Providence Journal, RI
By Paul Edward Parker
Journal Staff Writer
A Cranston textile company that was founded in 1807 will stop its manufacturing operations, which are done in Massachusetts, by June 1, company officials said yesterday.
Cranston Print Works, which prints patterns on fabric aimed at the home sewing market, will still design patterns, purchase raw fabric, and market and distribute the finished products. But it will outsource its printing operations to factories in Fall River, and Korea, Taiwan, Pakistan and China, officials said.
“This step is taken so we cannot only survive, but thrive,” company president George W. Shuster said in an interview.
“It’s not something we came to lightly at all,” vice president Frederic L. Rockefeller Jr. said.
The decision ends a tradition of textile printing that began in 1824 when William Sprague, who would later be elected governor and U.S. senator, established a small cotton printing plant as part of his family’s textile business. The company grew and, in 1936, bought a textile plant in Webster, Mass., that had been built by Samuel Slater, the Pawtucket industrialist recognized as father of the American Industrial Revolution.
Today, the Webster plant is still in operation and home to Cranston Print Works’ printing facilities. The company’s headquarters remains in Cranston, but printing operations there ceased in 1996. Design work is done out of an office in New York City.
When the Webster factory stops printing this year, about 75 people will lose their jobs and the printing equipment will be sold. But the plant will continue to operate as a sales and distribution facility. The company will still employ more than 200 people after shutting down printing, Rockefeller said.
Two subsidiaries of Cranston Print Works, Bercen Inc., which makes chemicals for the paper industry, and Cranston Trucking, will not be affected by the halt of printing operations.
Rockefeller said the printing operations were a victim of the generally slow economy as well as changes in the fabric-printing business, which is trending toward smaller volumes of a greater variety of patterns. Rockefeller said Cranston’s printing operations made money by printing large volumes of each of its patterns. “A lot of our customers were looking for unique assortments,” he said.
Shuster also blamed U.S. trade policy that, he said, encourages imports but discourages exports.
The company also had been hurt in recent decades when apparel manufacturing and home decor manufacturing moved overseas. “They followed the cheap needle offshore,” said Rockefeller.
Shuster said that laid-off employees are being offered severance packages and that many of them are eligible for retirement. “It takes some of the sting away, but there’s nothing you can do to totally eliminate it.”
pparker@projo.com
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