ARLINGTON — Penway Media was busy this past fall printing tens of thousands of adult coloring books for the holiday season.
Printing copies of “Color Me Your Way 4” gave a boost to the small print and design company in Arlington.
Penway Media owner John Peeters said he is looking beyond paper to continue growing, though.
The company’s graphic designers, technical innovation and focus on quality are key to future success, he said.
That focus on quality helped it win the work printing ”Color Me Your Way 4.”
The book’s author and publisher, Pam Smart, found out about Penway through a friend who lives in Snohomish County. Smart actually spent six years living in Everett and east of Oso before moving to Idaho about 20 years ago.
“I cried when I left” Washington, she said.
She started working on her first book in 2010. It was supposed to be an alphabet book for young kids. But Smart realized she did not have time to color in all of the book’s intricate images, she said.
So, after her husband, Ken, won $250,000 with a scratch-off ticket, they decided in 2011 to self-publish a few hundred copies as a coloring book. A local bookstore in Caldwell, Idaho, where the couple lives, was the first to carry it.
Then Costco started selling it.
While the book was originally meant for kids, adults started picking it up for relaxation, as creative outlets and even as art therapy, she said.
“It started with a prayer,” Smart, 58, said. From there, “it took off pretty quickly.”
She’s published four books in the “Color Me Your Way” series, and expects sales to break one million copies “any day,” she said.
Across the Atlantic, a Scottish designer, Johanna Basford, tapped into this new market around the same time with her own books. The first — “Secret Gardens” — was published in 2013. Various publishers have also followed the trend.
To keep up with holiday demand this year, Smart turned to Penway Media. She still works with printers in Idaho and Los Angeles, she said.
Penway’s printings included 11,000 copies for Toys for Tots.
The company is the only one in Snohomish County offering full-service graphic design, website design and printing, Peeters said.
The 33-year-old bought the company in 2013 from his mother, who started it in 1993.
Penway has 12 full-time employees. It went up to 30 to print “Color Me Your Way 4,” he said.
“These are high-quality books that require a lot of manual labor,” he said.
That allowed Penway to compete for the work with bigger print shops.
He said he hopes to get more work printing copies of “Color Me Your Way 5.”
That book is slated to hit Costco stores in March, Smart said.
“It’s special,” she said. It “tops all my books in terms of art.”
She is looking at expanding sales beyond Costco, as well as increasing sales outside the U.S. Though she does not want to undercut the Issaquah-based company, which gave her her big break, she said.
The “Color Me Your Way” franchise is “still growing,” Smart said.
Penway is growing, too.
Annual revenue in 2014 was 19 percent more than the previous year, and revenue should grow 25 percent again this year, Peeters said.
“Hopefully, we’ll keep that growth going” in 2016, he said.
He expects the company to get patents for a new printing method that infuses dyes into aluminum and steel, rather than painting or printing on the metal’s surface.
The process, called dye-sublimation, can be used for signs, building materials, even in aerospace manufacturing. Peeters said he recently met with Boeing officials to discuss potential applications. For Penway, the future is increasingly paperless, he said.
Dan Catchpole: 425-339-3454; dcatchpole@heraldnet.com; Twitter: @dcatchpole.
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