The "Outsourcing of Woods Printing" Story

It was an ordinary day. I had just finished printing the school calendar. I had spend hour after hour laying out the calendar, doing the typesetting, doing the paste-up, making negatives, stripping the negatives and halftones, burning the plates and running the press. The calendar was always printed on white paper with blue ink. They were the school colors. Now it was time to take the printed pages to Graphic Crafts in Willow Street to have them folded, assembled and bound. Usually printed about 6,000 calendars which had information for parents, special events, holidays and candid pictures of school children throughout the calendar. I spent hours taking these photos and having halftones made for printing them. Always made sure that my kids and my neighbor's kids had their photos in the calendar. Looked kind of fishy that the same people made the calendar every year. After I was finished printing it, I took one or more of my kids to work with me to help in the delivery of the calendar. They were elementary age at the time and really enjoyed helping their dad with the end of summer chore. We would have to get a school van and load all the boxes into the van. Then the drive to Willow Street. After unloading the boxes we always stopped on the way home for ice cream and a drink. Favorite part of the trip for everyone. I have fond memories of those fading summer days when we would share the work day together and then a treat for the hard work. Eventually the school wanted a full color calendar and the school's presses couldn't handle that, so they had to outsource the job to a local printing company. Oh well, I saved them money for many years by doing it in-house, but money wasn't as important to the school as image. Still that way. It was another extraordinary day in the life of an ordinary guy.