job is something that the printer is capable of printing the way the customer would like. It is closer to your office printer but on a much larger scale.
Currently LaPlume employs 22 people who work at their facility each day. They are a family run business out of a nearly 20,000 sq ft. building in Lawrence. When the current owner took over in 1966 there were 22 printing companies in the Merrimack Valley, now there are just 2. That just goes to show you the quality of work and staying power that LaPlume has been able to generate of their many years in business. Plus for those we were wondering they send out thousands of pounds of paper to be recycled week after week. Scott gave me an awesome tour of their facility where I feel like I learned a lot with regards to something that I am not at all familiar with. As I mentioned earlier, we have been showing mostly contractors as of late and it was nice to shine the light in the direction of another type of business. Who knows who will be next!
Originally published by Segreve & Hall. View article here.
