News from Becky Almeter, President of Hodgins Engraving
I am deeply saddened to report that we had a fire in our facility on Friday, May 2nd. While we are beyond grateful that all of our employees and all first responders on the scene were uninjured, the building suffered debilitating damage.
Since then, our management team has been working non-stop to restore operations as much as possible. The impact of this tragedy is deep for our Hodgins Engraving employee family, our community and customers, however we are intently focused on action we can take to move forward.
Our IT company has worked since they knew of the incident, to make sure our data and systems were backed up and started offsite restoration immediately. They’ve been working non-stop on this and for their efforts, we had partial access to our system within days, and anticipate having complete access and be fully operational by the end of the week (5/9/25). Their efforts have been incredible, and their quick and complete response has allowed our business to become more operational by the hour and by the day.
In order to provide our customers with updates on what to expect from us, I’ll outline our plan for operations and continue to update this page as we rebuild.
Already in Place as of 5/8/25
- We have secured a new office, located at 26 Harvester Ave, 2nd Floor, Batavia NY 14020. While we also have warehouse space available in our new location, please do not ship any items to this location until further notice. Please continue to send mail to our previous address until further notice.
- We have met with several local printers and print finishers to make plans for sourcing orders.
- We have started the process of documenting what inventory we had in the building, prioritizing what needs to be replaced ASAP to fulfill orders, and beginning claims.
- We have our phone routing to voicemail, with the request that customers send all communication to orders@hodginsengraving.com until further notice. We have a small team monitoring the emails and replying as quickly as we can. Our goal is to respond to each email as it comes in, with information as it becomes available.
- We have partial access to artwork files, order information, inventory, customer and billing information. We expect full access by Friday 5/9/25.
Next Steps On & After Friday 5/9/25
- Restore Pre-Press Operations – creating artwork files, proofs, and outputting files for production. Please keep in mind that we will have a week of emails and orders to work through so please extend your patience with pre-press needs.
- Restore our full customer service team
- Inventory will begin to be accounted for and replenished, including customer owned finished goods and fulfillment items, special order stock and envelopes that we held in inventory for customer specific needs, pre-printed items in our warehouse for customer order fulfillment, and masters/shells.
- Restore our AR and AP operations
How We Are Handling Orders That Were in Our Facility When the Fire Occurred
My husband, Jeremy Almeter who manages all of our production and myself, met with several industry partners on Monday 5/5 to tour plants and talk through details of their operations. We have a very close connection with many other printers, print finishers and specialty print operators in our industry, and we will need to rely on them for production for the immediate time being.
We were able to get a list of all orders in production at the time of the fire, and have been working non-stop to decide the course of action on a case-by-case basis.
- We are no longer going to be producing or sourcing production of rubber stamps, engraved signs, name tags, or embossing seals. Thank you to all of our long-time customers who have ordered these items for us for decades.
- We are no longer producing dies (photoengraving, plates, etching). We will be happy to help you source dies to a trusted vendor. Contact us at pe@hodginsengraving.com to discuss.
- We are triaging the work that is most time-sensitive to source production immediately to another vendor, including items that were rush jobs or that have specific deadlines, inventory that takes the longest to replenish, etc. We have been working with reduced capacity to handle orders due to having partial access to our computer system since Monday, however starting Friday 5/8 we will have our full customer service team operational, with full access to our system and artwork files.
I will continue to post updates to keep customers informed. We are working tirelessly to rebuild, and make progress each hour and each day. I have been overwhelmed by the resilience and support from our employees (who are our family), in the aftermath of this tragedy. Our team’s strength, combined with the outpouring of support from our industry and our community, will let us persevere, and we continue to rebuild what has been our families’ pride and joy for three generations.