Vertis has acquired direct marketing services provider USA Direct Inc., York, PA.
USA Direct will be a division of Vertis Direct Marketing and will continue operations in York. Vertis has manufacturing operations in Chicago; Irvine, CA; and Rochester, NY, plus three operations in New Jersey and another facility in Pennsylvania. Terms were not disclosed. The deal was final June 1.
“USA Direct is a well-established company in the industry,” said Dave Colatriano, senior vice president and general manager of Vertis’ DM and premedia business. “They are not an extremely large company, but they are a very good company. We operate in the same space, we call on similar customers, and in the past we have competed on work as well.”
USA Direct has expertise in design, printing, personalization and inserting for various specialized formats. The company delivers personalized DM programs to Fortune 1000 corporations including financial services firms, product manufacturers and nonprofits.
Vertis, Baltimore, provides targeted advertising, media and marketing services. It offers consumer research, audience targeting, media planning and placement, creative services and workflow management, targeted advertising inserts, direct mail, interactive marketing, packaging solutions and digital one-to-one marketing and fulfillment.
Vertis said that the USA Direct purchase increases its flexibility and range of direct marketing offerings by adding capacity to core manufacturing capabilities including digital, conventional and in-line printing. Mr. Colatriano called USA Direct a complement to Vertis.
“USA Direct has an expertise in the smaller-quantity executions, and their platform has evolved around that,” he said.
Vertis’ operations cover everything from sheet-fed to long-run mailings, “and we recognize that as clients become more focused and targeted that having a strong platform in short-run executions is very important,” he said.
Mr. Colatriano said the acquisition also gives clients access to USA Direct’s USA MailNow, a Web-based direct marketing order-entry tool offering the ability to design and produce direct mail pieces online.
USA Direct also has similar capacities as Vertis, Mr. Colatriano said, such as conventional laser, sheet-fed and digital platforms, and thus “will add additional capacity to our platforms. So you have a complement of, in essence, new offerings from the standpoint of a more robust short-run offering, as well as additional capacity in areas that we already produce.”
