Dingley Press’s $17M expansion to add new equipment, jobs
Dingley Press, Lisbon’s largest employer and one of five major catalog printers in the United States, is undertaking a $17 million expansion.
The Sun Journal reported that the company, which last year employed 360 people and published 330 million catalogs, plans to purchase over this year a fifth high-speed printing press, a third co-mailer, a machine that sorts and bundles catalogs, adding 15 to 20 jobs in the process.
"We need capacity," President and CEO Eric Lane told the Sun Journal. "Our growth plan would put us in excess of 400 million (catalogs) in three years. We have 2.5% of the ($3 billion) catalog market; if we made it to 4, we'd be pleased with ourselves."
The company has customers in 41 states.
According to its website, The Dingley Press was founded in Lewiston in 1928, soon moved to Portland, and developed what was to become a long-term relationship with L.L. Bean. That relationship flourished as the retail giant grew. But in 1981, L.L. Bean changed its catalog printing process to rotogravure, which made The Dingley Press ineligible to renew its contract. At the time, the Sun Journal reported, L.L.Bean, made up $5.7 million of the press’s $6 million in annual sales.
Under new ownership, The Dingley Press moved to Lisbon and was rebuilt.
Despite predictions of its demise due to web marketing, the print catalog niche is trending up, due to a strategy of multi-channel marketing, combined with new production and printing capabilities in print media that have lowered costs and complexities.according to a February 2015 Harvard Business Review article, “Why the Print Catalog Is Back in Style.”
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