Made in NYC Company of the Month - February 2011

Returning to the Home of Print Manufacturing in Lower Manhattan—Printer’s Alley

In recent years nine out of ten printing companies in lower Manhattan have been pushed out from their historic location. Corporate advertising companies and chain stores have moved in their place, taking over and transforming the face of the lower West Side. Print manufacturers have disappeared as landlords have raised rents and declined to renew leases. However, the craft of printing is far from disappearing thanks to the survival of Fine Print and Publicide Inc., two fairly young printing manufacturers located on Varick Street.

Publicide, Inc. is owned and operated by Dusty Hollensteiner. When he was fresh out of college Dusty first worked as a print shop assistant, hired to staple thick booklets together by pedal-pushing a staple machine by foot. Eventually, he was chosen to take over and run the print shop for a period while his boss left on maternity leave. After experiencing what it was like to own and operate a printing business, Dusty opened Publicide, Inc., in 2006 and began accumulating clients immediately—landing his first deal with Nike. Currently, Publicide, Inc., offers letterpress, offset, and digital printing. All of the letterpress work is impressively done on an old Heidelberg press machine, which Dusty learned to operate by reading manuals on his own.

Several years ago, Dusty met a fellow print manufacturer and owner of Fine Print, Joseph Gornail. They recently joined together to share a space on Varick Street in order to collaborate on projects with local vendors involved in the printing business. Their new facility conveniently has multiple in-house printing, embossing, letterpress, and engraving equipment. Joseph still uses his original office overlooking Madison Avenue in Midtown, where he continues to make sales. This location, says Joseph, is the central place to remain a major competitor in the business; he will often go back and forth between his sales office and press site downtown with his clients. According to Joseph and Dusty, their Manhattan location and the connections they form on a daily basis are very important factors in connecting them with the Fortune 100 and 500 accounts they currently have.

Joseph has family roots in the historic printing house square; he recalls his grandfather, a binder, describing the process involved in creating the special effects found in a finely printed product. His uncle, a pressman, would bring home high-quality paper for Joseph to draw on when he was younger. In starting Fine Print in 2004, Joseph says, he wanted "to reestablish and promote a community that promoted friendship between competitors, shared resources and would often collaborate on projects.” Joseph recalls his uncle explaining this idea of a tight network as one of the reasons he felt so lucky to be a pressman.

At Fine Print, Joseph specializes in high-end commercial and digital printing, finishing services, match prints, and publishing. Like Dusty, Joseph found his first project with Nike. His current success is a result of the hard work and top quality he provides and that spreads by word of mouth. Typical clients of Fine Print are artists, photographers, and designers looking for high-quality work.

With a combined ten employees between Publicide, Inc. and Fine Print, Dusty and Joseph say that business is better than ever and they expect to hire more talented workers in the near future. Acknowledging that it is not easy or cheap to maintain a business in Manhattan, both owners emphasized that one needs to be realistic about the challenges of running and maintaining a business in the city, and especially the high expense required to keep a business alive. They know the industry has changed tremendously, but instead of rejecting the new digital technology they want to embrace it while still preserving the fine quality of traditional offset printing in their work. Both owners agreed that the key to success in the print manufacturing world today is to keep an open mind, remain creative and innovative. Even though the energy around Varick Street has changed with the arrival of ad agencies, such as Kirshenbaum Bond Senecal + Partners, Wieden + Kennedy (where Joseph landed his Nike account), and SAATCHI & SAATCHI, Dusty and Joseph view their commercial neighbors as potential clients. 

Dusty and Joseph’s decision to partner together was a mutual one, agreeing that it was a move that made sense for both of them in an effort to keep the printing tradition alive. In doing business, they make it a priority to build a special rapport with their clients, inviting them to come on site and give the final approval on a project. Their belief, says Joseph: “always give the best quality control possible and leave the guesswork for someone else.”   

Printing NYC

163 Varick Street, 6th Floor
New York, NY 10013
212-619-5446 (Fine Print), 212-629-6517 (Publicide, Inc.)

Photos taken by Chloe Crespi