McBride's has law on its side

                              Arm of company specializes in printing jobs for police agencies

By Jim Kulp

For The Telegraph

    Alton --  

Allen McBride says print shops are an archive of history.

     "That's because they keep a good filing system of what they print," the president of McBride's Printing said.

     For example, the company has the brochures it once printed for Germania Savings and Loan in Alton, which collapsed in financial scandal.

     "Print shops have files of businesses that no longer exist. We're all a good source of business history. If companies go out of business, print shops still have their materials on file.

     McBride's Printing has been in existence since 1985. It was first a Kwik Kopy franchise and is actually two businesses, McBride's Printing and Copy Craft Printers.

     The McBride's arm produces such traditional products as flyers, bulletins, newsletters, invoices, envelopes, carbonless business forms, etc. It also makes many, blueprints for construction firms and offers services for customers who order 100,000 copies of an item to the person who pays 25 cents for just one copy. "We try to give as good a service for them as we do for the big-jobs," McBride said.

     The company has five employees including McBride - and is at 51 E. Elm St., the corner of Elm and Alby, formerly the site of a longtime popular grocery store.

     It was a Kwik Kopy franchise at first, until 1992. "I then became independent," McBride said. "In our shop, we can copy anything, in color or black and white, up to three feet by eight feet."

     The Copy Craft portion of McBride's is one of the more interesting phases of the company. It creates business cards for law enforcement personnel, cards embossed with a colorful foil representing a shield or a star. McBride's biggest customer is the Illinois State Police, for whom he said they do business almost every day. "We also have, a contract with the St. Louis Police Department, including Chief Joe Mokwa."

     Other customers include the Colorado highway patrol, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, the National Park Service, the St. Louis Fire Department, the California Horse Racing Board and officers in Phoenix, Ariz. He also has contracts with law enforcement in Eureka and Kinloch and is negotiating with the New York Police Department for business cards for 5,000 detectives. He also produces a generic card, for private security officers.

     McBride said the Copy Craft arm of his business is growing and is one of only four printing companies in the United States that specializes in law enforcement cards and also is the only one in the Midwest. He purchased the company in April 1997 when it was on Hampton Avenue in St. Louis. "We moved everything over here, and the business card contracts came with it," he said. It has a Web site, copcardstore.net and two fax numbers, 618-463-9345 and 618-465-0667.

     Allen McBride’s wife Carol, works part time in the shop; his son, Christopher, 19, a special education student at East Alton-Wood River High School, does odd jobs for the firm. He has two daughters, Tracy Giese, 30, an employee of the Italian American Pasta Co. in Kansas City, and Elizabeth, 28, a graduate student at Webster University in Webster Groves who is studying to be a nurse anesthetist.

     "My wife and I met at the old Shurtleff College," he said. Both are 1960 graduates of Southern Illinois University Edwardsville, he with a government degree, and she with one in business administration. McBride also has a master's degree in social work from Washington University and, from 1969 to 1985, worked for the Illinois Department of Children's and Family Services. When he left to start his printing business, he was assistant to the department director.

     When he started in the printing trade, he had no experience, but he and his wife wanted to buy a franchise and went shopping for one. Kwik Kopy was doing a marketing study' at the time and recommended that they start a Kwik Kopy franchise in Alton based on the studies results. Kwik Kopy helped them learn the business.

     McBride's duties at his company consist mostly of management, but he also does the delivery, "which is a big part of my day." His firm does the design and art work for its products on the premises.

     His hobbies are fishing and hunting and he is a Mason and a Shriner; he also has been a member of Rotary for 20 years.

     He has another hobby collecting political memorabilia. He has some 300 buttons of such politicians as Nixon, Clinton, Percy, Perot, Dukakis, LBJ, Hart, Wallace, Bryan, Eagleton, Reagan, Landon, Carnahan, Dole, Howlett, Ogilvie, Walker, Dirksen and Douglas.

     McBride said he and his wife invested $200,000 in their printing business and that on the first day they opened, he made $1 in profit. But he didn't save the bill for a souvenir as is common among startup companies. "When somebody asked me if I framed it, I said no, I spent it on lunch.

Published 2003, The Telegraph

Last modified: May 07, 2007