The Albany Newspaper Guild

Jennifer Gallop

For 12 years, she has been a marketing sales assistant at the Times Union.

Q: What do you do at your job?

A: Along with Sharon Powell, I design print mail and do list management for outside clients businesses and not for profits mostly in the Capital Region. We have an internal database of addresses of residences in the eight-county area (Albany, Columbia, Greene, Rensselaer, Saratoga, Schenectady, Schoharie, Warren). We can target by gender, income, age, even education, for marketing purposes. If a client wants to mail postcards to clients in Albany who have a certain income, we can do that. We do single sheet full color advertising inserts, like Hoffman's.

Q: How did you get to where you are?

A: After graduating from college, I worked at the weekly Spotlight. I started at the Times Union in the Circulation department as a service rep, moved to office manager in marketing under Bob Provost, worked for a while with an NIE (Newspapers in Education) program. Bob started the database department, which was transfered to Advertising. I have been with database marketing for 8 years.

Personal: Jennifer grew up in Feura Bush and graduated from Ravena Coeymans Selkirk High School. She graduated from Siena College with a marketing major. Jennifer and her husband Bill live in Glenville with their two daughters: Marina and Aubrey, and their pets: a dog, two cats and a rat named Annabelle.

Interests/hobbies: I enjoy soccer and play in a moms league at Afrim's on Albany Shaker Road, Colonie. I also enjoy photography.

Quote: “The Guild to me means many things, but mostly it provides me with a sense of job security and solidarity. It’s always nice to know that others are looking out for your best interests.”

Story by Azra Haqqie; photo by Lori Van Buren

Dan Higgins doesn't just send greeting cards... he designs and prints them on his own press

Ask anyone who knows Dan Higgins, and they'll tell you he's a funny guy. So it's no surprise the Times Union reporter has a side business making greeting cards that deliver witty one-liners. The surprise is that the brains - or at least the sense of humor - behind Crooked Spoke Press is Higgins' wife, Kate Mance.

After the couple bought a house in Glens Falls two years ago, they decided to make a little extra cash doing something they enjoyed. While trying to figure out which of their hobbies could be lucrative, Mance said she remembered the wedding invitations they didn't have.

I fell in love with the idea of letterpress when we were engaged, she said, but the high-end price tag didn't fit into the young couple's budget. With a large barn on their Sanford Street property and a growing number of Web sites devoted to printing, Mance and Higgins decided to go for it. They bought an 1893 Chandler and Price 8-by-12 press they found online from a man in Chicopee, Mass., who buys and sells used equipment. Within six months, the press was rolling.

Now, Crooked Spoke Press sells its greeting cards online at http://crookedspokepress.com, at area crafts shows and in two stores - Red Fox Books on Ridge Street in Glens Falls and Greenwich Letter Press in New York City. The cards consist of vintage clip art and Mance's quips. Our cards really reflect her off-beat sense of humor, Higgins said. His favorite has a sketch of a mariachi musician with a sombrero and guitar with Holy crap, you're great printed next to him.

The company also makes wedding invitations, baby announcements and other specialty orders. That's where we're able to make a profit, Higgins said. While the made-to-order printing already makes up about three-quarters of Crooked Spoke's business. Mance and Higgins hope to expand to include party and shower invitations, business and calling cards.

Higgins takes care of customer service and advertising, which now includes ads on Google.com and TheKnot.com. Mance does the hands-on work. She combines the text and graphics into a Photoshop document, sends it to a company in Syracuse that puts the image on a photopolymer plate, then loads it into the press. She mixes the colors by hand and runs the press with a foot treadle.

It's tricky technology - if you can even call it technology - because it's so old, Mance said. It needs a lot of finesse, a lot of tweaking. The fun part is all the experimentation, she said. It makes it all the more satisfying when you get it right.

By Rhonda Triller, Copy Editor, Features Department.

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