A worker cooperative for over 40 years.

Getting started.

Community Printers was founded in 1977 by a small group of young idealists who wanted to help social and environmental causes. With a small single color offset press in a tiny storefront in downtown Santa Cruz we offered free printing for community organizations throughout the Monterey Bay.

To help our community.

We all volunteered at the print shop and worked other jobs to pay the bills. Many of us worked at other print shops by day and then came in the evenings and weekends to donate our time to social, political and environmental causes that were important to us. Eventually we realized that instead of working other jobs that we could build Community Printers into a business that could support us financially while continuing our goal of using the printing press as a tool to help our community. 

Steady growth.

Fast forward from 1977 to today, we are the largest commercial printer on the Monterey Bay with 20,000 square feet of equipment, and thirty-two full-time employees producing $5,000,000 per year in revenue. The shop operates16 hours a day producing printing for a wide array of products for community organizations, public agencies, municipalities, and local businesses both large and small.

A history in giving back to the community.

True to our roots, we set aside and donate over $45,000 a year in printing to non-profit organizations to the communities that we serve as well as maintain a discount program for qualifying non-profits.

A unique business model.

Our structure is unique as well. The Board of Directors of Community Printers, Incorporated is comprised of all the employees who have worked at Community Printers for at least six months and been voted onto the board. As far as we know, we are the largest worker cooperative on the Central Coast.

The privately held stock of Community Printers Incorporated is held in trust by a non-profit called the Eschaton Foundation. We donate 1% of our sales per month to Eschaton who in turn uses these funds to underwrite our print donations. By structuring our monthly donations in this way, there is never a question about whether we can afford to make a particular donation. We have an ongoing program that is funded on a monthly basis, rain or shine through both good times and bad.

All of our employees participate in the decision making process.

Many people are curious about this structure. It is unusual. The employees of Community Printers have complete say over such fundamental decisions as wage and benefit structure, hiring and firing, investment into technology, virtually all the same things that any board of directors oversees.

Experienced management team.

The board has appointed a management team comprised of leads from each of the departments; sales, administration, pre-press, press room, bindery, and fulfillment to manage the business day to day. The management team in turn reports to the board at quarterly meetings and additionally from time to time when a large decision must be made quickly. Monthly financials are posted for all to see. Our daily sales totals are on the bulletin board right next to the time clock. We strongly believe in transparency. Every worker at Community Printers knows what is going on with the health and direction of the business.

We believe that much of our success as a business comes from our structure.

Major decisions must be vetted by the larger group. That process has consistently yielded good decisions in an industry that is constantly changing where a wrong call about investments in new technology can destroy a company. There are half as many printers today as 10 years ago. Some tried to change too fast, others didn’t adapt to new technologies or invested heavily in technology that turned out to be the wrong direction. Our business model tends to be conservative in that we spend a significant amount of time deliberating big decisions. There is a lot of caution built into collective decision-making.

Constantly changing and innovating.

In the past, the people who sell printing technology have been willing to finance just about any purchase. This made it easy for printers to get under water in debt. In hind sight our more measured approach to growth has ended up serving us well. The challenge has been to create a culture that values the need to constantly change and innovate. We are fortunate to have a team of people who are obsessed with print and understand the value of constantly innovating. We invest a lot of time in research and development of new products to stay relevant in a changing print landscape.