Corrections or additions?
This column was prepared for the March 24, 2006 issue of U.S. 1
Newspaper. All rights reserved.
Downturn’s Silver Lining
When newspaper circulation drops, Joe Colletti, president of Ferag
Americas, spies a silver lining. Based since last year at Crossroads
Corporate Center, he sells $25 million printing press systems. It
seems that when newspapers consolidate their printing operations, he
can sell new equipment that takes up less space and prints papers more
quickly.
“Planned consolidations create opportunities for our sales
organization,” says Colletti. “Publishers need to get more production
out of the same space.” Recently he and his 13-person office sold two
systems to a Toronto-based publisher and one to North Jersey Media
Group in Rockaway. The Star Ledger and the New York Daily News are
among his clients for inserting machinery, and Dow Jones uses his
firm’s labeling and conveyor equipment.
Colletti’s 10-person office is the North American sales and service
organization for Ferag-America’s Swiss parent, WRH Marketing (Walter
Reist Holding AG). He claims his Swiss-made equipment is the fastest
in the industry, and it can zone down to a personal level. “If the
publisher knows your shopping habits, it can put unique inserts into
your paper. Our inserting equipment can handle that.”
Swiss manufacturers dominate the printing press market in the United
States, but it wasn’t always that way. Until about 20 years ago, New
Hampshire-based Goss had the corner on the market. “They got too big
and too expensive, and that opened the door to European competition,”
says Colletti. Now companies in Germany and Switzerland control 90
percent of the U.S. market. Colletti’s main competition comes from GMA
in Allentown, Pennsylvania, which also has a Swiss parent.
A graduate of La Salle University, Colletti and his wife have
preschool twins and a six-year-old daughter. He had worked for FMC’s
material handling system firm in Chalfonte, Pennsylvania, and came to
Ferag-America eight years ago, when the firm had a 100-worker factory
in Bristol, Pennsylvania. Three years ago he had to restructure the
company and close the factory because it was competing with the Swiss
parent. He moved the sales operation to Princeton last year.
“Certainly newspapers are going down in circulation,” says Colletti.
“As an industry we need to make advertisers happy and customers happy.
We need to change newspapers so they have more local news.”
WRH Marketing/Ferag Americas, 3150 Brunswick Pike, Crossroads
Corporate Center, Suite 220, Lawrenceville 08648; 856-842-0600; fax,
856-842-0989. Joe Colletti, president. Home page:
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