By Paul Post
In response to rapid growth, 10-year-old M&M Digital Printing has moved to a spacious new location, giving the firm three times more room to work with.
The business was previously housed in the Seeley Office Systems building, 95 Broad St. in Glens Falls, and began operating out of the former Community, Work & Independence building on Upper Glen St., Queensbury, on Aug. 26.
“At the old location we were packed in like sardines, on top of each other,” said Matt Flint Sr., company owner-founder. “We only had 950 square feet. Here we definitely have room to grow. There’s more space and it makes the work flow easier. Buying capability also opens up because we have more warehouse space. At the old location we could only stock so much paper, which means we had to pay more for smaller volumes. Now we can buy larger volumes, so that brings the cost down.”
A former Web Graphics production manager, Flint launched out on his own after tiring of the corporate world. He and his son, Matt Flint Jr., the operations manager, are two of the firm’s four employees.
M&M’s small size and state-of-the-art equipment gives it the flexibility to turn jobs around quickly, which has fueled unprecedented sales.
“We’re probably the only printer in New York state that offers same-day or next-day service on many items,” Flint Sr. said. “People come in all the time and say, ‘Can I have this today or can I have this tomorrow?’ There’s really not anybody else that does that. That’s where we’ve really grown our name and brand, by providing that type of service. Someone calls and says, ‘Hey, I’m really in a pickle, can you get this done?’ Nine times out of 10 we can.”
“We’ll do almost anything that’s a paper-based material, from an envelope, business card or letterhead to prescription pads, mailers, brochures, flyers, post cards, calendars and everything in between,” he said. “It’s such a huge set of offerings.”
M&M also handles larger items such as banners, signs, stickers, labels, posters and architectural prints.
This month Flint Sr. is traveling to a large industry trade show in Las Vegas to learn about the latest equipment, with an eye toward possibly expanding the types of jobs M&M can do.
“This trade show will show me a lot of things that are available and what the new technology is,” he said. “We could be expanding what we do now, to have more capacity, or we could expand into different offerings such as direct-to-garment and 3D printing. I haven’t really pinpointed that yet. It would mainly be for small quick runs. That’s what we specialize in. Generally, for large runs I tell customers if it doesn’t fit in our wheelhouse, or I don’t feel we can be competitive with big commercial brokers, I’ll forward them to someone else in the industry.”
Flint Sr. had already begun working with digital equipment while still employed by Web Graphics and wanted it to be his focus when starting his own small, new business.
“I knew I didn’t want to go into the offset printing world,” he said. “With offset you have such large set-up fees for plates, ink and chemicals. Digitally you don’t have any of those things. And we wanted to specialize in quick turnaround times. In the offset world, you definitely can’t do that.”
“We definitely push a lot of things through here on a daily basis,” he said. “At any given time we could have 200 orders in-house. It’s been a great experience to say the least.”