Schmidt has acquired the cooperative direct mail business of Solar Communications Inc., including Solar’s collating assets and paper outer-wrap technology.
“The business-to-consumer portion of our business has been growing significantly over the past few years, and this acquisition provides a good opportunity to continue that growth and add some capabilities that we didn’t have,” said Jeff Winter, director of sales and marketing at Schmidt.
Business-to-business marketers, which used to make up a significant portion of card decks, are increasingly switching to Internet search, explained Winter. On the consumer side, however, marketers are increasingly “using direct mail as a cost-effective tool to drive store traffic,” he continued.
“As postage rates go up, shared mail is still a very cost effective way for marketers to get a targeted message out,” said Winter. Schmidt’s card deck business has grown over 20% per year for the last three years, and that’s almost all on the consumer side.
The paper outer-wrap and sealing technology that Schmidt has picked up from Solar is significant because this will enable the company to do national mailings at automated letter postage rates, saving customers a lot on postage.
Schmidt specializes in printing and distributing cooperative direct mail packages, collateral print for magazine and catalog publishers as well as freestanding inserts for newspapers. The company employs nearly 350 people and is a subsidiary of Taylor Corp.
