Around Town

By Christopher Miller

It says it right on their website, “individuals and businesses in and around the Lock Haven area have looked to Reese’s Print Shop as their “one stop shop” for professional and personal digital and offset printing, copying, faxing, and graphic arts services for the past 30 years.”

Well, you can add another 10 years to that age since Reese’s Print Shop, located on Main Street in historic downtown Lock Haven, has just recently turned 40 years old.

“It all started around 1975 when I was hired at The Express newspaper to help install the new printing press to print the newspapers in town,” said Randy Reese, owner and co-founder of Reese’s Print Shop. “I had bought a little letterpress like the one in our front window for $25 or $30 and 5 cases of lead type but it was just a hobby – I did not intend to open up a shop of my own.”

Judy had also worked at The Express around the same time in the newspaper Circulation Department managing subscriptions and making sure that customers received their papers properly.

Their website, www.ReesesPrintShop.com, outlines the entire history of how our local printer came to be.
“In 1981 Reese’s Print Shop began in the basement of Randy & Judy’s home in Lock Haven with one small letterpress that printed one business card at a time,” and by 1989 they had outgrown the home basement and looked to move into a larger production area and open the boors of a business storefront.

Those who may remember 1989 may recall that the business was originally located at 33 Bellefonte Avenue in downtown Lock Haven near Triangle Park. Fast forward to 1995 and the Reese’s moved to their present location at 7 East Main Street only a short walk down the road from their previous location, which offers more than 2,500 square feet for production and provides jobs to a few very lucky local residents.

Over time the print shop began to do continuous updates to meet the needs of the ever-growing local area and digital world. Additional machines were purchased which were able to produce more copies in a shorter amount of time, a machine which can automatically number and perforate paper, color copiers, printers, and a very large folding machine which boasts the made-in location as West Germany.

By 2005 digital printing machines were introduced which ushered in a new era in graphic design and production. Throughout the entire time of utilizing computers for the creation of printed goods, Reese’s has always been an Apple/Mac-friendly business. “Our second Mac is in the front window, a Mac Classic – we’ve probably owned at least one of every Mac that there has ever been including the G5 which was called one of the fastest computers in the world back in the day,” said Randy.

Digging back into the personal history of Reese’s Print Shop, Randy recalled the early days of printing and production from their home. “Out of that basement we had one of our first-ever large print runs – 40,000 letters sent to all of the owners of Piper aircraft to gauge the interest in holding a Fly-In event at Piper, which is what helped to start Sentimental Journal,” Randy remembered. “After that first mass-mailing we started to be able to buy more equipment.”

As a business in the printing industry, Reese’s has truly been through it all. “We started with a hand-set letterpress processing and printing one thing at a time, then we were using the camera and darkroom to shoot negatives and plates for offset, and now we are in the digital world,” Randy said. “When computers work (today) it is okay,” but Randy said that he sometimes remembers the days when the steps were much more involved to go from an idea to a finished product.

“If the machines work the way they are supposed to, I do not mind working hard,” Randy said. “We have brand new equipment coming in on Tuesday (last) and I am willing to keep working as long as I stay healthy.”
For Randy, his love of the work and the business is the physical production of the final product. “I love the production of it and getting stuff done, it is just good to have the service to keep everyone and everything going and we are able to almost guarantee a short wait for items to be ready,” Randy said.

“The average person walks in the business for copies, faxes, binding and laminating and to buy copy paper,” Randy mentioned, “but we have many more services here than people actually realize.” A semi-complete list of services available at Reese’s Print Shop are listed at the end of this article.

Reese’s Print Shop is one of only a handful of regional full-service printers that can do the majority of printing work in-house. “I tell people that we are the only printer in Clinton County and that our area is tremendously large – Renovo, Loganton, Jersey Shore, Lock Haven, Mill Hall, Lamar…when it comes to buying custom printed items locally, we are it,” Randy proudly stated.

“Before Christmas we had a customer come in who used to buy labels online, 60 labels for $60 and when they came in to my shop here I told her that I was able to print 250 of them for the same price within a very short time frame that she was paying another online company to print them,” Randy said. “Yes, deadlines can be a frustration as a business owner, but it is normal for us and we strive and thrive on it – it is never bad, just sometimes hard to handle it.”

Though the stress of a deadline is definitely…stressful…one thing that has been a blessing to our local printer has been the impact that the COVID pandemic has had on this local business. “So many people come in here now and want to deal and support local,” said Randy. “No one has a computer anymore and everything is on a phone or a tablet, and they want things printed – we can do that for you – things from Etsy come to us to be printed and we can do that, lots of invitations and announcements, flyers and signs, our only trouble right now is the ability to find the amount of paper stock that we need to get all these jobs done and out the door.”
“People want to stay local and want the dollars to stay local and because of that there have been so many new business opportunities in our area.”

The services available at Reese’s Print Shop are not limited to: appointment cards, banners, black & white and color copies and printing, booklets, brochures, business cards, calendars, carbonless forms, catalogs, direct mail, door hangers/tags, envelopes and flyers, index tabs, labels, letterhead, menus, name badges, newsletters, programs, publications, raffle tickets, large format CAD drawings and posters, tablets, padding and perforating, scoring, shrink wrapping, numbering, cutting, folding, and almost anything imaginable!

Specialty services include announcements and invitations such as wedding, graduation, baby, formal, artwork and graphic design, bulk mailing, faxes, laminating, and bulk paper purchasing.

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“Business has always been good to us.”

Reese’s Print Shop
7 East Main Street
Lock Haven
570-748-6528
1-800-432-6528
Fax: 570-748-4722
Monday – Friday 9am to 5pm
Saturday, Sunday closed
www.reesesprintshop.com