Atkins Printing Service:
Impressive Success
by Michelle Troutman

You never know what lurks below Main Street. To the casual observer, with its white-walled, fluorescent lit offices spread along the basement of three buildings, Atkins Printing Service looks like an average business. Beneath the surface lie important family and political ties, organized work done with care, and a focus on the worker and the customer – a formula that yields millions of dollars in annual revenues.

The Atkins offices buzz with workers sitting at desks, clicking at computers, packing boxes, running printing presses and binders. The humming and clacking of the machines mix with voices and country music over the faint, bitter odor of printing ink.

As part of the printing process, the sales, press, pre-press (graphic design and typography), mailing and packing, and bindery departments work together to produce projects for small business, corporate, political, and government clients. Projects range from simple letterhead and envelopes to postcards, district court forms, booklets and brochures, book and CD covers, calendars, menus and placemats, catalogues, and campaign signs. Through the Pantone Matching System (PMS) of color samples, they offer thousands of colors to choose from, and can work with images customers send through their Web site. One hitch is that the colors on RGB (red, green, blue) computer monitors don't look the same way as when they're printed with presses using the four-color mixture of CMYK (cyan, magenta, yellow, black). A printed color swatch gives a more accurate view.

The pre-press area is where workers create graphic designs and typeset text which is later thermally transferred direct-to-plate to be reproduced exactly as they appear on screen when printed. Off-set and small format printing is done in the press room; four presses produce one-color, two-color, three-color, and four-color prints with soy or vegetable-based inks. From there, bindery handles die-cutting, laminating, stitching, and collating; booklets and brochures are cut, processed, and folded. The mailing and packing rooms are where mailings are stamped and addressed, and finished projects are sorted, packed, and sealed.

Founder Ralph Atkins opened his portrait photography studio in 1910. By the mid-1970s, Atkins moved from 2 Silver St., popularly known as the former Silver St. Tavern (now home of the Midnight Blues Club & Restaurant and The Cellar Door) to its current location at 155 Main St., eventually expanding to two more buildings. Ralph and his son Edward later decided to offer off-set photolithography printing, a process using film to transfer text and graphics from plates to print, and remained in the photography business until the late 1970s. Ralph then passed the business on to Edward. Upon Edward's death in 1992, his son Ralph W. became president. Now retired, this past January Ralph sold the business to Jim and Peter Mitchell.

The Mitchells have ties to a Maine political dynasty, too: George Mitchell is their uncle, and Governor John Baldacci is a cousin. The Mitchells are related to the Atkins through Edward's marriage to his second wife Barbara, the sister of their father Robert and Uncle George. Atkins' membership in a typographical union early on has also helped them secure a lot of political campaign, union, and state government printing. As current president Jim Mitchell says, "We're the largest political printer by far in Maine."

Thirty-five year Atkins veteran Clyde Goodwin, who runs the folding machine in bindery, can boast family connections as well, his mother and father before him, and his wife having worked there for over 20 years. As a teenager 30 years ago, when Jim Mitchell started sweeping floors and running errands, Goodwin was his boss. Both now find their roles reversed. Recalling those times, Goodwin remarks, "I asked him jokingly if he bought the company just to get back at me."

Mitchell was the sixth of seven children, all born in Waterville. "We all grew up in Waterville, went through the Waterville school system, and six of the seven, actually, left the state, and then ultimately came back," he says.

Mitchell graduated from Dartmouth College in 1983, with a degree in religion. After graduation, he went into the advertising business in Chicago and in Boston, but moved back to Maine to attend law school. Instead, he decided to teach English and civics, and later started a couple of businesses, a Bangor marketing and advertising firm with his former wife Loren, Mitchell & Mitchell, and by 1990, Public Affairs Group, a lobbying business in partnership with a law firm, running it before and after heading the Maine Democratic Party. He ran the MDP for about a year before a 1994 run for Congress, finishing second to relative John Baldacci in an eight-way primary. " Fortunately, he beat me," Mitchell remembers. "I learned a good lesson -- that I'm better behind-the-scenes than as a candidate." Mitchell now runs his lobbying firm James F. Mitchell Company with his sister Ann, and Sharon Sudbay, counting among their big-name clients Anthem Blue Cross/Blue Shield, Central Maine Power, General Motors, Eli Lilly, Waste Management, Maine Yankee, and Maritimes & Northeast Pipeline.

Alongside the Mitchells, general manager David Shaw and production manager Brian Smith run Atkins. Jim Mitchell sets the marketing strategy with sales manager David Christie, working to attract more customers and expand their services to existing customers. This month, the sales and customer accounts sections will be moving to the first floor as part of an expanded copywriting and graphic design service known as APS Direct. Mitchell says, "They [customers] shouldn't hesitate to come to us with a concept. We'll take their concept and turn it into the product that they want."

His brother Peter also works in the semiconductor industry, helping to improve effectiveness in manufacturing processes here and abroad. "What he's brought to Atkins, really, is a focus on how to become more efficient, how to deploy technology more effectively and appropriately, ultimately so that our customers get what they really need, which is a good quality printing job done in a timely fashion at a competitive price." Their elder sister Ann oversees the financial operations.

"We had wanted to purchase a business in the central Maine area, because we grew up here, and we were in a position, through good fortune, to be able to look at different business opportunities, and this came about as an opportunity, what we saw, to own and operate a business here in Waterville, our hometown. It's worked out remarkably well. We think this is a good place to do business."

The company currently employs 27. In an age in which job security is rare, the Mitchells plan to retain the policy of employee satisfaction. "I think our business philosophy is two-fold: very focused on the customer, but also very focused on our employees. We want to make sure people are happy coming to work, to the degree we can," says Mitchell. "We don't have a top-down structure. It's very flat. I always go around to talk to all the employees to find out what's going on in their work life, so that I can understand better. I don't need to hear it through the supervisor to the general manager to me. We don't do that around here."

He considers his title meaningless, stressing that he runs Atkins with a shared approach. "I think, generally speaking, my role is to prod and poke and question and I hope, also help motivate." Atkins' founder aligned the business with a trade union, helping secure political work for many years. As a closed shop, Local 643 in the Typographical Union (part of the Communications Workers of America), Atkins employees receive healthcare and retirement benefits. Employees' wages average 10 to 20 dollars an hour, and starting this year, employees will earn a 10 percent share in the company profits. "We think that's a very important way to motivate people, not only to look after the quality, but also to try to figure out ways to be as efficient as possible." Many of their employees have worked for an average of 15 to 20 years, and said that if they didn't like working there, they wouldn't have stayed.

"We're on a path for growth. Our sales are up significantly versus a year ago, and versus two years ago," Mitchell says. "And, what we've done is we establish a quarterly goal, with the input of the employees, the sales department, production, etc., and then every week, we tell everybody how we're doing."

Of the Mitchells, employee Randy Lovely says, "They're very motivated, and they're not afraid of change, or of capital investment." He adds, “Their customer base is rather large, so it's going to bring a lot of work to us, and obviously, their political resources make a big difference for us. It's a win-win situation for them, and for our company, and the employees.”

Mitchell considers Atkins a middle-market printer catering to many small businesses typically without ad agencies or marketing companies to handle their printing. Atkins' big and small business clients and customers include York Spiral Staircase, Thomas College, James D. Julia Auctioneers, and the Poulin Auction Company. "We have a range of customers from very small customers who would print a few hundred dollars worth of letterhead and envelopes with us, all the way up to companies who print several hundred thousand dollars' worth of printing with us annually. It just depends."

"We are very concerned about making sure that our customers are satisfied with the service, that they feel that they get a good value from our product that we provide to them." In an industry with an average of about two percent mistakes per volume, Mitchell states that they're under 1.5, with a goal of zero. "There's so much attention to detail to focus on getting it right," says Mitchell. "We don't want to make any mistakes, and obviously a lot of the mistakes in the industry are caught before they're ever shipped to the customer, so the customer doesn't see them. But the print shop sees them, and we eat the costs, so that becomes a problem, and so you've got to focus on not having any mistakes."

Mitchell's goals are to retain the workforce, expand it, and with help from increasing revenues, grow the business over time. "Steady, solid growth, not spectacular, over-the-top growth that we can't manage."

He believes a high focus on service has kept Atkins in business for 98 years. "We really pride ourselves on going the extra mile for customers. We think that that helps keep bringing them back." Given its genes, political pedigree, and practical philosophy, it will likely survive another 98 years.

Atkins Printing Service is open Monday through Friday, 7am to 5pm. Web site: www.atkinsprinting.com.

Visit the Meet Me Downtown home page to read our other business profiles.