Sioux Printing Marks Anniversary With Expansion
Sioux Falls, SD—In 40 years, Sioux Printing, based here, has seen a lot of changes. Two-color printing was "black and whatever color was in the press," recalls Jon Lewin, Sioux's third-generation owner. In 1959, Sioux employed eight people; now it has 85. And the pressroom, formerly home to a collection of older presses, has been completely remodeled to house two new six-color 40˝ MAN Roland 700 presses, a two-color Heidelberg Speedmaster 52 press and a two-color Quickmaster 46-2 press.
"This is an exciting time for us," says Cathy Krueger, a sales representative for Sioux. "This company is really on the cutting edge. And I've never been with an organization that puts so much effort into being the best."
The company's roots are in the Sioux Falls Shopping News, founded by Sherman Lewin, Jon's grandfather. When Jon's father, Dick, returned from the U.S. Air Force in 1956, Sherman asked him to sell advertising. Dick stayed on and remained with the company for 38 years.
Because the Shopping News was printed one day a week, Dick saw the profit in keeping the presses busy, and he pursued commercial printing jobs. As commercial printing became the focus of the company, the Shopping News was sold. The company was incorporated in 1959 as Sioux Printing.
Jon Lewin started working in the bindery at age 12, "hand gathering by walking the table" for 35 cents an hour, he says, and was later assigned to the pressroom.
When Dick Lewin retired in 1996, Jon took over as president. Although Sioux had a "high-tech" prepress department (disk-to-film capable since 1991), Lewin saw the need to update his sheetfed pressroom to meet ever higher expectations of his customers.
On a quest for "the best press available," Jon Lewin says he spent a year flying his pressmen around the country looking at presses.
Lewin says that Sioux is "raising the stakes" with the competition in the Upper Midwest, noting that the speed and turnaround time of his new presses—combined with the Sioux Falls location—make his pressroom competitive with large Chicago-area web operations.
Lewin has also purchased a Baumann pile turner, distributed by MAN Roland, that he is using for both new presses.
"Now, with the MAN Roland presses, we can keep up with our customers' designers, who often create images that are tough to print," adds Krueger, emphasizing that she has business now that she never had before. "And I'm glad we got two [presses], because people were fighting over the one we had."
