Now Showing Envelopes

Pennington added people have been predicting the demise of the envelope product line since the explosion of the Internet and e-mail. Nevertheless, the envelope industry has continued to adapt to changing markets.

“Other than a couple of downturns due to the economy, the envelope is still a growing product line,” he said. “In many cases, e-commerce applications have actually spurred growth of envelope usage. I believe that the envelope will continue to evolve with new features and uses.”

Pennington further explained that buying merchandise online actually has drummed up some envelope business.

“This triggers a store to send a statement and advertise to you,” he remarked. “An online transaction spurs follow-up mailings.”

Though many companies are pinching pennies, some continue to upgrade and purchase new equipment.

Trade Envelopes recently upgraded its envelope converting equipment so it can have a wide-range of converting speeds and envelope converting and printing equipment was recently installed at Calibrated, Ennis’ largest facility.

“This has kept us competitive in large quantities as well as small quantity custom envelopes. Additionally, Pennington said the company purchased state-of-the-art die-cutting equipment that keeps very tight tolerances and has higher throughput.

“This die-cutter allows us to be more precise with our die cutting for the pre-printed envelopes and helps us efficiently produce the envelopes,” Pennington said.

Rite Envelope recently purchased another four-color jet press, which gives the company enormous capacity for quick-turn, high-quality, process printing. In addition, the company purchased two new jet presses allowing it “to make changes on the fly and to print larger envelopes with a quicker set up,” Monahan said.

JBM purchased a few new machines enabling it to turn product around faster. It also bought a machine that provides it with the ability to print numbers, barcodes and variable data, Sheanshang said.