TERRACE BAY — A local business has made the difficult decision to close its doors, marking the end of an era.
The Terrace Bay Print Shop officially announced the closure on July 18, following a recent reduction in hours due to the “current economic downturn.”
The Print Shop has operated in Terrace Bay for nearly 75 years.
Glenn Hart, editor/writer of the Nipigon-Red Rock Gazette, told Dougall Media the closure is another casualty in the wake of Terrace Bay AV’s mill idling, which impacted over 400 employees in the community.
“This comes back to one of my very strong opinions about local industry – local business supporting local business. For the most part, (The Print Shop) has lots of businesses that do support them, yes, but what it takes to keep a place like that open is a larger organization – something like a school board or one of the government agencies to supply from them.
“With the loss of the mill, they’ve basically lost the only large organization that was in support of The Print Shop . . . it (took) out a huge part of the budgetable income that The Print Shop had,” he said.
Hart said another challenge faced by locally-owned and operated businesses like The Print Shop and his own business is large organizations are generally attracted to a standardized quote system in use by larger stationary/printing companies.
“Small businesses and towns can’t compete with those because they’re not even looked at, under the guise that (the organizations) are saving money. If you look at the numbers, they’re not actually saving money compared to when they buy local,” he said.
“What I always say is $30,000 to a large corporation based out of Toronto is nothing, (but) $30,000 to a small business in a small town is a huge deal. It keeps them in business.”
Despite the bad news, Hart said residents still have options.
“It’s still kind of dynamic because the owners, the staff (in Terrace Bay), and myself are still working on what can be done.
“I think it’s dangerous to say it’s just shutting down. Call or email here – even the other Print Shop’s email will still work with jobs and we can make something work . . . we can work through it,” he said.
Hart described his office, next to Zechners Foodmarket in Nipigon, as a satellite location for The Print Shop and said they are “intricately linked.”
Which is why, the day after The Print Shop’s closure was announced, Hart took to Facebook to assure residents their local newspapers would still be published and delivered as it was before.
He reminded regional organizations to support local whenever they can.
“These small businesses are the ones who are supporting the community – they’re supporting those schools, they’re supporting those children’s organizations – they’re supporting those things in the community but the big businesses aren’t,” he said.
“The biggest issue I see is the larger, group-buying capabilities of that kind of organization and that’s what they do – they buy all their stationary, whatever they need, they have to go through this quotation system. So, they’re not supporting local and then (local) businesses end up going under because you can’t really make a good go if you’re just relying on a trickle job here and there – which is still great to have but you need more of a steady income that only the larger organizations can provide.”