The new company will occupy the existing PrintMailers' 112,000sqft location that's large enough to house almost all the combined equipment and presses from the two companies. Though the expiration of the lease at the Ideal Printers' Houston facility was one of the triggers for the merger, Ideal Printers owner Larry Vaughn told PrintWeek that he and PrintMailers owner Steve Johns quickly realized there were many other advantages in joining forces.

"Steve does quite a good job in mail and fulfillment, while I do quite bit of digital and he doesn't necessarily do a lot of that," he said. "There's also very little client overlap and though most of our clients are local, we do have national customers and this merger will give us more of those opportunities as well as additional services to offer."

Johns added, "We have some (equipment) overlap. Larry has a 40" press while I have a brand new 2924 Komori so we'll put both of those machines together. He's got two Indigos, I've got one. He's got quite a bit more black and white digital capability than I do and we both have similar bindery equipment. We don't expect to surplus much of the equipment - we'll just move all the equipment together and we'll run a full two-shift operation - that way we'll keep the equipment busy pretty much round the clock."

One segment the newly merged company will look it expand is in large-format printing. "We're planning on creating our own large-format department in the facility," Vaughn said, adding the company has HP presses for large format. "Right now we've got a 9000, we've got a 5500, we've a lot of bindery pieces and laminators and we're looking at latex devices and possibly down the road we'll be looking at flatbed."

Vaughn and Ideal Printers also bring some web-to-print, as well as web design and social media capabilities to the new company. "That's why we chose Seebridge Media as the new name," he said. "We wanted to get away from the old printer connotation and really create an image of a multi-channel marketing company."

Vaughn added the Houston printing market seems to be on the upswing, but noted, "You have to think outside of the box - you can't just go into customers talking only about commercial print - you need to add the social media aspect, you've got to be able to add mail fulfillment, print is just a small piece of the puzzle."

Seebridge has not made any decisions yet of whether the merger will result in any staffing changes, but Vaughn noted, "The economics of this merger are not built on layoffs."