Leanin' Tree -- Lassoing New Offerings

An American tradition for more than half a century, Leanin' Tree Inc. is the world's largest publisher of Western, wildlife and other regional-interest greeting cards. The company is known for its unique fine art designs, as well as the high quality of its products.

It has also distinguished itself as an innovative marketer, able to respond to changes in a highly competitive business environment. Over the years as trends evolved, products were transformed with processes from diecutting to foil stamping to the use of glitter and a host of other graphic embellishments. Among the most recent examples of Leanin' Tree's marketing savvy is the roll out of its new Boxvelope boxed-card assortment packs.

"We knew that this product was going to take off with our wholesale customers," says Mike Bognar, Leanin' Tree's postpress production manager, of the company's new 20-card assortment packs available in 16 distinctive themes. "We also knew that our existing collating capability—designed for handling much smaller assorted-card packs—would be inadequate to handle this particular product line."

Collecting Collating Info

This prompted a comprehensive re-evaluation of their overall collating requirements, which ultimately led to the installation in May of a Vijuk Setmaster collator equipped with deep pile feeding stations.

Originally called the Lazy RL Ranch, the company was founded in Fort Collins, CO, by Ed Trumble, chairman, and his partner, Bob Lorenz, in 1949. Three years later the firm moved to Boulder, where it was reorganized and renamed Leanin' Tree Publishing. Assuming sole ownership in 1965, Ed Trumble split the organization into two separate companies in the late 1980s, with the Consumer Div. becoming Trumble Greetings, and the manufacturing, product development and Trade Div. taking the name Leanin' Tree Inc.

In the course of traveling throughout the West in search of distinctive artwork to reproduce on Leanin' Tree greeting cards, Ed Trumble accumulated one of the nation's largest privately owned collections of Western art. Trumble's Leanin' Tree Museum of Western Art, also located in Boulder, includes more than 200 paintings and 80 bronze sculptures depicting a broad variety of the genre themes. The collection includes such celebrated names as Gerard Curtis Delano, Frank McCarthy, J.K. Ralston, Bill Moyers, Fritz White and Earle Heikka.

In 1949, Leanin' Tree offered four Western Christmas card designs. Today, the company markets more than 3,000 designs for everyday occasions and major holidays in Western and wildlife themes, while also marketing contemporary and Christian card lines. Though the company originally began selling Christmas cards by direct mail, Leanin' Tree now focuses primarily on wholesaling to small independent retailers. Presently, the company ships more than 20 million cards annually.

Leanin' Tree's production facility features a full-service bindery that covers everything from paper cutting, foil stamping, diecutting and folding, to shrink wrapping.

"Collating has been a big part of our operation for some time," notes Bognar. "But until recently we were dealing with packs of four and six cards, plus envelopes. Our new Boxvelope boxed-card assortments carry 20 cards and envelopes in two sets of 10 cards each. Though production began doing all the collating manually, we knew beforehand that we'd have to invest in collating equipment capable of bringing production up to speed with sales volume."

Variety of Choices

Bognar says the search for the new collator began in 2004. "We considered a number of machines—at least one less expensive, and several much more complicated—and in the end we went with the Vijuk Setmaster because of ease of operation, as well as its reputation for dependability and versatility."

Prior to installing the Setmaster, production for the Boxvelope ran approximately 2,000 packs per day, with 10 employees picking up and sorting the card/envelope sets completely by hand.

"We're still using the same number of people on the line, but the Setmaster has nearly doubled our production speed," says Bognar, who adds that he expects production to reach at least 2,000 units per hour as they become more familiar with the machine.

Central to the design of the Setmaster collators is the flexibility to outfit machines with virtually every conceivable option—from stitching/folding/trimming, ultrasonic welding and gluing, to variable-speed jogging and crash numbering. The collator customized for Leanin' Tree has 20 deep pile pocket feeders, required to meet the company's production requirements.

While the depth of the standard feeders is 2 inches, the deep pile feeders provide 34 inches, which Bognar says is deep enough to stack as many as 1,000 to 1,500 cards. Do the math, and it's easy to see why Leanin' Tree is so impressed with the performance of its new collator.

"We gave Vijuk the product and told them what we were seeking. Between them and the manufacturer, they took a basic machine and configured it to our exact needs," stresses Bognar. He adds that allowances were even made to permit the use of friction feeders at the end of the machine in the event they ever want to run more than 20 products per set, as well as for the possible addition of static pinning or shrink wrapping at some point in the future.

According to Leanin' Tree's mission statement, the company is committed "to bringing the best in art and words together in a way that touches your heart." At the same time, they will continue to identify and act on new market opportunities. And, based on customer response to the latest line of boxed-card assortments, it appears that their plans are right on track to grow the product into a "giftable item" in the very near future.