SUCCESS STORY

foreign metal plates are made I noticed some others here where uh for instance this snapshot folder I'm pretty certain they asked you on this one didn't they Frank that's right that's right that they wanted some sort of a summer flavor for that particular series you really came up with it there this one here intrigues me Frank first time I saw it I certainly thought that was leather well they asked for something novel in that and we were kind of stumped at first and we sat down to ponder it one of the boys just happened to pull his wallet out of his pocket and I caught it and I said there's my cue so we followed it up that shows us how artistic ideas are born well Frank I begin to see that uh being a Picasso of the postal service is quite a challenge to an artist by the way I promised our viewers I'd find out something I want to ask you right now is it uh envelope or envelope well some say one some say another take a choice I'll tell you I'm going to see the president of the company in a little bit I'm sure he'll give me a very definite answer thank you Frank right now we want to turn to John Kennedy who is going to give us some breath got background about the early art of envelope making [Music] until fairly recent times envelopes were all made by hand envelope making was often a private Affair each person cutting his own or it was a rainy day sideline for bookshops or stationers of course if we relied on this system today it would take about half the people in the United States to turn out all the envelopes that are needed for business and personal uses in the main post office of Los Angeles alone more than 7 million envelopes are received and sorted and delivered every day about the only people who might feel a little more comfortable with fewer envelopes would be those Knights of the mail pouch who serve as the final Link in our great postal system now let's return to our success story reporter Ken Peters and Alec Kenzie president of Coast envelope company is it pronounced envelope or envelope well either it's the same story it doesn't make any difference so long as they order it well I thought I'd sure get a definite answer from you well whatever they are Mr Kenzie I guess this is where the actual manufacturing starts that's right stacks of large paper I've certainly never seen so many colors and kinds of paper in one place before well color is the order of the day it's needed for direct mail to appeal also needed for return envelopes to help sort and that sort of a thing I guess the importance of color and the different styles wasn't true 38 years ago oh no they mostly white though well now what's the first step in making the envelope you have to count these sheets no they're counted at the Mill at the time the paper is made and they come as you can see here counted in lots of 500. and Max we cut them in 500. and lots of 500. well now that's what we want to see next how you actually cut the yeah envelope blanks that's done over here in this diet that's right all right that's a very interesting uh procedure here Mr Kenzie uh those dies are certainly an important feature in this they go through the whole 500 sheets at once that's right they're made of high grade tools steel and they're cut by Craftsmen they have to be sharpened properly differently for different kinds of paper here's one well that'll give an idea you can I think our viewers can see that that really is a razor sharp edge there and has to be in order to go down through there properly of course uh I imagine it's all worked out in advance isn't it to make sure you get the maximum number of cuts on each sheet oh that's right Ken otherwise you'd be wasteful uh the thing is all laid out ahead of time the Cutters know exactly where to put the die so that the least amount of wishes is developed we want to see this one cut here there it goes really goes down through there doesn't it well fine of course I know that although you uh you try to prevent waste that there is a certain amount of it here as uh our viewers will be able to see over here in the waist Barrel however Mr Kenzie uh as I understand that this this actually isn't strictly waste is it no it isn't do we sort it as you see it here and then it goes out to the bailing room where it is put up in Bales well we're going to see how that failing process in just a little bit I'll tell you I told our viewers that we were going to show them how the window envelopes were made so I'd like to uh if we may look over here at the automatic punch press oh that's interesting this is a very new machine it hasn't been offered a few years and it cuts them below it cuts the holes in the windows uh in the envelope blanks uh at the rate of about fifty thousand an hour is wasting no time is it that's right well now we'll be able to see a little later how the windows are actually installed in there here we have the hose cut into the blanket I notice over here you have some doing the same job on hand pressing huh that's the way it was done before this machine was developed you still use this type of operation oh yes for the smaller jobs uh that where it wouldn't be too economical to set a high-speed machine I see well I think it's interesting to see the uh the various the evolution you might say for instance I know that you have automatic machines to fold the envelopes but what intrigues me is the fact you still have women here folding them by hand just as they did in the olden days yeah now why are you still doing that well there or some orders are small special stalls and it doesn't try to set up a high production machine for the I'd like to have our camera watch Mrs Branham here who is uh gluing the envelopes and although we say this is a hand operation she's developed such dexterity at it but uh boy it's almost as fast as my machine isn't it well it seems that way doesn't it and it's taken our years to develop her uh facility for doing that I'll step over here and find us how many years this is Brandon Brandon I guess I shouldn't disturb you how many years have you been here at coach envelope 26 years how long you've been doing this type of uh hand work only six months before I came here for over 26 years well Mr Kenzie don't run away from me now now this has certainly been very interesting to be able to see the evolution and the Art of folding envelopes in just a minute now from this hand operation after we've been to the print shop we're going to see those amazing automatic machines and also see how those windows are installed in the meantime I think it'd be interesting if John Kennedy showed our viewers what happens with that scrap paper we saw a minute ago [Music] it's interesting to see how various Industries increase their efficiency and control their costs by getting the fullest possible use from their raw materials no matter how carefully the die press operators work there is bound to be a certain amount of scrap when they're through cutting out the envelope blanks some of the scrap comes out in such very small strips that it makes excellent material for packing Coast envelope uses much of it to prevent small boxes from rattling around inside large cartons other scrap and the majority of it is wheeled from the die cutting tables over to a huge Baler truckloads are carried to the Baler where they are compressed into very solid Bales weighing 350 to 400 pounds foreign section of Coast envelope company is devoted to printing nearly all business or commercial envelopes carry some sort of printing on them and this printing is usually done before the envelope is glued and folded because of the small amount of printing that appears in the envelope most type is hand set after which it is locked up in a form and a preliminary proof is taken on a small hand machine when this proof is approved the type in the locked up form will then be used to develop the plastic Matrix after the plastic Matrix is developed rubber is applied to it and they are put into a mold with the use of heat and pressure the rubber is forced into the indentations of the plastic Matrix to reproduce the desired printing or signature or whatever may be required this is the printing plate here at Coast envelope many types of printing presses are used for different printing jobs to find out how some of these presses work let's rejoin Ken Peters our success story reporter and Mr John Davidson vice president of Coast envelope that they can use the whole backside out of an envelope to carry an additional message and very little extra cost I gather that that's the particular thing that two people are really featuring it now yes it is well now um our cameramanier is going to give us a look over this print shop to give us an idea of how large it is and I think that uh first thing they're seeing down there that battery of presses down there what are they John well Ken those are Harris rotaries you know we have all kinds of printing equipment here for envelopes but those they run around 12 000 Impressions an hour Fred one or two colors on either side of the envelope I know they're extremely important however I know from Talking review that the machine the juror particularly excited about which is really your pride and joy is this one right here well that's right we're very proud of this machine it's the latest of its kind in the western part of the United States we just imported it from Germany and uh it's doing an elegant job for us so now what is so distinctive about this particular machine John well the outstanding feature first of all Ken is that it is an aniline press and lean inks dry instantaneously and that allows us to do two things we can run the press faster about 18 000 Impressions an hour and also it allows us to send the envelopes to the next department for folding as soon as they've been printed instead of having them stand overnight to drive now John you spoke about aniline Inc I for one don't know much about that is that a new type of Interest yes it can it is usually they use grease spacings but this is aniline ink it's a Dye that's mixed either with alcohol or with water you can see it inside the chamber yeah and the fact that it's dry so quickly makes it possible for you to actually print three colors in one run through this small machine that's right we can print three colors two colors on one side and one color on the other which is one step ahead of the rotary so John I wonder if you can pull out a sample there for us so we can see what job is doing surely TV as you notice it's an airmail envelope with the stripes around the perimeter and if you'll turn it over Ken you'll see the tint block on the other side what's the uh what's the importance of this tinting well that tint block does two things it opaques the sheet makes it so that you can't see through it and also I think it adds a certain distinction to the envelope certainly makes it very very attractive well of course at this point it doesn't look much like an envelope but we're quite anxious to see how these are folded and put together so while I'm getting over to that particular part of the plant John Kennedy will take over for a minute [Music] foreign success story and on the spot telecast brought to you by Richfield tonight we're visiting the plant of the coast envelope company at 810 East 3rd Street in Los Angeles when Leonard writing and business Communications increased it became obvious that a better and faster method had to be developed for making envelopes various types of machines were tried without success until a plunger type of machine was developed and while the pleasure machine has improved a great deal from the first models the basic principles are pretty much the same the envelope blanks are placed in a pile on the feeding mechanism of the machine the plunger Rises and Falls creasing the blank and starting it through the mechanism where it is gummed and folded the envelopes then travel along a chain-type belt during which time the gum is dried there is also a window plunger which forms the envelopes and glues the window over the pre-cut opening while the plunger can turn out approximately forty thousand envelopes in eight hours the newer rotary type machines have a much greater capacity which we'll discover when we rejoin Ken Peters our success story reporter and Mr John Davidson oh say John I forgot to ask you I'm still trying to find out uh is it envelope or envelope well uh I don't know can some people call it envelope and I guess some people call it envelope okay excuse me for happy now as I understand it's uh John this rotary machine that we're going to see is practically revolutionize the whole envelope business huh that's right Ken this rotary of course operates on the principle of a wheel instead of the oscillating uh motion of the other older presses and as a result it operates smoother and it goes faster and it's much more versatile in that we can run different sizes of envelopes on the machine all the way from a theater ticket size to an envelope of put in with John I sure like to show our viewers how it works here and the envelopes are introduced they're fed in at this point the the blanks are and now the first job that's going to be done is to seal is to come the steel flap so these are spread out in such a way that each one of the seal flaps is exposed and as they move in behind this gum tray A Little Wheel comes out and applies they come to the seal slab as you can see here now nothing else can be done until that gum is dried so they move on down through that tunnel and go all the way back to the other end of the machine all the time being bombarded with heated air of course it's all time out in such a way that when they come out on top here that thumb is perfectly dry I think you can see the uh the application of the of the gum on the plant then things really begin to happen in a hurry here they move into this point the envelopes are separated when they go onto this roller they they are scared for the top and the bottom folding and then these two little arms that move in and out actually fold in the end flaps then as they go underneath the glue tray here these little drums here contact the glue and deposit it on the end flaps As you move into this point the bottom clamp is stuck underneath that roller so that it is sealed then All That Remains to be done is for this little knife here to fold over the seal flap and we have a completed envelope the result they move out here and this little spiral effect here feeds them out into the point of delivery here one at a time and they are counted automatically in lots of 25 and that's done by projecting the 25th envelope all along here so that as Evo works here she can very easily grasp 100 envelopes and put them into the carton 500 to a cart it's as simple as that oh by the way this is uh Claire Stevens here who taught me everything I know about these rotary machines this color knows an awful lot about them how long have you been here at the place 30 years what's the capacity of this uh this will do about sixteen thousand an hour but every time how does that compare with the country well they're about five thousand miles you're fine thank you Claire now there's another machine down here I want you to see it does essentially the same type of job but it does one thing that this machine doesn't do that I want you to see and that is install those little glassing windows that we've been talking about the process starts right over here where the envelopes are separated in such a way that the the little window hole is completely exposed and then as it moves along here underneath the gum tray gum is applied all the way around that window holds then if you look up here you can see that is the the roll of glassine tape that is being fed into the machine and down here it is cut off I'm going to ask Ed kiss if he'll slow down the machine and run it through manually you'll be able to see now there is a little strip that is deposited right over the window hole we can watch that again that little strip is cut off and deposit it on now could you start her up full force again ahead so we can see how see that's really too fast for the human eye to observe then on down the other end of the machine the operation is practically identical with the one that we we just saw a very nice folding action here where you can see the sides are being folded in well John I must admit these are really amazing machines I'll tell you though uh in spite of all the great variety of envelopes you have it occurs to me that there's a there's one particular field that remains unsung well what's that Chad we're always looking for businesses well John I was just thinking if there was some way that you could get the all of the youngsters to go away to summer camp to actually write all those letters they promise to write back their folks who'd have to have twice as many machines running at twice the speed this ingenious machine which is being run by Mrs Vina Winkler adds extra security to heavy duty envelopes for it installs the metal clasps which I'm sure are familiar to us all ever since the hand folding days many methods have been used to make envelopes tamper-proof over the years the more involved type of fastenings have disappeared but the clasp is expanding its uses all the time especially since this type of envelope can be reused for filing or storing papers after it has served its primary use now this is a special section of the plant where open end envelopes are made would be quite a large part of this business this is what you call an Lo machine which means large open-end envelope and this is the envelope plank for one of these large envelopes let's see how they're converted into an actual open envelope here they're fed up on this little elevator they're picked up into the machine and fed down through these aligning pins here and then just like on the machine we saw they encountered this scoring row here which actually scores all four sides of the envelope and then as we move along here the two side flaps are folded in together one of the flaps is glued and then they come together and are sealed and down at this end as they move over this end roller the bottom and the top flap are sealed now the the bottom uh or rather are Gump and then the bottom clamp is sealed and then just like we saw before the uh the seal clamp has to move all the way back through a drying tunnel so finally it comes out here with the seal perfectly dried and it moves up here and one by one again they are fed by this spiral device here one at a time and Connie working here has them automatically counted out for so she can select 50 at a time and put them into the carton of course I think we're all familiar with the uses for these large open-end envelopes but they've got a machine over here which is used for the small open-end envelopes and I'd like to ask Jack Hunt here the superintendent to show us a sample of the small uh envelope the Paper Mate refill envelope oh that's where the refill cartridge that's right boy this looks like a tremendous order well about 25 million really well that gives us an idea that the small open-end envelope is a big part of this business let's take a look at this machine it's essentially the same as the one we just saw you might say on a on a miniature scale I think you realize already that an awful lot of these workers here at Coast envelope have been here for a good many years and uh that is certainly true of Mrs Ray Hines here Mr Heinz how many years do you say you've been at Coast envelope 35. uh before that you lived in my own state of uh yesterday I believe you told me you're going back there this summer the first of August you're not going to stay there I should say not I'm coming right back to the coast envelope all right fine we wanted to visit this department because I think we use the associate envelopes with males and uh I know I was trying to recover that about 15 billion letters a year are turned up for purposes other than mailing for filing for pay envelope theater tickets and so forth now we're ready to have John Kennedy tells us what happens after the envelopes leave the production line most of Coast envelopes business is done right here in Los Angeles and throughout Southern California and parts of Arizona and Nevada over half of the total envelopes manufactured are sold and delivered by the envelope manufacturer directly to large users for smaller orders and for those which have only a short distance to travel the envelopes are packed and padded in lightweight boxes which are then tied into bundles with the aid of this ingenious tying machine now to give you some idea of the variety that is produced by Coast envelope company we're going to rejoin Ken Peters our success story reporter and Mr Alec Kenzie candy I've heard you referred to as the dean of the envelope business here on the West Coast you've certainly seen a tremendous growth of your company in 38 years time and oh that's right well the industry's young anyway so that's a good sector of the industry isn't it what can you tell us about future plans for this company which now has two modern plants here and in San Francisco well the future tells a story in the growth of California we've bound to grow because California is growing Mr Kenzie I can't resist congratulating you on the really fine group of people you have here really uh you just immediately sense that you have a very happy relationship throughout well it's been a happy relationship they've been fine people to work with there's one very happy gentleman here I certainly want our viewers to meet that's your sales manager Mr Howard ladal Howard you've been here uh since you said 32 years uh that is correct Ken looks to me is all the works agreed with you oh it's an easy business well this gives us some idea of the tremendous variety of envelopes this is just a few of them almost endless in variety what do you feel is the outstanding feature of your envelope program well I should say there's one thing in particular that I would like to point out and that is the excellent advertising value that can be obtained from using the back and clamps of the envelopes in particular preparing an advertising message it's just wonderful value many pairs of eyes see these before they reach their destination you know a thing that I hadn't realized is how many different types of envelopes one company would have to have printed oh yes indeed now for example here's one of the large insurance companies and they will use upwards of 25 different envelope items just a few of them shown here same thing seems to be true over here with the Department Stores yes indeed the private stores will use as many or more even than the uh insurance company well now Howard of course so far tonight we've concentrated 100 on your envelope business but I also know that one of your largest divisions is the book cover division oh yeah goodness yeah now this is uh this is what we mean by book covers these are the very effective covers that are made by this division covers for catalogs and different loose leaf Publications and they also are one of the world's largest manufacturers of checkbook covers pretty good chance that your own checkbook was made right here of course down below matter of fact I see Gene Baum the sales manager of this in Auburn here who is studying his checkbook uh what are you trying to see whether you fellas made it no Ken I know he made this check cover because this check cover revolutionized checkbook industry with our new patented duragraph clip now uh speaking of your book cover division what's the percentage of the overall business does it represents well we do about a third of the total volume of business in the coast envelope Corporation I know you'll figure you're just scrapped the surface on it too well we think southern California has a great future and we're going to grow along with it well I certainly hope we can come back and see how your book covers are made by the way yes if you do too this is my last chance to find out whether it's envelope or envelope well some people say envelope some people say envelopes it's very apparent we're not going to find out whether it's envelope or envelope but we found a great deal about how they're made and I'm pretty sure that for a while at least when we get our mail we're going to inspect the envelopes as well as the content the envelope industry is a small one as Industries go but it portrays in miniature all the best characteristics of American free enterprise it produces a superior product at low cost and in so doing makes enough money to pay good wages generous taxes and a reasonable return on its investment tonight's success story has been visiting the coast envelope company since its early Beginnings in 1917 Coast has grown with the Los Angeles area starting with a small shop and about 10 employees it has expanded its operation until it is now one of the largest West Coast suppliers of all types of envelopes Coast has been a leader in developing new types of equipment and adapting machines and methods to streamline its production and to give better service to all its customers through this concentration on efficiency in service Coast has built its success story