SOMERVILLE, Mass. — Ronald E. Valentine looks on with pride at the back of the building he owns, which has a banner up thanking first-responders.
“They’re out there working, they’re front line people and they’re working really hard for us,” said Valentine, owner of Quality Graphics. He’s been donating these banners during the pandemic.
Valentine spoke with Boston 25 News outside of the Somerville building he owns. Valentine is a broker who works with clients and shares space for production with Signarama Somerville, one of Quality Graphics’ many subcontractors that have been flooded with covid-19 work of late.
“We did a few large runs for the City of Boston, some multilingual brochures we had to print within a couple of days -- 300,000 brochures,” explains Valentine.
Quality Graphics remained open throughout the pandemic as an essential business, Valentine says.
But they were not immune to coronavirus’ negative impact on revenue. They furloughed workers briefly in late March, they were back within two weeks. That ended when Quality Graphics received a federal Paycheck Protection Program loan, said Valentine. The company did not apply or receive state money for their work, Valentine explained.
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“We would never take advantage of a situation like that,” he said.
What they are doing is getting banners, signs and posters on social distancing and personal hygiene completed through their network of wholesalers that will go to customers who own gyms, restaurants and numerous other businesses in and around the region.
“It’s huge, they need to reopen, we need to get things moving,” Valentine said.
He estimates 25 percent of his orders pertain to COVID-19.
Meanwhile, his neighbor and subcontractor, Signarama, has been working furiously to get through the volume of COVID-19 related work.
“It’s probably 75 percent of the business because they are rushing to get open and they can’t get open without the signage,” said Neal Cutler, owner of Signarama Somerville. “It’s hard to keep up.”
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