Conventional wisdom says the print industry is dying. If that’s true, then Mossberg & Co. is an exception to the rule.

The family-owned printing company, which started in 1930 in South Bend, has continued to thrive by adapting to new demands.

“We still do a lot of print, but print’s changing,” said James Hillman, the company’s chief executive and grandson of its founder. “It’s being digitized, it’s communicating with different media, and we’ve adopted all of that technology.”

Mossberg employs about 145 people. Most of those employees work at two sites in South Bend: the company’s headquarters at 301 E. Sample St. and its fulfillment and marketing services center near the intersection of the Indiana Toll Road and U.S. 31.

Mossberg has a diverse array of products. For example, it prints and collates the instructions that accompany medical devices, produces packaging and labels for retail merchandise as well as glossy publications and hardcover books. With its digital print division, the company can provide short-run printing for customized, on-demand orders.

Mossberg has also succeeded by being “customer led and customer focused,” Hillman said.

“We listen to what our customers need,” he said, “and they often lead us into new products and services.”

One of Mossberg’s newer ventures is in printing labels for cans of craft beer, particularly for mobile canning operations that serve small breweries. The labels are formed in the shape of a tube, slipped onto a blank can and then shrunk onto the can’s surface. The labels can be seen on beer cans nationwide and on local brews such as those made by Tapistry in Bridgman, Evil Czech in Mishawaka and Bare Hands in Granger.

“This industry is growing incredibly rapidly,” Hillman said. “There are a lot of people who do shrink labels, but not many people apply them to cans. What the industry needs is labeled cans, so that’s the product we produce.”

Working with Influenster, a New York company that sends packages of test products to people who have social-media influence, is another one of Mossberg’s newer ventures. Mossberg receives the products — such as makeup, shampoos, chocolates and athletic wear — and then prints the labels for those products, packages them and sends the packages to Influenster’s reviewers.

“South Bend is a tremendous geographically positioned city for distributing products throughout the country,” Hillman said. “South Bend is a great place to be a distributor.”

Mossberg is in the process of investing in its main plant on East Sample Street. The company announced in December that it would spend $490,000 on new printing equipment for the site.

Source: South Bend Tribune