INKS - OUR RAISON D'ETRE

When it comes to mission statements, I like to believe that the simpler the better. I was told once that the mission statement for MacDonald's was "to sell hamburgers". Whether it's true or not, it's simple, to the point, and understandable.

Graphic Chemical's mission is to sell ink. Sure we carry all of the other things that you, as a printmaker, need to create your artwork, but the bottom line is to sell ink. I once had a relative, who worked here, that didn't understand that making ink was not our goal. It's terribly important in achieving our ultimate goal, but it's a hard cruel world out there, and our existance, like that of any company, depends on sales.

With that in mind, we work very hard at producing the best inks around the world. In doing a rough count on recent customers (recent being within the past couple of years), I found 55 countries outside of the U.S. that we have shipped to. We have stocking distributors in almost half of those. We don't sell in all of these places without having an outsatnding product.

Recently, we had a chance to tour the primary manufacturing facility for Mercedes-Benz near Stuttgart, Germany. I was really trying to draw parallels between their manufacturing process and our own, but I really don't see them. We have no robots, no real assembly line, no high tech equipment, and precious little automation. What we do have in common with them is old world craftsmanship. Our inks are all made to exacting standards uising formulas that in many cases date back to our founding fathers (or in my case, founding gandfather). Inks are weighed, checked, milled and packaged by hand. Our newest mills are only 50 or so years old, but they do exactly what we want them to do - make high quality inks.

If you haven't done so already, check out our inks - you'll be pleasantly surprised at the quality and affordability, we guaratee it.