Wine-focused Paragon Label sold to Resource Label Group

A rapidly growing Tennessee-based producer of packaging for wine, beer, cannabis, health care and other industries on Thursday said it acquired Paragon Label, a Petaluma company that has grown to become one of the North Coast’s largest wine-label printers in its 20-year history.

It’s also part of a consolidation in the wine-label printing business in the past several years.

Terms of the deal weren’t disclosed. Paragon founder Jason Grossman and his Sonoma County team came with the deal, according to the announcement.

Grossman, also president for the past decade of Mrs. Grossman’s, the 39-year-old Petaluma-based hobby sticker company Paragon grew out of, said in a statement that Resource Label’s “operational expertise and technical support” will fuel Paragon’s next phase of growth.

“It’s a very good strategic move,” Grossman told the Business Journal Aug. 16.

“We’ve been growing every year for the past few years,” he added. “We needed some horsepower, and Resource Label has it. They are very dedicated to the wine industry.”

Grossman continues to run Mrs. Grossman’s as president and now is president of the Paragon Label division for Resource Label. The sticker company has 15 employees, and Paragon has 45.

Resource Label has wine-label printers in Oregon, Washington and Canada, with some having more expertise in prepress operations and another in finishing processes such as foil application, Grossman said.

It took about a year to decide to sell to Resource Label, but he realized in talking to others in the organization and former owners that the backers were interested in growing the business units, rather than slashing costs and operations, Grossman told the Journal.

Paragon primarily serves makers of premium wine in Sonoma and Napa counties. It was an early innovator in adapting the high-volume, lower-cost potential of flexographic printing to the high-quality demands of wine labels. The company also integrated increasingly advanced digital offset printing lines, laser die-cutting adapted from former Santa Rosa company Lasercraft, and labels made from wood veneer. Paragon also developed proprietary finishing technology to enhance shelf appeal of wine bottles in stores.

Last year, Paragon rolled out its Out of the Bottle augmented-reality service, which uses Apple iOS and Google Android apps to connect video and other content to labels on the store shelf.

Backed by investors First Atlantic Capital and TPG Growth, Resource Label Group LLC makes pressure-sensitive labels, shrink sleeves, and RFID and NFC stock-keeping technology for the packaging industry. First Atlantic has held Resource Label for a long time, but the middle-market investment arm of TPG came on board in May. TPG Growth was an investor in Sonoma County pinot noir cult wine success Kosta Browne before its sale to Napa Valley’s Duckhorn Wine Co. last month.

Andrea Grossman started Mrs. Grossman’s in 1979, and her son launched Paragon Label in 1998, building on idle capacity at the nearly 60,000-square-foot Petaluma sticker printing plant. But as the wine-label business grew, it took on its own space and equipment there.

The two companies are using about 25,000 square feet apiece. Resource Label has given Grossman the green light to expand Paragon into the remaining space and outfit it with equipment in the next 12 months, he told the Business Journal.

Other North Bay wine-label printers have sold in recent years. G3 Enterprises, a brother company to E. & J. Gallo Winery, in February acquired Tapp Label, a St. Helena-based printer mostly for wine and spirits that had grown rapidly in the past four years, from Ingenious Packaging Group of Toronto. Last month, Resource Label acquired Ingenious.

Last year, Resource Label acquired Cellotape and Landmark Label in San Francisco’s East Bay area and picked up Gintzler International, which had New York and Texas locations. In 2016, Resource Label acquired RayPress Corp. in Alabama and Advanced Labels NW in Washington state.

Contact Jeff Quackenbush at jquackenbush@busjrnl.com or 707-521-4256.