Firm an invitation to get creative

WORDS’ WORTH: Arley-Rose Torsone and Morgan Calderini, co-owners of Ladyfingers Letterpress, founded the Pawtucket company in 2011. The company makes custom-designed invitations and greeting cards that personalize the message with old-fashioned hand lettering. / PBN PHOTO/TRACY JENKINS
WORDS’ WORTH: Arley-Rose Torsone and Morgan Calderini, co-owners of Ladyfingers Letterpress, founded the Pawtucket company in 2011. The company makes custom-designed invitations and greeting cards that personalize the message with old-fashioned hand lettering. / PBN PHOTO/TRACY JENKINS

Custom-invitation maker Ladyfingers Letterpress is poised for rapid growth.
By spring, the Pawtucket company will be selling a Heritage Baby Album, interactive greeting cards and a new line of greeting-card designs that incorporate photos. It’s a tall order for a firm that’s not yet 3 years old.
The boost in production and exposure is expected to flip the company’s revenue stream from 80 percent individual custom work and 20 percent wholesale and retail to the reverse.
“It’s going to be a big year,” predicted Morgan Calderini, project manager, letterpress operator and co-owner, with designer and wife, Arley-Rose Torsone.
Revenue doubled in 2013 to $350,000 from the year prior, said Calderini. The owners began working on the company right before they got married in September 2011 and officially formed the S corporation the following March.
Ladyfingers Letterpress makes custom-designed invitations and greeting cards that personalize the message from the sender using old-fashioned hand-lettering, custom-design work and letterpress printing. Use of the letterpress technique is what makes the company’s product stand out, Calderini said.
“People are really hungry for the tactile feeling of pressed paper,” she said.
Instead of using lead type to print words, a hand-drawn design is exposed to film, which is then exposed to a printing plate made of polymer. Then, through a light table, the image hardens and is raised anywhere the light hits the plate, Calderini said. The printing plate is used to press the image and ink into the paper, leaving a deep impression.
The business materialized after the couple made their own wedding invitations – an oversized, hand-lettered poster printed in neon inks. They both left jobs with nonprofits to launch the company with no more than commitment and a credit card.
“We started out with no money,” Calderini said. “Everything I’d ever read [said], ‘Be sure you have enough cash for one year.’ We were well-aware no bank would give us money to start our business, but we didn’t have anything to lose. If we had waited ’til we had more money, we never would have started.”
One of their favorite creations is a wedding invitation for a couple named Jeremy and Joe, who invited 30 close relatives and friends to their wedding on a mountaintop in Mexico. The invitation features mini piñatas that the recipient breaks open to reveal a poster invite and candies. “Our job a lot of times is to drum up excitement and set the tone for an event,” Calderini said – and that’s not just weddings but baby showers, parties, and milestones, to name a few.
Torsone is the designer, while Calderini is project manager, a job she likens to air-traffic controller, coordinating the staff’s work. Most jobs typically take two to three months to complete.
“As our business has grown and we have more people to help us, we have sometimes 50 to 75 projects we are working on at one time,” she said.
Launched last May, the company’s wholesale line of greeting cards is currently sold to 75 shops across the country, including Urban Outfitters, which at one point ordered 3,000 cards. Calderini reached out to Attleboro Enterprises, an adult program for adults with developmental disabilities, which helped by packaging the entire order, she said.
Next, the Heritage Baby Album, due this May, is being developed with Interpak, a Pawtucket manufacturer, Calderini said. She’s convinced there is a market for it.
“It seems crazy in this day and age when everyone is Instagramming pictures,” she said, “but we’re going to go back to the time when you actually had a baby book with pictures that you wrote in.”
Also coming this spring are the new interactive greeting cards.
“They will be different shapes and will have interactive elements,” she said. “They will be the gift, pushing the limits of what greeting cards can be.”
Within the next six months, Ladyfingers Letterpress also will offer designs that can be selected and used in conjunction with uploaded photographs before the greeting card is printed and shipped.
In October, the company participated in fashion week in New York City at the invitation of the Martha Stewart Bridal Magazine, Calderini said.
“Unless you are going to do it yourself,” Calderini said, “you can’t find anybody else doing this type of thing.” •

COMPANY PROFILE
Ladyfingers Letterpress
OWNERS: Morgan Calderini and Arley-Rose Torsone
TYPE OF BUSINESS: Printing and design
LOCATION: 1005 Main St., Studio 8116, Hope Artiste Village, Pawtucket
EMPLOYEES: 6
YEAR ESTABLISHED: 2011
ANNUAL SALES: $350,000

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