Envelope Maker's Expansion Prompts Move To Douglas Site
Walking through the Classic Envelope plant in Whitinsville is like taking a step back in time.
Machines that date back as far as the 1960s cut large rolls of paper into neat stacks of sheets that lay on wood pallets on the old mill floor.
For smaller orders of specialty envelopes for holiday cards or wedding invitations, an employee places a razor-sharp steel die on a stack of paper and lowers a press onto it to cut it manually. Another employee is responsible for sharpening each die every few days by hand with a file.
One floor up, those sheets are fed into loud machines that rapidly fold the envelopes, applying glue and clear windows. Tens of thousands of pounds of baled paper scraps are hauled off each week by a recycler.
Despite all the talk about emails bankrupting the United States Postal Service, there’s still a demand for envelopes. Just look in your mailbox.
Michael DeCaro, the company’s president, said making envelopes hasn’t changed much since he entered the industry in the 1970s. The machinery is more advanced, though. Classic can computer-design envelopes that have color printing inside and out.
While the manufacturing process isn’t much different, the Central Massachusetts market has shifted.
When National Envelope closed its Worcester facility late last year and laid off a number of its 160 employees, Classic scooped up more than 100 of its customers.
DeCaro hired 35 employees in September and October of last year to keep up with the new orders. And now, the company’s equipment and 75 employees are “packed like sardines” into a 90,000-square -foot, three-story mill space on Whitinsville’s Main Street.
The new customers boosted business 30 percent. DeCaro said it could have nearly doubled, had the company had room to fit in more machines.
But DeCaro will soon have that room, hopefully by November. He recently signed a $1-million purchase-and-sale agreement for a vacant mill in neighboring Douglas that offers more than double the space.
DeCaro acknowledges that the loss of National Envelope has been to his company’s benefit but is far from gleeful about it.DeCaro worked there for a time. And he said he has since hired some of the National employees who were laid off last year.
DeCaro also once worked for Worcester Envelope Co., a nearly 120-year-old company now based in Auburn. DeCaro and his wife Patricia decided to start their own envelope business in 1988 with four employees. The staff has grown nearly 20 times and the company plans to hire another 40 employees after the move to Douglas.
The 25,000-square-foot Douglas building was last inhabited five years ago by Interface Fabrics, a Michigan-based textile maker. Classic plans to invest $1.5 million to install a new roof and upgrade the sprinkler systems, among other renovations.
“It’s a great company in expansion mode,” said Craig L. Blais, executive vice president of the Worcester Business Development Corp., which is securing a federal Small Business Administration loan for Classic.
“We fully understand what has happened in the industry with respect to National Envelope closing its doors,” Blais said. “To bring this old mill back into productive use is a top priority for us.”
The Douglas building has enough room on the first floor to house Classic. DeCaro has talked with Quinsigamond Community College about having the school rent classroom space upstairs.
DeCaro said several factors have kept Classic healthy amid competition from much larger global manufacturers, which have not been immune to people sending less snail mail.
NEC Holdings Corp. in New York, one of the world’s largest envelope makers, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection last year, citing the recession and the displacement of print media by electronic media.
DeCaro said his staff is highly skilled and that his company can make almost any kind of envelope, standard or specialty.
DeCaro said it’s a personal point of pride that he and his wife run a company that will hire a person without a college degree, train him, and provide opportunities to move up.
“We bring you in and we train you from scratch,” he said. “That’s getting scarce in this country.”
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