Pop-Tone paper is now available in 15 vibrant colors. These candy sweet colors will make your creative project pop with flavor, and every sheet in the Pop-Tone line is manufactured with clean, renewable energy. In this episode of our podcast, we sit down with Brian French of French Paper Company. We’ll ask him about the Pop-Tone color palette and we’ll even get into some of the history of the mill at French Paper Company, a family business going on 140 years.

Click the following link to listen, or right click and “save as” to download and listen at another time:
LCI Paper Podcast #34 – French Paper Company Interview

Here is a transcript of the interview:

Brian, what is your current role with French Paper and how has it evolved?

You know, the best way I can really answer that question is to say, a little bit of everything. As a small, independent paper mill, we really have to take on multiple roles so I do whatever I can to play my part in that. My grandpa always says the best way to be a business man is to be well rounded, so what better way to do that than to have my hand in as many things as possible. I do anything from sweeping floors to web site support all the way up to traveling sales; so kind of a little bit of every single thing.

So three generations of French’s at the company currently?

Currently we have my grandfather who’s 86 years old and he’s here every day, my father who’s the president—Jerry French, and then myself.

What’s your grandfather’s name?

My grandfather’s name is Ed.

Can you give me some history on the mill and French Paper Company in general?

Yeah, definitely. There’s plenty of history around here. Next year will be our 140th year so we’ve been around for a long, long time. We’re in little Niles, Michigan in the southwest corner of the state. We’re currently on our sixth generation if you count me so we’ve been family-owned all the way through. A lot of people think we’re from France because of our name but we’re definitely American all the way.

We created the industry’s first non-animal imitation parchment in 1949; we pioneered recycled papers throughout the 50s; and we installed a hydroelectric generator in 1922. So we have been green before it was the cool thing to do or before people really asked for it.

Can you give me any more details on the generator that produces the electricity for the mill’s operation?

Yeah, definitely; like I said before, in 1922, it was actually my great grandfather [Frank French] who was running the company at the time. The mill is situated on a river, the St. Joseph River, here in Niles and what he did is built a dam and put in a hydroelectric generator to supply the electricity for the paper machine. As the years have gone by and demand grows with production, we’ve installed more generators. Now, we’re in our 88th year of hydroelectric production and we’re actually up to 4 generators now.

A lot of our competitors brag about buying energy credits from power companies and things like that. We actually do it right here on the site the old fashioned way. Not only is it environmentally responsible, but we find it pretty fiscally responsible as well for the company. It helps us keep our costs down and supply better, cheaper paper for our customers.

Believe it or not, when we’re not manufacturing paper, we sell our excess power back to the energy grid. So we support our community that way as well.

So the river is able to produce extra energy, wow.

Yeah, exactly right. It’s always going whether the paper machine is going or not, so the energy is coming out one way or another. We’re up to 4 generators now to make that happen but our paper machine in the mill itself actually runs entirely off those generators.

Gotcha. Now we’re talking about Pop-Tone today as well. When was the Pop-Tone line launched?

The official launch was in the summer or 2007 so it’s roughly 3 years old at this point.

		Banana Split
		Berrylicious
		Blu Raspberry
		Grape Jelly
		Grapesicle
		Gumdrop Green
		Hot Fudge
		Jellybean Green
		Lemon Drop
		Orange Fizz
		Pink Lemonade
		Razzle Berry
		Sour Apple
		Tangy Orange
		Wild Cherry

Our staff is excited about the new colors that Pop-Tone brings to our lineup at LCI. It really fills a void that we had here with some of these really more vibrant colors and I guess some could be described as pastel and then some are deeper. What was French Paper trying to achieve when selecting this color palette?

Actually, as with most of our paper grades, Pop-Tone was generated based off the needs of the design community. As we travel the country and meet with designers, we listen to what they are missing in their color palette. 3 years ago, we heard a lot of people saying, actually complaining, that most of the text and cover paper mills were discontinuing all their color lines and kind of migrating toward creating whites and ivories. We never want the design community to lack options in any way so we decided to make a new grade with as wide a color range as possible. That’s kind of what came from Pop-Tone. Once we got the colors picked out, they pretty much named themselves and the grade created itself. Still today, it’s one of the largest grades on the market as far as popular color choice.

We’ll continue talking about Pop-Tone a bit. I’ve never seen a paper manufacturer guarantee printing performance in home grade printers like laser and inkjet. Can you tell me more about that, as many of our customers print the papers we carry at home.

Yeah, definitely. As a small paper mill with a lot of history, we know our customers expect a lot from the sheets we create, no matter what the end use is going to be. Whether it’s a home user or a large commercial printer, they’re going to expect a lot from the printing on our sheets. And over the life of our mill, we have been able to develop a good sheet that’s successful across the full range of printing techniques. So we feel very comfortable about our sheet when it comes to that. However, with the difference in brands and models of printers, we do always suggest a test run before paper purchase. But our guarantee is limited to the replacement of the paper if it’s deemed defective by the mill. I can tell you in my two years of being at the mill; I cannot honestly remember a single negative result though. Very rarely do we stumble upon something like that.

What has the overall reaction been to Pop-Tone since the launch in 07?

It’s been absolutely fantastic! We’ve seen it used from everything from personal stationery to band posters all the way up to corporate annual reports; people have really taken kindly to it. We were worried when we first brought it out, because the colors were that popular style of color. We didn’t think a whole lot of large corporate companies would get into them. But what it’s come down to is a lot of companies can see a color in there that really matches their logo or type of branding they really like and it gives them a lot more options than they had prior. Since its release, the sales have shown double digit growth the entire time. As far as we can tell, they’re going to continue to do that. It’s been very, very popular.

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That wraps up our interview with Brian French of French Paper Company, the environmentally friendly manufacturer of Pop-Tone specialty papers. If you haven’t seen these new colors, see our selection of Pop-Tone paper card stock and text weight sheets.