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EDC Finance worked with First National Bank on this project.
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After figuring out a way to expand his company’s sales, Scott Cagno needed to figure out a way to expand his company’s capabilities.
Cagno, owner of National Envelope Imprinting Inc., has found his answer.
He’s moving his small business from a leased building in Brownstown to a larger, more efficient building in Mount Joy that he and his wife Connie have purchased.
It’s a $900,000 project, funded through EDC Finance, a local nonprofit that connects businesses with state and federal funding. In this case, it was the U.S. Small Business Administration’s 504 loan program.
“For years, we’ve been in leased space. We thought it was time to control some things we couldn’t control. … This building will serve us well,” he said Wednesday.
Now in 22,000 square feet on one acre at 52 Industrial Road, Brownstown, NEI will move in mid November to 27,500 square feet on 2.3 acres at 30 S. Jacob St., Mount Joy.
Cagno said the building, built in 1954 and expanded in 1970, has a better layout plus better internet service. The bigger lot size means NEI has room to enlarge the building, if it wishes.
The building was acquired for $750,000 from TE Connectivity, successor to Tyco and AMP. Rich Wolman and Deepa Balepur of Compass Real Estate and Mike Curran of CBRE handled the transaction. Cagno will invest another $150,000 in improvements.
Founded in 1985, NEI prints logos, return addresses, teaser lines, instructions and other messages and art, in one to four colors, on envelopes for the financial industry, nonprofits and other sectors. NEI does not make the envelopes.
Cagno, of Lititz, is a Lancaster Bible College graduate who joined NEI in 1988 and bought the business in 2008.
Since then, sales have grown by 30 percent, he said, though he declined to specify the dollar amount. The workforce has grown by two to 18. More hires are possible in the future, as sales rise.
Cagno is guiding NEI through a drastic change in his industry, as customers in the digital age have less need for an outside firm to print text and artwork on envelopes.
“It would have been common 10, 15 years ago to do hundreds of thousands or millions of one particular job,” he said. “Now it’s often tens of thousands or single thousands. People aren’t keeping inventory like they used to.”
To compensate for the trend toward smaller jobs, NEI has added customers. In the past two years, Cagno said, NEI has enlarged its customer base by 25 percent, or 120 customers.