Green’s six-decade career is studded with the kinds of achievements that distinguish the men and women inducted into the Printing Impressions/RIT Printing Industry Hall of Fame, an elite circle he joins this year.
41 on the most recent Printing Impressions 350 ranking of the largest printers in the U.S.
Pairing Phoenix Lithographing’s strengths in commercial printing with ICS Corp.’s prowess in high-volume direct mail, the combined operation claims to be capable of printing more than 75 million pages per day, and mailing over 100 million pieces per month.
After a move from Brooklyn to Philadelphia with his father in 1961, Green, still in his teens, bought and rebuilt a used Davidson offset press and began printing flyers and other work in a friend’s basement.
During the next 57 years, the business would go on to attain its present status as the largest privately-owned printer in Philadelphia, boasting a 300,000-sq.-ft.
The business has surged in capability as well as in size — always a keynote of growth strategy for Green.
Green also claims to be the only printer in the world who keeps an eight-unit Goss Sunday web press in a warehouse as a backup to an identical one running in the pressroom.
Evidence of Green’s ongoing commitment to investment is seen is his latest purchase: an additional four-unit web press that is scheduled to go into operation at the Caroline Road facility this fall.
The company had up to six web presses running financial and transactional jobs at peak times for that work, and political printing for both parties in the 2020 election year kept cylinders turning as well.
“He invests in the business constantly,” affirms Steve Anello, vice chairman of the Phoenix Group, who, like most of the other Phoenix Group executives quoted here, is a veteran of a printing company brought into the network by Green.
Green “never hesitates to invest in technology,” says one of his vendor representatives, Sandy Gormley, an account manager with Fujifilm.
In 1998, recovering from a health issue and planning to retire to the West Coast, Green agreed to sell International Lithographing to a group of investment bankers from New York City whose management abilities turned out to be far less impressive than their Ivy League credentials.
After a few former employees appealed to him for help, Green decided that the only way he could give it would be to come out of retirement and re-acquire the company he’d sold.
He admits that he struggled to reboot the company, which had been closed down for nine months by the time he stepped in.
“There were no accounts, no salespeople, no employees — there was no one,” Green says.
But his resolve held firm and, within months, he had cleaned up the building, repurchased and restored the equipment, reconnected with vendors, and built a new base of customers.
Starting in 2007, Green purchased a string of companies that included Colorlith Corp., Marlton, N.J.; CDQ, New York; Innovation Printing & Communications, Philadelphia; Connecticut Color, Meriden, Conn.; and All-Out Print Communications, Woodridge, Ill.
“He took the gamble, and it paid off,” Satz declares.
Ted Kosloff, chairman of Roosevelt Paper, has been a supplier to Green for nearly as long as his companies have been in operation.
The company’s success in the face of adversity didn’t go unnoticed.
“He’s an excellent businessman — probably one of the best negotiators I’ve ever met,” says James J.
“I have had the privilege to negotiate many equipment deals with Mr. Green,” she says.
“We’ve known each other for years, and do business with each other, so we thought it would be a great idea to merge,” he says of the partnership, which includes the resources of ICS’s 200,000-sq.-ft.
There’s no surer sign of the company’s present vitality than its production of two enormous orders for the COVID-19 vaccination cards, a job that Green describes as “the largest amount of pieces that we’ve ever done in 57 years.” The plant ran the first batch of 400 million from last October through mid-April of this year, and then got busy on a follow-up order of 171 million cards in May.
A business owner who was obliged to put his retirement plans on hold in order to save his company might be expected to revive them once the future of the business was secure.
“I just liked him,” recalls Rick Herr, Phoenix Group’s executive VP of sales, and the former owner of Connecticut Color, of his initial encounter with Green.
“I don’t think I would have started a business if I hadn’t met Barry,” reflects Satz, who launched HighRoad Press with Green’s backing in 2004.
After 60 years of hard-won success in the printing industry, Green has accumulated a vast store of knowledge about almost everything it contains.
“I never saw a printing job that wasn’t a rush,” Green declares.
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