Allied Printing to improve technology, change ownership

Allied Printing is shifting its growing business in Ferndale from its longtime owners to a small group of longtime employees, including the transfer from father to daughter. Paul Zimmer and Robert Straub are transitioning the 60-year-old business' ownership to Dave Bader, Margaret Fitzgerald, Elly Chichester, Tony Pelc, Jill Straub and Greg Balan over the rest of this decade. For Jill Straub, daughter of Robert Straub, taking over ownership fulfills a longtime goal of hers since joining the company after she graduated from Michigan State University in 2002. "This is pretty much all I have known and what I wanted to do," says Jill Straub, sales executive for Allied Printing. Allied Printing has grown from 12 employees and one building in 1971 to 95 employees and the occasional intern in four buildings that cover 100,000 square feet of warehouse, production and corporate office space. It has hired a handful of people over the last year, mainly in its digital department. Allied Printing is a full-service printing company that specializes in digital printing, packaging, direct mail, program management, fulfillment, and web-based marketing services. The company has experience 11-percent revenue growth in 2012, thanks to investments it has made in technology for its printing and e-commerce services. "We'd like to see the next few years follow that growth pattern," Jill Straub says. "We'd like to improve our technology to increase the demand so that people will want to come to us." Source: Jill Straub, sales executive for Allied Printing Writer: Jon Zemke Read more about Metro Detroit's growing entrepreneurial ecosystem at SEMichiganStartup.com.