Buffalo Rising Online

Apr 21st, 10:08am By Sandra Williams Gordon

Great Arrow Graphics once housed their production facility in the Pierce-Arrow Building. A small staff of five or six people, including Alan Friedman and his wife, Donna Massimo, ran the entire business.

Beginning with only six hand-silkscreened cards in 1984, Great Arrow Graphics grew into a premier greeting card company, with over a thousand designs in stock to date, 25 on site employees, and 70 artists worldwide. Great Arrow Graphics, now on Main Street in Buffalo, is truly a success story. And to this day, every single card is hand-silkscreened.

Great Arrow Graphics was a small startup in the late 70's, making hand-silkscreened wedding and birth announcements for their friends, “Just because we could," stated Friedman. "And that opened our eyes to the idea of cards--making small prints--because we had always done silkscreen prints, usually posters, or one-time prints, and we just really enjoyed the format. So we came up with a handful of little cards, abstract images that we thought might make interesting greeting cards, and we tried to sell them."

Soon, Great Arrow was commissioned to produce a custom card for Bloomingdales, which they have done every year since.

Great Arrow Cards are indeed special. Initially, one is met with the texture and feel of a silkscreened card. Then attention is drawn to the richness of colors and finally, to the spectacular design. It is a little work of art, hand produced--instead of mass printed--and made right here in Buffalo.

"Hand-silkscreen printing is physical work, but it doesn't demand strength as much as feel," Friedman said. "An experienced printer can control the pressure on the squeegee better than any machine, allowing us to reproduce the subtleties in an artist's original work. That's why artists love to design for us, and why Great Arrow cards have a richness and saturation that simply cannot be replicated by standard lithography."

Waxing poetic, Friedman offered, "Great greeting cards work on many levels. They are little symphonies. Image and language beautifully crafted for a simple, yet vital purpose — to help us find the words to say what is on our mind."

To date, Great Arrow Graphics has won 50 Louie's (the equivalent of an Oscar in the Greeting Card industry), three of which have been Card of the Year, the most recent being in 2007. It has also been featured in many prime time television shows, and Friedman himself was featured on the front page of the Wall Street Journal in 2006.

Great Arrow Graphics soon outgrew its production facility at the Pierce-Arrow Building. In 1995, they made the move to the Tri-Main Center, and over the years, have continually grown and are now settled into their 15,000 square foot studio that continues to house their design, printing, fulfillment and administration needs.

That growth has not always been met with smooth sailing. During the past decade especially, many greeting card companies have failed, and buying habits have changed.

"If you take a good look at what you buy in a box store it gives you a good look at how things are now sold in America," Friedman stated. "With the exception of some major cities, which still have very vibrant independent shopping districts, like New York City and San Francisco--and to some extent Elmwood Avenue. In fact, the Lexington Co-op is one of our best selling kiosks in the country."

Consumers have changed the market too, Friedman said, "So many people have changed their buying habits, so that when someone needs a toaster, they go to Target, when they need batteries, they go to Target, when they need toilet paper or towels or whatever. And so their card department is quite vibrant, but it is filled with products from just a couple of companies. And once you have decided to sell your products there and give them the discounts that you have to give to sell them there, well, what does that mean for the liability of your line for the small boutique stores?"

It's a question of company policy then, for Friedman. "You have to make a choice. We've made a choice to not be in that market. I'm not sure it's a wise choice, but it has maintained our position in the boutique market because most of those other lines are no longer sold in a boutique market. But that market has gotten smaller. The card industry is not as vibrant as it was in 1998, 1999."

In a small compromise, Friedman explains, "We've made decisions to sell to some chain stores in which we can preserve our independence…we are in Barnes and Noble, we are in Borders, we are in Wegmans, we are in Whole Foods in some locations…so you have to do that business on some level or there is just a tiny market."

As for staying put in Buffalo, Friedman said, "I've never come up with a reason to move somewhere else (he and his wife are both from New York City), and never found a significant reason to move out of the area and back to New York City. We've always loved it here, it is a very wonderful, livable city for reasons everybody knows, and it's been a great place to raise kids. It has been easy to find wonderful, creative staff, many with art degrees to work with us. Buffalo is a great pool to build our staff from and it is a great place to run a small business. If you can work with the cost of operating out of Buffalo and sell product to more expensive, more affluent markets, it is a great business plan.

"A lot of it is challenging, always fighting to sell our product in the market at a fair price, where anyone who has more than one store wants a 50 percent discount. But I think it's important to try and work with that. This business has been great and we've managed to eek along with it since 1978 or so…30 years…so that is a long time to operate a small business in Buffalo. But Buffalo is very supportive of businesses that stay here for the long haul. I am lucky to work with a lot of great people, my employees are wonderful and the landlord is a great person. We’ve invested a lot in our space, even though we don't own it, and a lot of people would consider it a silly thing to do but we've done it because it is a great place to be and that seems to be what working is all about. Investing your time and your resources back into your community."

Friedman has enacted his civic-minded philosophy through the Paint Box Project. Starting in 2006, Great Arrow Graphics began collaboration with the Roswell Park Cancer Institute to include greeting cards in their line and market it nationally.

"It has worked out nicely," said Friedman. "We've had a number of art parties, one a couple of weeks ago where kids come in and work specifically in an art form that we can use for the silkscreen process, and come up with a card that is sophisticated enough to use in our line. These cards have been well received. Besides being sold locally, they've been in Barnes and Noble for the past two years, and have done quite well. We really enjoy collaborating with the fine people who do that work. We get to meet the family and kids and it has been an incredible opportunity." And, of course, the proceeds go to Roswell Park to support research to help end cancer.

Friedman has another passion that he freely shares with the community: Astronomy. Visit avertedimagination.com to see his photographs of planets. "One of my favorite things to do is astronomy. It's a huge joy showing kids Saturn for the first time. I feel blessed to be able to do this stuff, and be able to make my own way and not be grounded to the dirt…yet."

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