Ennis Acquires Royal Business Forms, Closes Alstyle Deal
Ennis Inc., based in Midlothian, Texas, acquired Royal Business Forms Inc., a privately held company headquartered in Arlington, Texas, for $3.7 million in Ennis stock. Royal Business Forms has existed since 1959 and has customers nationwide. The acquisition continues Ennis' strategy of growth through related manufactured products for its existing customer base. The acquisition will add additional short run print products and financial documents sold through the distributorship marketplace.
Ennis also completed its previously announced $242 million merger with Alstyle Apparel Inc., a manufacturer of promotional apparel in Anaheim, Calif. Alstyle now is an Ennis subsidiary. In June, Ennis acquired manufacturer Crabar/GBF for $18 million.
Office Depot to Slash 800 More Jobs
Office Depot Inc., Delray Beach, Fla., will cut another 800 jobs, including positions in retail stores, its corporate headquarters and its European sales force, the company said. The announcement comes weeks after the company announced plans to cut 900 jobs as it consolidates operations at eight call centers and offices in six states. The cuts include 550 full-time retail store employees in North America; 97 employees at its corporate headquarters in Delray Beach; 24 workers at a call center in Torrance, Calif.; and 93 financial workers in Wichita, Kan. These jobs will be outsourced to a domestic company, and employees will be offered positions at the outsourcing company. Other cuts include 10 employees at its 4sure.com Inc. subsidiary in Trumbull, Conn., and 45 employees of its contract sales force in Europe.
U.S. Label Shipments to Reach $15.2B By 2008
Label shipments are forecast to increase 5.7 percent per year to $15.2 billion in 2008, according to a study by marketing research firm The Freedonia Group Inc., Cleveland. Entitled "Labels," the study says technologies such as radio frequency smart labeling, 2-D bar coding and plateless digital printing will open a new range of labeling applications. Maturity in key label markets and competition from direct labelless printing applications such as mailing, primary packaging and corrugated box labeling will limit further gains, the study said.
Staples Launches Paperless Rebates, Reports Earnings
Staples Inc., Framingham, Mass., launched Staples Easy Rebates(SM), a paperless online rebate process to make retail shopping easier with simple and trackable rebates. Staples retail, catalog and online customers now can submit online rebate information for hundreds of items, eliminating the need for the lengthy product rebate process. Easy Rebates alerts the customer at checkout if there are rebate eligible products within an order and directs them to www.stapleseasyrebates.com. The online tool walks the customer through a submission process and then automatically sends emails indicating the rebate status, including when the rebate check is mailed. Also, Staples reported a 26 percent increase in its third-quarter profits due to increased customer traffic and strong sales of office furniture, supplies and copying services. For the August-October period, the firm earned $208.9 million, or 41 cents per share, compared with a profit of $165.8 million, or 33 cents per share, a year ago. Total sales grew 12 percent last quarter to $3.83 billion compared with $3.43 billion a year ago.
RFID Technology to Keep Tabs on U.S. Drugs
The Food and Drug Administration and several major drug makers are expected to announce initiatives that will put tiny radio antennas on the labels of millions of medicine bottles to combat counterfeiting and fraud, according to a story in the Nov. 15 edition of The New York Times. The most common radio frequency identification applications are tracking of goods in supply chains, tracking items in production lines and enhancing security. (For details, visit RFID Journal at www.rfidjournal.com.)
International Paper Sells New England Land to GMO
International Paper Co. (IP), Stamford, Conn., sold 1.1 million acres of New England timberland to GMO Renewable Resources LLC, Stamford, for approximately $250 million. Sale of the land, located in Maine and New Hampshire, is expected to close by the first quarter of 2005, the company said. The companies also have agreed to a long-term deal that GMO will supply wood fiber to two of IP's paper mills in Maine. IP also will provide GMO with forest management services.
Printing Pro Helps Election Officials
Election officials in Oswego County, Kan., couldn't tally 800 to 900 absentee ballots because their scanner kept jamming. Fortunately, Dee Brown, sales manager at Parsons, Kan.-based manufacturer The Flesh Co., did her part on Nov. 4 to ensure all votes were counted. Brown, whose daughter worked at the polls, stopped by to visit when she spotted the problem. "Those pages had picked up moisture and made them extremely curly and uneven," she said.
The ballots had been sitting around for weeks. Brown ran a batch of fresh forms through the machine to prove it worked, then instructed officials to get a hair drier. A worker brought his drier from home, and Brown and her daughter started drying the ballots at the County Clerk's office. Brown's daughter held the drier while Brown fanned small stacks of ballots in front of it. "You could physically see the difference after we did it," Brown says.
A Parsons Sun reporter learned about the incident and turned it into a front-page story. Before long, the Associated Press picked up the story and distributed it nationwide.
