Business

The Work We Do: Rita Hagerman, Academy Printing Services

I’m Rita Hagerman, the co-owner here at Academy Printing Services.

We’ve been a printing business for over 70 years. I’ve been here for 30 years. 

Probably 90 percent of our business is from the North Fork and Shelter Island. We have a couple customers on the South Fork and a couple further up west.

I’m from Southold, and I came here when I was four years old, so I’m a local, not a native — but my husband, who owns the business, is 12th generation Southoldian. 

We love this building. It goes back to 1867, it was a schoolhouse, and that’s where the business name came from.

I usually come in around 7 o’clock, our pressman works from midnight to 8 a.m. I get a chance to go over things with him, and we look at the jobs, see what stock we might need. Customers can come in at 8 a.m.

I do design work, as does our full-time graphic artist. I also do billing, folding, stapling, sweeping the floor, whatever else comes with having a business. One of my favorite things is to design logos or to put them to use with all the different parts that a business might need. We do commercial printing, so that’s letterheads, envelopes, brochures, menus, stickers and invoices. We do a lot of the work here. We have three different kinds of presses – we have sheet-fed, we have letterpress and we have digital color. Our digital color machine is new; we’ve only had it about a year and we’re getting great color off of that. 

Having a small business is really nice. We try to benefit the community that benefits us. And I think we all have that feeling you love to do business locally. 

A lot of people are under the impression that you can buy things less-expensive online, and in most cases, that’s not true. It’s worth comparing, but what we do is give you personal art that’s not canned art that you just picked up off a website. And we love doing that. 

Academy Printing Services is located at 42 Hortons Lane in Southold.

“The Work We Do” is a Suffolk Times multimedia project profiling workers on the North Fork. It is made possible by Peconic Landing in Greenport. See photos on Instagram @thesuffolktimes.