Rochester Democrat & Chronical -
Gates printer Express Press on the rise
Company diversifies, will hire and find a larger facility
Matthew Daneman • Staff writer • July 29, 2008
Rochester, NY - 7/29/08
For much of its 30 years, Express Press was a small quick-print shop — one of numerous places running off envelopes or letterhead for other small businesses, even for a time operating as a neighborhood copy shop.
Today, the Gates operation is rapidly morphing into a marketing company where print is used alongside e-mail and Web sites as part of wider cross-media marketing for clients.
As a result, Express Press and its side businesses are expecting to add staff and move to a larger facility within the next year. "We're very much bursting at the seams now," President David Clar said. "It's a good problem."
Express Press employs 13 and expects to add up to six workers in the next 18 months, Clar said.
Express Press started expanding its core businesses in 2002 when it launched a yearbook publishing side business, Expressly-Yours Yearbooks, that targets school and military markets. But the major shift in business came with the founding of CLARiGO close to two years ago.
That auxiliary business, operating out of the same Chili Avenue building, is rapidly becoming the primary focus of Express Press, Clar said.
Clar declined to give specific financial numbers for the privately held business but said that CLARiGO sales should eclipse revenues from its traditional print business by June 2009.
Its clients include some Fortune 500 companies and, most recently, an out-of-state casino, he said.
Genesee Community College hired CLARiGO in 2006 to help with its marketing campaigns to attract prospective students. A mailing campaign put together in part by CLARiGO that used a sandal-shaped postcard brought in numerous more high school seniors to an open house last April than previous open houses, said Hal Legg, GCC recruitment communications specialist.
The college, located in Batavia, also plans to work with CLARiGO to create personalized URLs — Web addresses that incorporate the recipient's name — for prospective students, Legg said.
"In the marketing we do, relevance is king," he said.
Numerous commercial printers have dabbled in or reworked themselves as marketing companies in recent years as digital printing technology has opened the door for them to do more direct mailings and other services, said Timothy Freeman, president of the Erie County-based Printing Industries Alliance.
The first year of CLARiGO "was extremely tough" until the company was able to start showing to prospective clients some case studies of work it had done, Clar said. After about a year, the company started turning a profit, he added.
Original Democrat and Chronicle article
Press Release Archive
May 27, 2008 - Judge a Book by its (Hard) Cover
October 15, 2007 - Express Press Receives National Recognition
May 20, 2007 - Customize With Express Press 
April 20, 2007 - Local Printing Company Receives Honor From US Marine Corps.
April 19, 2007 - A Tale of Two Campaigns
December 18, 2006 - Marketing with Minimal Databases
January 10, 2006 - Students to Learn How to Produce Personalized School Yearbooks at Free Seminar
November 18, 2005 - Forty Under 40 Award
September 15, 2005 - Digital Printing Award