Stronger than ever: MPB expands footprint to Waynesburg
C.R. Nelson
From left, MPB chief financial officer Jeff Pyles, MPB owner Andy Walls and Jay Hammers pose for a recent photograph.
C.R. Nelson
Steve Cogar and Traci Opal pose for a photograph inside MPB’s Waynesburg location.
Taylor Moore stands in front an MPB truck.
Taylor Moore works in MPB’s Morgantown office.
By C.R. Nelson
If you ask Jay Hammers what lessons he learned from the COVID-19 pandemic that hit in mid-March 2020 he’ll tell you – it wasn’t the greatest time to be selling a business.
Now, a year later, the deal is done, everything went well, everybody still has their jobs and Hammers is happily retired.
But he will never forget those first few weeks when the world turned upside down, businesses closed and customers sheltered at home.
“We were closed for two days until print shops were declared essential but there was no work,” he recalled.
“Our first phone call was a customer cancelling a job. I remember thinking is this how it’s going to end? But we stuck it out. We felt we had to be there.”
When Jay Hammers first considered retiring, he knew the fate of Rhodes and Hammers Printing – the business he started with partner Harry Rhodes in 1987, depended on finding the right buyer to fit the customers that the shop’s good work and fair prices had cultivated for more than 30 years.
“I was ready to retire, but I wanted to keep the business going for the people who work here and the people we serve,” he said. “So I started to look around.”
Hammers said for him the choice was pretty obvious.
Hammers said he “started the conversation” with Andy Walls, owner of MPB Print & Sign Superstore sometime in November 2019.
“We knew about each other from our mutual vendors” and there was an understanding of mutual respect between the two businesses already,” Hammer said.
“We didn’t step on each others toes, we helped each other out.”
MPB could do the work Rhodes and Hammers wasn’t set up to do and Walls was impressed with the small town atmosphere and customer loyalty that would come with the acquisition.
Rhodes and Hammers is a union shop, able to do those specialty orders that need a union label, and “we want to stay local and keep the image and history Jay has here,” Walls said.
MPB operations in Morgantown are impressive with 65 employees and roots that go back to 1896.
Then it was known as Acme Publishing – names beginning with A got top listing in the telephone books of the day – and was in the business of printing local newspapers.
Walls was born to the printing trade.
“My dad was a printer and if I wanted to see him I went to work,” he recalled. “He always found things for me to do.”
Walls found he liked what he was doing and stayed in the business. When Morgantown Printing and Binding came up for sale in 1995 he bought it. The rebrand came in 2000 when business began expanding outside of Morgantown and sales representatives began using MPB as a sales pitch to appeal to a regional customer base.
When tentative negotiations began in January 2020, Hammers knew it was the deal he had been looking for with people who shared his own work ethic and love of the job. “
There’s nobody else I’d want to sell to,” Hammers said.
Hammers grew up in Waynesburg and started working after school for the Democrat Messenger newspaper in 1971. He stayed on with the newspaper as a photographer and ran the presses.
After a 15-year stint working with fellow pressman Harry Rhodes at Suttons Printing on Franklin Street, Rhodes and Hammers Printing set up shop on Church Street in the building that is home to Fischer Antiques. Its present location is one block down at 54 Church Street, its entrance walls bedecked with new signage letting everyone know Rhodes and Hammers is still there and better than ever.
Last March, there was no guarantee of that.
“Andy called and said ‘let’s wait on it.’ The next 10 or 12 weeks were touch and go, but when we went green in June things started picking up,” Hammers said. “I’m a control guy and not knowing was the hard part. But we all came to work at reduced hours and stayed open and waited it out.”
In Morgantown, Wells was doing the same, retaining staff and hoping business would spring back up.
“If you lose people you lose control of your business,” he said. “They’re the ones that make it work.”
Sometime in August, Walls called Rhodes and Hammers and restarted the discussion that had been put on hold in March.
“We’ve bought nine companies in the last 26 years and this one was the least headache,” Walls said. “We were both on the same page.”
If you step inside MPB’s newest branch office in Waynesburg, you’ll find a familiar face – Steve Cogar at the front desk with a new title – customer service and production.
There’s been a convenient switch up on staff.
MPB sales manager Traci Opel, who lives in Carmichaels, is now working with Cogar in Waynesburg and former Rhodes and Hammers pressman Taylor Moore, who lives in Morgantown, is only minutes from work now making deliveries and coordinating shipping at the main office on 915 Green Bag Road, Morgantown.
“I’m excited to be back in Greene County meeting old friends and bringing in new customers,” Opal said. “We’re glad we’ve been able to expand the services we offer our customers going forward, with everything from wide format printing cut to any shape to vehicle wraps and wall signs and murals. It’s all about community and customer relationships.”