Photo courtesy of Excelsior    Oatmeal Studios' owners Joe and Helene Massimino sold the Vermont company to Excelsior. To the right is new owner David Crane with new General Manager Joseph Gallagher.

NORTH ADAMS, Mass. — Excelsior Printing Co. will bring its newly acquired business to the city.

The Roberts Drive printing company announced Tuesday that it purchased Oatmeal Studios of Rochester, Vt., and will bring the inventory and warehousing to the city, which could translate into local jobs.

"The founders wanted to retire. We were in negotiations for about a month and finalized the deal last week," Julianne Fruscio, Excelsior's business development and marketing coordinator, said on Tuesday.

Excelsior has been printing Oatmeal Studios' greeting cards for more than 20 years. Oatmeal's sales team will be offered positions first and unfilled jobs could be filled locally. Additionally, Excelsior hired Joseph Gallagher to be the general manager to develop even more products and expand into other markets.

"We're really hoping to develop the brand Oatmeal more," Fruscio said. "It's a new direction for us because we are now specializing in greeting cards."

Though Excelsior has the ability to do its own design work, it will continue using Oatmeal's database of freelancers to design the cards. Oatmeal also accepts submissions on a daily basis, Fruscio said.

Oatmeal Studios was founded by Helene and Joe Massimino and has been creating and distributing greeting cards and notepads for more than 30 years. The greeting cards are printed with vegetable-based inks on recycled paper. 

"We think it's a great fit," said Joe Massimino in a press release. "Excelsior has been a part of Oatmeal Studios almost from the beginning and they have a stationery pedigree of their own that will serve Oatmeal Studios’ customers well into the future."

In 2005, Excelsior separated from Crane & Co. and, in 2008, made a similar acquisition of SeedPrint. Excelsior now prints and ships seed packages while doing minimal design work.

Crane purchased the Excelsior companies — Excelsior Printing and Excelsior Process & Engraving — in 1970. Crane moved Excelsior Process & Engraving to the Robert Hardman Industrial Park in 1985 and then announced that it will close the Curran Highway location last year.

Excelsior Printing Co. on Roberts Drive was purchased by David W. Crane in 2005.

A local custom printer is partnering with a technology startup to offer customers in Berkshire and Hampden counties a new way to publish their printed material online.

Excelsior Printing Co.  in North Adams will be the exclusive provider of Flip Page Publishing's 3D publishing technology. Excelsior will be able to offer customers a three-dimensional version of printed collateral on their Web sites through a plug-in created by Flip Page and delivered through Excelsior.

It will allow customers to "effectively communicate in cross-media channels," said David Crane, Excelsior's owner and president.

The technology allows the read to zoom in and out, print and share documents as well as, of course, "flip" the pages. Flip Page Publishing is based in Branford, Ontario.
 
"The Massachusetts marketplace is a new venture for Flip Page Publishing and we feel it is full of opportunity," said Flip Page's President Brent Palmer.

Excelsior has been in business for 118 years and is a provider of custom and innovative print and distribution programs throughout North America. Excelsior became Berkshire County's first Forest Stewardship Council certified "green" printer in 2008.