Nahan knows when to mail less.

The surprising number is 42. On Nahan’s website, an unnamed short-term lender is described as having cut its mail volume by 42%. For a company that owns printing equipment, fewer envelopes might sound like an awkward success story. Then come the other numbers: annual spending fell 33%, and cost per funded loan fell 51%. The printer is presenting subtraction as a reason to hire it.

Those are company-reported results from one client, rather than a promise about the next campaign. Still, they reveal something useful about Nahan’s ambitions. A manufacturer can compete over the price of producing a piece of paper. A marketing partner can ask whether that piece should exist. The second conversation reaches further into the customer’s business.

The printer in the planning meeting

Jim and Helen Nahan founded the business in 1962 with 15 employees. Its reputation developed around direct mail and commercial printing. Catalogs demanded a particular kind of discipline: a retailer’s carefully chosen colors had to survive the journey from artwork to paper. A 2014 account from equipment supplier SCREEN named Neiman Marcus, Bergdorf Goodman and Saks among Nahan’s customers at the time.

The product range had two distinct personalities. There were luxury catalogs, selling through pictures and atmosphere. There were also inserted mail packages aimed at credit cards, finance and insurance. One needed to make a brand feel desirable; another needed to make an offer clear enough to act on. Both depended on repeatable production.

In January 2021, Nahan added a Marketing Services division. That June, Mike Ertel became CEO as Mike Nahan, the founders’ son, retired from the role. The shift brought strategy, creative, data and analytics alongside the presses. Nahan could now help choose the recipient and shape the offer, as well as manufacture the result.

Its commercial proposition spans work that clients might otherwise divide among an agency, a data specialist, a printer and a mailing operation. Nahan sells tailored services and production rather than an off-the-shelf software subscription. Its marketing offering includes predictive models, campaign planning and digital augmentation through email, social and display. The expertise is in coordinating those decisions.

A catalog has a cost of admission

Consider a catalog’s dimensions. To a reader, a smaller book might seem like a design choice. To the people making and mailing it, size connects to paper yield, press efficiency and postal cost. Nahan’s discussion of catalog formats describes testing compact books, changing page counts and choosing bindings with both budget and brand presentation in mind.

“These aren’t just production conversations,” says Mark Groff in that discussion. A prospect may need a short introduction to the range. A loyal customer may justify a larger book. The sensible question is what each audience needs to see, followed by a test of whether the extra pages earn their place.

The production technology supports that flexibility. In November 2021, Nahan announced an investment in a Canon ProStream 1800 inkjet press, including the ability to produce variable, full-color catalog covers in-stream. Personalization could reach the object itself. Different recipients could receive different content without treating every variation as a separate conventional print run.

Geography mattered, too. In April 2022, Nahan acquired the mail division assets of Intellus Marketing in Montgomeryville, Pennsylvania. The company pointed to faster campaign turnaround and added capacity alongside Minnesota. It also described an industry contending with paper shortages and supply-chain problems.

“Direct mail is the fastest-growing segment of our business.”Mike Ertel / April 2022

There is also the material consequence of making all this paper. Nahan’s sustainability page describes recycled stocks, primarily soy oil-based heatset and sheetfed inks, and controls intended to reduce production waste. It reports recycling 15.5 million pounds of paper in one year. These details belong in the buying conversation alongside response rates: campaign design determines what gets manufactured, and production choices determine how that work is done.

The people who remember the last run

There is a quieter asset behind the machinery. In an essay about Nahan’s culture, Ertel says 24% of employees have been with the company for more than 20 years. He describes customers standing beside operators during press checks, making color decisions together. That is a specific service advantage: access to someone who understands what a machine will actually do.

The same account includes a midnight employee barbecue and an intern following his mother and grandfather into the business. These are small details, but they make the longevity statistic easier to picture. In October 2025, Nahan also announced STAR 4, the highest designation in Printing Industry Midwest’s diversity, equity and inclusion accreditation program.

Count the sales you actually caused

Nahan’s own advice identifies familiar trouble spots: outdated customer data, creative that has gone stale, and approval processes slowed by handoffs. Its answer includes regular data checks, format testing and clearer ownership. That gives a prospective client something more useful to ask about than the price of a thousand printed pieces.

The measurement question is especially revealing. Someone receives a catalog, then buys online. A match between the mailing file and the purchase establishes a connection; it cannot, alone, establish that the catalog caused the sale. Nahan recommends a comparable group that receives no mail, allowing marketers to examine incremental lift.

A reader can copy that discipline: pick a business outcome, test a defined audience, keep a holdout and compare results before expanding. The economics still have to work. If incremental customer value cannot cover production, postage and the surrounding work, a handsome mailer will not rescue the budget. Nahan’s most interesting claim is that the thinking before printing can improve what happens after delivery.