PhillyDeals: Graphic Arts Inc. and Smith-Edwards-Dunlap Co. to share site in Philadelphia

Two Philadelphia printing firms, family-owned since the 1800s, have combined under one roof, hoping that together they can keep winning business to keep more than 100 printers busy putting out colorful physical documents in an increasingly digital age.

The third generation of Binders and Koontzes to own Graphic Arts Inc. (GALitho.com), a West Philadelphia firm that specializes in drug-company marketing jobs, has joined forces with the Lobel family's Smith-Edwards-Dunlap Co. (SED.com), which specializes in insurance, political, and commercial work. The firms will share one roof but will continue to do business under their separate names.

Graphic Arts has closed its leased plant at 41st and Chestnut Streets near the University of Pennsylvania and moved to SED's 120,000-square-foot Port

Richmond complex, Smith-Edwards-Dunlap boss Jonathan Shapiro told me.

Shapiro and Graphic Arts boss Fred Binder say the deal preserves jobs for Teamsters-Graphics Communications union printers and other employees of the firms, who average more than 20 years on the job.

"We have many cases of multigenerational employees," said Shapiro, who started as a shift supervisor at 25, more than 30 years ago. "Dean Miller, the supervisor of our mailing department? His father was our maintenance man." Earl Martin, information-technology manager, started as a teenage messenger.

Can the enlarged company survive as more and more print consumers move to digital formats?

With only a small design staff, the combined firms depend mostly on print-ready jobs brought into the office, not on moving work online to handheld devices.

"People will always need posters, kits, flip charts," Shapiro told me.

Suburban deal

The price includes Morris' assumption of a $38 million loan to New York Life Insurance Co.