I was the only guy not wearing a suit. It`s 1986, and after picking up a bunch of executives at the airport, here we were all clustered around a press console of an almost-new Miller TP 104 five-color press. The Miller, a 41” double perfector, had barely reached its first birthday. Pandick Inc. was the buyer and one of a close group of financial printers headquartered in New York City. Bowne & Co., Charles P. Young, Sorg Inc., Merrill Corp, and R.R. Donnelly were the other members of a rather prestigious and very lucrative club. The voice of Wall Street. In Bowne’s case, a rich history going back to 1775.
No one would have guessed that the black Friday market crash on October 1987 would not only unsettle financial markets but lead to the collapse of most of these Printers. Today only Merrill Corporation, which was the newest member (founded in 1968) and R.R. Donnelly survive. Bowne did take over bits of the others but found themselves taken over by RRD in 2010. Annual Report and Financial Print was so desirable and envied, and few Printers could provide the quality or the 24/7 turnaround time. However, it was also a Wurlitzer that only played one song.
On this early fall day in Waterloo Ontario, Pandick bought the Miller and to celebrate I took them for lunch in the quaint Mennonite town of St Jacobs.
The Miller sale was a milestone, and we also got the contract to install it. Not everyone was thrilled about that. One of the Pandick executives had brought along his local “Miller mechanic”, who seemed very unhappy to lose out on the installation.
Now into November, we were busy dismantling the press which included the removal of all inkers so it could be hoisted up eight floors at 345 Hudson Street in lower Manhattan. Eager to start the install, we had to be on-site bright and early on a Saturday morning. The street had to be blocked off, and a Saturday was the only possibility. Because of the proximity to Newark, New Jersey, we decided to fly there and stay across the river in Jersey City. Our first calamity didn’t take long. On Friday night, we arrived at the old Toronto terminal One where a batch of flights departed from the same gate. Not paying attention we somehow missed our plane by boarding an aircraft headed for Boston! The penny dropped when a passenger, staring at his ticket, told me I was in his seat. What a mess this caused. Not only missing our flight but also all our baggage and tools ended up in Newark while we headed on another plane to LaGuardia in Queens. A ridiculously expensive taxi-cab ride later got us in our motel after midnight. Things didn’t get much better.
On a sunny Saturday morning there we were watching the riggers hoisting units that weighed 12,000 pounds each into a massive century-old building in New York’s famous “Printer`s Row.” However, there was a new problem. The riggers refused to take the delivery citing it was too large to fit the elevator shaft. They insisted (and as I soon was to discover through their pal the Miller mechanic) we were forced to disassemble the delivery, but the work had to be carried out at their yard in Brooklyn. Another delay which also required massive amounts of electrical disconnections as the delivery panel housed the majority of the controls for the press.
The weather started to turn nasty as the cold winds from the north quickly reminded us that this was November. To argue proved futile even though we demonstrated that the unit could fit by showing both Pandick and riggers how we’d twist and raise the delivery somewhat like the launch-pad of a V1 rocket. A Pandick limo picked us up and there we were in a dank unheated and dimly lit warehouse, ripping apart the delivery.
A few days later the press was on the eighth floor, and we busied ourselves getting it assembled. First the printing units, then using a gantry, the inkers. Finally feeder, delivery and the agony of reassembling inkers and delivery sub-assemblies. Each day seemed longer than the last. A few 16 hour days finally saw our press ready for power, and we were all exhausted, not only by the long hours but the travel back to Jersey each night. The routine involved packing up our tools; hiding them, walking to the subway, and a short ride to the World Trade Center to catch the PATH subway that took us under the Hudson River to Jersey City -- repeated each morning. Usually, we were the last to leave the plant, and we’d wave goodbye to the Janitor who, as we noticed, had bathroom supplies stuffed under his coat.
The production equipment at Pandick was ancient. Most of the bindery equipment looked like it had arrived on the Mayflower or with Columbus. Old Sheridan stitchers, a Juengst gatherer and covering machine, Baum and Dexter folders covered the vast expanse. The pressroom consisted of old Miller TP-38 perfectors and a couple of Coldset web presses. Our almost-new Miller TP 104 looked out of place. As rolls of paper came off the freight elevator and carted into the pressroom, the entire press shook from the vibration that reverberated right across the production floor.
The press finally went into production although we were days late after troubleshooting the electrics. Everything from rags to tools would routinely vanish each night. We were surprised that all the Miller tools had also grown legs and walked away. Even more, rattled to have the foreman chastise us for these losses as if we could do anything about that. Learning quickly, we scattered through the pressroom searching (and occasionally finding) some of the tools. It turned out pretty much all the pressmen either hoarded consumables or like our friend the Janitor took them home. Lesson learned: don’t leave anything of apparent value laying around.
One takeaway in rich abundance was the incredible amount of Print produced each day. Financial printers seemed to defy gravity with a constant, endless amount of Wall Street work. That would change over the next few years. First Xerox Docutech industrial copiers eroded the B/W litho press then as imagesetters appeared whole pre-press departments started to disappear. None of us understood that rapid new technology shifts and then the internet would lead to unplanned obsolescence of jobs and careers. Many of the Pandick staff had been employed for decades doing precisely the same tasks. Customer “press OK” lounges looked more like the lobbies of a Four Seasons Hotel and making money was as easy as taking a breath.
The Episcopal Trinity Church, chartered in 1697, owns a large block of real estate including the building where Pandick used to be. Today the holdings are valued at $6-billion. Landlords have a virtually recession-proof business model. As printers started to leave Manhattan for cheaper locals in Long Island City and Jersey, Trinity remodeled existing factory buildings and increased rents for the few that remained. So locals opined that Trinity strongly encouraged printers to leave by not renewing leases. The New York real estate business hardly missed a beat and is unaffected by technology trends or the rise of the internet. Buildings over 100 years old continue to bring in fantastic revenue. Trinity shed no tears to see the back end of the many printers, including Pandick.
Another old printer, Latham Process, was located on nearby Varick Street. I had installed a fifty-inch two-color Planeta PZO-6 in that plant back in 1983. Latham was a museum of printing machines even back then. Anchored by a George Mann 56” perfector and pre-war Plamag web press, Latham had all the work they could handle including printing a daily stock guide for Standard & Poors. Latham is but a distant memory today.
Gentrification was upon New York. Financial Printing, although still existing, bears no resemblance to the magnitude that existed in the 1980s. Our press sale was just one of the hundreds closed by machinery suppliers all over the world. We, machinery dealers, were so hypnotized by what was immediately ahead of us that we never stopped to realize that constant sales successes would have an end date.
I learned a great deal from that Pandick installation, both during the install and after the Black Monday crash of October 19, 1987, when the Dow dropped almost 23%. Never assume anything will stay the same and learn how to improvise when strategies suddenly take a detour. Both can be painful lessons. Because of our relationship with Pandick and seeing the carnage of Black Friday in real-time, we proceeded more cautiously into the 1990s, shunning debt and assuming future economic disruptions would change our world repeatedly. We also thought more about a goal than a rigid plan, and this proved successful.
The Print industry has completely changed since 1987. At one-time Printshops were filled with skilled workers who took years to learn and develop their craft. Today’s youngsters have grown up in the digital age and are completely comfortable with the interface of operator and machine. They already have the necessary skills to produce work on intelligent equipment that needs only a mouse click to start operating. Production equipment – primarily digital, has a short usable life as we are inundated with ever more easy-to-run machines. In Pandick’s day, their machine’s usefulness was measured in decades not years.
Looking back, I see how companies such as Pandick didn’t have a chance and were unprepared to navigate future technology shifts and tighter margins. They were so preoccupied that they saw no need to assume Financial Printing’s days were numbered. Instead of branching out into other Print segments, such as general commercial color work or buying another printer, Pandick never did. In comparison Bowne never failed by spreading their services – especially in their Canadian operations, and only ceased trading when RRD purchased them.
I still see this type of myopia today. When industry focus is primarily about the mechanics of Print or the twists and turns of new color control tools, that’s a mistake. Running a digital (even offset) press has never been as easy. Color control, file manipulation etc. is no longer wishful thinking but is expected on any new machine. Print must exploit the equipment we already have to create new products that will help customers sell more. Today’s successful Printers are already doing that.
One last memorial legacy from our experience occurred when all three of us made the mistake of trying to fly home the day before the US Thanksgiving holiday! Only one made it on stand-by. Two of us were stranded at an airport motel for two days before we could get home. Another lesson learned.
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