Greg Hrinya05.20.16
Gintzler International
100 Lawrence Bell Drive, Buffalo, NY, USA
951 Hwy 183 North, Liberty Hill, TX USA
www.gintzlerinternational.com
Gintzler International’s centennial celebration has been marked by gambles and growth. The Buffalo, NY-based label converter has never shied away from taking chances on its employees and its customers, a tradition that dates back to the 1930s. The company originated as a small storefront print shop in downtown Buffalo in 1916. The economic uncertainty of the Great Depression caused its owner at the time to post the shop in a high-stakes game of poker.
“The story goes that the company was not doing well back then because it was the Great Depression,” says Bryan Scheible, a fourth generation printer and CEO of Gintzler International. “Sometime in the 1930s, the owner John C. Crist slapped a deed down during a poker game and they gambled over it. He lost the business in a poker hand, but the new owner Harry Gintzler kept him on board as a general manager to run it.”
While researching the company’s history, Scheible learned that Gintzler actually predates 1916. “We actually found ads in the late 1800s; about 1895,” he recalls. “Now we’re saying it’s a little more than 100 years old. It’s really kind of cool trying to restructure all the history, but the company has had a history of really being on the forefront of technology.”
Today, Gintzler has 90 employees between two manufacturing plants in Buffalo and Liberty Hill, TX, USA. The company also features remote offices, ranging from the East coast, down through Texas and into the Midwest. The Scheible’s purchased the company from Franklin Nice in 2010, and the growth spurt has continued to present day. Scheible and his wife, Mary, also owned Texas’ International Print & Packaging, which came under the name of Gintzler International in 2015. The management team and all employees at both locations have helped the Scheibles expand to become a leading producer of pharmaceutical, health and beauty, and food labeling. Gintzler also features Digital Label Express, which is designed to meet its customers’ short-run needs with high-quality digital label printing and laser diecutting.
“The Texas plant was originally International Print & Packaging, and that was one that my wife and I started in the 90s,” explains Bryan Scheible. “A bank asked us to look at some equipment, and the next thing you know, we bought a company. It’s really funny how that worked out. And then Digital Label Express was developed as a technology to get into the digital game. We recognized that the workflow was so different, so we treated it as a separate department outside of our traditional flexo.”
Gintzler has undergone several significant paradigm shifts throughout its 100-plus years. The first paradigm shift came in the late 1940s and early 1950s when the company got out of the offset business and decided to focus on packaging and flexography. Gintzler’s second significant change came in the 1980s, when the company made capital expenditures as new format presses emerged on the scene. A recent landmark came in 2010, when Gintzler re-upped with a wave of new Gallus equipment.
The company still relies on its successful relationship with Gallus, the Switzerland-based manufacturer of narrow web label presses. Gintzler International recently invested in its third Gallus ECS 340 flexo press, which was installed earlier this year. “Gallus has done a phenomenal job for us throughout the different plants to standardize platforms and add some additional features and functions for us that we need to support the higher-end customers,” says Scheible. “Both plants have Gallus presses – and we have over 22 presses. It’s primarily Gallus, and there are different makes and models in the Gallus lineup.”
According to Scheible, the three Gallus ECS 340 presses and the EM280 have served as Gintzler’s backbone. “Gallus has been a great company to work with,” he says. “Because we deal with unusual projects, we have access to their engineering team. When it comes to attachments or modifications, every single time they’ve been there for us. It’s been a really nice relationship, so the plan is to design and keep phasing in the new equipment.”
The company also has a press to handle heavy substrate board materials, as well as finishing and inspection equipment for pharmaceutical and general label applications. The goal is to avoid line downtime, whether it’s for timing or quality issues.
Gintzler’s range of equipment offers customers a variety of options, including customization. According to Carrie Meidenbauer, executive VP of sales, the company recently landed a major account in the health and beauty market because of its ability to handle short lead times and custom work. After the customer had run out of labels, its current supplier could not replenish them for four-to-six weeks. They then contacted Gintzler’s production team, got the artwork into prepress, and the job went onto the press the next day. “We wanted to hit the color they wanted before we went into actual production,” explains Meidenbauer. “They came out and made some moves to the point where they liked the results better than their old supplier, got it on press, and we had 800,000 labels to them in less than a week. They’re now transitioning all their business over to us because of our flexibility and our service. And their previous supplier is a phenomenal company, their lead times were just getting longer and longer. That’s where Gintzler shines. We took the opportunity to fix a problem, and we showed the company exactly what we’re about.”
Gintzler was also recognized by the Flexographic Technical Association (FTA) in its 2016 Excellence in Flexography competition. The company garnered a Silver award for its Finest Kind 1753 Green Tea Hibiscus label in the “Narrow Web, Process, Metallized Substrate” category. The award was revealed at a banquet during FTA’s Annual Forum in Fort Worth, TX, USA. Gintzler utilized a two level die to cut a porthole and reveal a ship through the product bottle.
“We’re looking at entries and submissions, and I think you always want to benchmark yourself against what’s going on out there,” explains Dan Rozanski, executive VP of marketing. “It’s probably more about that than winning an award so you can showcase it. Our focus is more about making sure the customer is taken care of than pounding our own chest.”
Family Values
Gintzler is a family-oriented business, and the company has placed a premium on its employees and customers. There are several long-tenured employees, with anniversaries surpassing the 30-year mark. “There’s a lot of brainpower here,” exclaims Scheible. “We’ve had people who have been here for over 30 years, and we have someone coming up on 40, as well.”
Gintzler prides itself on a wealth of experience, ranging from long-tenured employees with years of on-the-job experience to millennials who are fresh out of school.
“In this industry, the customers’ needs are so varied, there’s no way one person can know it all,” explains Scheible. “That’s where it’s interesting. People come from different departments and different plants. We feel like it’s our responsibility to let our clients know about new ideas coming out there. It’s diverse age groups, too. It’s a fun environment and cool to see some of the ideas that get bounced around there, and then you find out how to collectively do it.”
The generational shift has made it more difficult to find employees, though. With Gintzler’s sales growing annually, Scheible has gone to great lengths to recruit people for this regional converter.
“There’s always a challenge to hire people, and the sad thing is that there really aren’t any trade schools anymore,” Scheible says. When I was younger, high schools would have a printing curriculum, so we’ve had to step up recruiting efforts to actually go out and develop an internal training program and go to the high schools, the trade schools, the colleges to bring people in, and that’s been a major shift in human resources. When you go back 10 and 20 years ago, schools were prepping students to at least expose them to the industry. Now you mention printing to them, and they go, ‘that’s a business?’ That’s been a challenge for us.”
To celebrate the company’s centennial, Gintzler has organized several initiatives to give back to its employees and the community. “We’re looking at it as a full year of celebration,” says Rozanski. “We did a blood drive down in Texas, and we’re going to be doing one in Buffalo with the Red Cross. We’re giving a donation to ReTree Foundation on Arbor Day, and it’s giving back to the community because it ties into something that’s near and dear to everybody’s hearts here.” We also are involved with Make A Wish, which all the employees have embraced through donations and various means of support.
Gintzler is also planning to distribute a seedling tree to each employee as a celebration of the company’s next 100 years. Scheible and Rozanski both anticipate a bright future for the company. Gintzler is seeking ways to stay ahead of the market, “The long-term outlook for our industry – for our markets – we’re very optimistic,” adds Scheible.
As an allusion to family and history, Scheible keeps his grandfather’s restored Baltimore press in the corner of his office. “When he was a kid in the Great Depression, he had a choice to get a printing press or a sled. And he said, ‘I’ll go for the printing press because I can make money.’ He was high school age, and he got one of those Baltimore hand-crank machines,” he says.
A sustainable future
In order to act as a friend to the environment and its customers, Gintzler has taken multiple measures in the way of sustainability. Its Lean Manufacturing processes are accompanied by GMI, ISO 13485 and ISO 9001 certifications, as well as a UL-certified plant in Texas.
In addition to creating greater quality control and traceability, Gintzler has instituted manufacturing processes designed to limit waste. The company is down-gauging and reducing web widths. It also utilizes computer controlled ink mixing and thinner film stocks.
“Our core value is to make the best product possible with the least amount of resources,” explains Scheible. “Over the years, our warehouse has gotten a little bit smaller, we’re not taking as much to the dumpsters and we’ve down-sized that. In our Texas plant, we’re planning on switching to wind power.”
“With the ISO13485 certification, we’ve become a very lean, efficient plant, and we’re always looking for better ways,” adds Meidenbauer. “We’re always looking to run our operations leaner because we want to pass the savings onto our customers or not raise their prices. We look for new materials, new processes, mixing our own inks, cutting our own cores. We’re always looking for more efficiency.”
The company’s efforts in sustainability and certification have been buoyed by enhanced service initiatives, too. “I’d say the service aspect was really ramped up, and not to say that service was ever poor, but it was just taking it to the next level,” explains Rozanski. “Going to the next level, getting the GMI certifications, ISO certifications, and just to be able to add that full chain-of-custody and comfort to the customers so that they recognize and realize that we’re not just a label company.”
Gintzler’s efficiency efforts further point toward its growth as a company. “To me, there’s an exciting balance between 100 years of tradition and being there, weathering all sorts of economic ups and downs, to looking forward to a really bright, exciting future ahead in the Texas and New York locations,” concludes Rozanski. “That’s the exciting part. To me, it’s nice to be part of something that’s been around a while, but what brings a lot of people into work in the morning is the level of opportunity that we have in the future. You can see that the foundation is laid and the investments are being made, and they haven’t stopped. It’s a continuous thing.”
100 Lawrence Bell Drive, Buffalo, NY, USA
951 Hwy 183 North, Liberty Hill, TX USA
www.gintzlerinternational.com
Gintzler International’s centennial celebration has been marked by gambles and growth. The Buffalo, NY-based label converter has never shied away from taking chances on its employees and its customers, a tradition that dates back to the 1930s. The company originated as a small storefront print shop in downtown Buffalo in 1916. The economic uncertainty of the Great Depression caused its owner at the time to post the shop in a high-stakes game of poker.
“The story goes that the company was not doing well back then because it was the Great Depression,” says Bryan Scheible, a fourth generation printer and CEO of Gintzler International. “Sometime in the 1930s, the owner John C. Crist slapped a deed down during a poker game and they gambled over it. He lost the business in a poker hand, but the new owner Harry Gintzler kept him on board as a general manager to run it.”
While researching the company’s history, Scheible learned that Gintzler actually predates 1916. “We actually found ads in the late 1800s; about 1895,” he recalls. “Now we’re saying it’s a little more than 100 years old. It’s really kind of cool trying to restructure all the history, but the company has had a history of really being on the forefront of technology.”
Today, Gintzler has 90 employees between two manufacturing plants in Buffalo and Liberty Hill, TX, USA. The company also features remote offices, ranging from the East coast, down through Texas and into the Midwest. The Scheible’s purchased the company from Franklin Nice in 2010, and the growth spurt has continued to present day. Scheible and his wife, Mary, also owned Texas’ International Print & Packaging, which came under the name of Gintzler International in 2015. The management team and all employees at both locations have helped the Scheibles expand to become a leading producer of pharmaceutical, health and beauty, and food labeling. Gintzler also features Digital Label Express, which is designed to meet its customers’ short-run needs with high-quality digital label printing and laser diecutting.
“The Texas plant was originally International Print & Packaging, and that was one that my wife and I started in the 90s,” explains Bryan Scheible. “A bank asked us to look at some equipment, and the next thing you know, we bought a company. It’s really funny how that worked out. And then Digital Label Express was developed as a technology to get into the digital game. We recognized that the workflow was so different, so we treated it as a separate department outside of our traditional flexo.”
Gintzler has undergone several significant paradigm shifts throughout its 100-plus years. The first paradigm shift came in the late 1940s and early 1950s when the company got out of the offset business and decided to focus on packaging and flexography. Gintzler’s second significant change came in the 1980s, when the company made capital expenditures as new format presses emerged on the scene. A recent landmark came in 2010, when Gintzler re-upped with a wave of new Gallus equipment.
The company still relies on its successful relationship with Gallus, the Switzerland-based manufacturer of narrow web label presses. Gintzler International recently invested in its third Gallus ECS 340 flexo press, which was installed earlier this year. “Gallus has done a phenomenal job for us throughout the different plants to standardize platforms and add some additional features and functions for us that we need to support the higher-end customers,” says Scheible. “Both plants have Gallus presses – and we have over 22 presses. It’s primarily Gallus, and there are different makes and models in the Gallus lineup.”
According to Scheible, the three Gallus ECS 340 presses and the EM280 have served as Gintzler’s backbone. “Gallus has been a great company to work with,” he says. “Because we deal with unusual projects, we have access to their engineering team. When it comes to attachments or modifications, every single time they’ve been there for us. It’s been a really nice relationship, so the plan is to design and keep phasing in the new equipment.”
The company also has a press to handle heavy substrate board materials, as well as finishing and inspection equipment for pharmaceutical and general label applications. The goal is to avoid line downtime, whether it’s for timing or quality issues.
Gintzler’s range of equipment offers customers a variety of options, including customization. According to Carrie Meidenbauer, executive VP of sales, the company recently landed a major account in the health and beauty market because of its ability to handle short lead times and custom work. After the customer had run out of labels, its current supplier could not replenish them for four-to-six weeks. They then contacted Gintzler’s production team, got the artwork into prepress, and the job went onto the press the next day. “We wanted to hit the color they wanted before we went into actual production,” explains Meidenbauer. “They came out and made some moves to the point where they liked the results better than their old supplier, got it on press, and we had 800,000 labels to them in less than a week. They’re now transitioning all their business over to us because of our flexibility and our service. And their previous supplier is a phenomenal company, their lead times were just getting longer and longer. That’s where Gintzler shines. We took the opportunity to fix a problem, and we showed the company exactly what we’re about.”
Gintzler was also recognized by the Flexographic Technical Association (FTA) in its 2016 Excellence in Flexography competition. The company garnered a Silver award for its Finest Kind 1753 Green Tea Hibiscus label in the “Narrow Web, Process, Metallized Substrate” category. The award was revealed at a banquet during FTA’s Annual Forum in Fort Worth, TX, USA. Gintzler utilized a two level die to cut a porthole and reveal a ship through the product bottle.
“We’re looking at entries and submissions, and I think you always want to benchmark yourself against what’s going on out there,” explains Dan Rozanski, executive VP of marketing. “It’s probably more about that than winning an award so you can showcase it. Our focus is more about making sure the customer is taken care of than pounding our own chest.”
Family Values
Gintzler is a family-oriented business, and the company has placed a premium on its employees and customers. There are several long-tenured employees, with anniversaries surpassing the 30-year mark. “There’s a lot of brainpower here,” exclaims Scheible. “We’ve had people who have been here for over 30 years, and we have someone coming up on 40, as well.”
Gintzler prides itself on a wealth of experience, ranging from long-tenured employees with years of on-the-job experience to millennials who are fresh out of school.
“In this industry, the customers’ needs are so varied, there’s no way one person can know it all,” explains Scheible. “That’s where it’s interesting. People come from different departments and different plants. We feel like it’s our responsibility to let our clients know about new ideas coming out there. It’s diverse age groups, too. It’s a fun environment and cool to see some of the ideas that get bounced around there, and then you find out how to collectively do it.”
The generational shift has made it more difficult to find employees, though. With Gintzler’s sales growing annually, Scheible has gone to great lengths to recruit people for this regional converter.
“There’s always a challenge to hire people, and the sad thing is that there really aren’t any trade schools anymore,” Scheible says. When I was younger, high schools would have a printing curriculum, so we’ve had to step up recruiting efforts to actually go out and develop an internal training program and go to the high schools, the trade schools, the colleges to bring people in, and that’s been a major shift in human resources. When you go back 10 and 20 years ago, schools were prepping students to at least expose them to the industry. Now you mention printing to them, and they go, ‘that’s a business?’ That’s been a challenge for us.”
To celebrate the company’s centennial, Gintzler has organized several initiatives to give back to its employees and the community. “We’re looking at it as a full year of celebration,” says Rozanski. “We did a blood drive down in Texas, and we’re going to be doing one in Buffalo with the Red Cross. We’re giving a donation to ReTree Foundation on Arbor Day, and it’s giving back to the community because it ties into something that’s near and dear to everybody’s hearts here.” We also are involved with Make A Wish, which all the employees have embraced through donations and various means of support.
Gintzler is also planning to distribute a seedling tree to each employee as a celebration of the company’s next 100 years. Scheible and Rozanski both anticipate a bright future for the company. Gintzler is seeking ways to stay ahead of the market, “The long-term outlook for our industry – for our markets – we’re very optimistic,” adds Scheible.
As an allusion to family and history, Scheible keeps his grandfather’s restored Baltimore press in the corner of his office. “When he was a kid in the Great Depression, he had a choice to get a printing press or a sled. And he said, ‘I’ll go for the printing press because I can make money.’ He was high school age, and he got one of those Baltimore hand-crank machines,” he says.
A sustainable future
In order to act as a friend to the environment and its customers, Gintzler has taken multiple measures in the way of sustainability. Its Lean Manufacturing processes are accompanied by GMI, ISO 13485 and ISO 9001 certifications, as well as a UL-certified plant in Texas.
In addition to creating greater quality control and traceability, Gintzler has instituted manufacturing processes designed to limit waste. The company is down-gauging and reducing web widths. It also utilizes computer controlled ink mixing and thinner film stocks.
“Our core value is to make the best product possible with the least amount of resources,” explains Scheible. “Over the years, our warehouse has gotten a little bit smaller, we’re not taking as much to the dumpsters and we’ve down-sized that. In our Texas plant, we’re planning on switching to wind power.”
“With the ISO13485 certification, we’ve become a very lean, efficient plant, and we’re always looking for better ways,” adds Meidenbauer. “We’re always looking to run our operations leaner because we want to pass the savings onto our customers or not raise their prices. We look for new materials, new processes, mixing our own inks, cutting our own cores. We’re always looking for more efficiency.”
The company’s efforts in sustainability and certification have been buoyed by enhanced service initiatives, too. “I’d say the service aspect was really ramped up, and not to say that service was ever poor, but it was just taking it to the next level,” explains Rozanski. “Going to the next level, getting the GMI certifications, ISO certifications, and just to be able to add that full chain-of-custody and comfort to the customers so that they recognize and realize that we’re not just a label company.”
Gintzler’s efficiency efforts further point toward its growth as a company. “To me, there’s an exciting balance between 100 years of tradition and being there, weathering all sorts of economic ups and downs, to looking forward to a really bright, exciting future ahead in the Texas and New York locations,” concludes Rozanski. “That’s the exciting part. To me, it’s nice to be part of something that’s been around a while, but what brings a lot of people into work in the morning is the level of opportunity that we have in the future. You can see that the foundation is laid and the investments are being made, and they haven’t stopped. It’s a continuous thing.”