Mail-Well Inc.: A Historical Reference to Envelopes, Printing and Mailing

This page is an independently compiled history and industry background reference. It is not a backup or copy of any web page published by the former Mail-Well, Inc., and none of that company’s text, images or logos are reproduced here.

If you followed an old link here expecting the company, you will not find it: Mail-Well, Inc. was a North American envelope and printing company formed in 1994, and on May 17, 2004 it announced its new name, Cenveo, and launched a new website at cenveo.com. The address mail-well.com/index1m.html once carried the company’s framed corporate entry page, and CreativePro’s 2001 article on direct mail still links the words “Mail-Well Inc.” to it, as does the Internet Archive’s September 2015 copy of the article. This page puts a sourced summary at that address. For the full timeline, with a source for every date, read Mail-Well Inc.: Company History and Its Cenveo Transition.

Mail-Well at a glance:

• Name before company. Rockmont Envelope Co. of Denver, founded in 1919 as Rocky Mountain Envelope Co., branded its envelopes “Mail-Well”; the year the trademark was first used is not recorded (company history entry).
• Formed in February 1994 from Georgia-Pacific’s envelope business and Pavey Envelope and Tag Corp. (company history entry).
• Four businesses by 1999, built through more than 40 acquisitions: envelopes, commercial printing, printing for distributors and labels (company history entry).
• Refocused from 2001: the prime label segment was sold in May 2002, and the company reorganized into commercial and resale segments in October 2003 (Form 10-K filings, 2001–2003).
• Renamed Cenveo, announced May 17, 2004, with cenveo.com and the NYSE symbol CVO (company release).

What Was Mail-Well Inc.?

Mail-Well, Inc. was a company that bought and combined envelope and printing businesses. It was formed in February 1994, when the Sterling Group merged Georgia-Pacific’s envelope business with a one-plant maker, Pavey Envelope and Tag Corp., with Gerald F. Mahoney as chairman and CEO. The name itself was older: according to the International Directory of Company Histories, Rockmont Envelope Co. of Denver, a business founded in 1919 and renamed Rockmont in the 1920s, branded its envelopes “Mail-Well” from early on. The entry gives no year for the first use of the trademark.

The same source counts more than 40 acquisitions between February 1994 and early 1999, which gave the company four businesses: envelopes, commercial printing, labels and printing for distributors. Its shares moved from NASDAQ to the New York Stock Exchange in December 1996 and traded there as MWL.

Takeaway: Mail-Well, Inc. existed under that name from 1994 to 2004; the envelope trademark is older, but its start year is not recorded.

Envelope and Commercial Printing Operations

Envelopes were the core of the company, and commercial printing became its second business. The December 1994 purchase of American Envelope Company made Mail-Well the largest envelope maker in the United States, and Supremex (1995) and Pac National (1996) added large Canadian operations. Quality Park Products (1996) brought envelopes for the office products market, and Murray Envelope (1997) added printing for distributors.

Commercial printing began with Graphic Arts Center in August 1995, a West Coast printer of “high-impact” work such as car brochures and annual reports, and grew with Anderson Lithograph in 1998. By its 2001 annual report, the company said it believed it was the world’s largest envelope manufacturer. It described two envelope markets: custom envelopes and packaging products, including Tyvek mailers used by the U.S. Postal Service, and envelopes sold through wholesalers, paper merchants and office superstores.

For how these product families work today, see the envelopes section, the overview of types of mailing envelopes and the comparison of paper and poly mailers.

Takeaway: Envelope making and commercial print ran side by side at Mail-Well from 1995 onward.

Historical Envelope Safety Innovations (Visulope)

The Visulope was a see-through envelope design reported in November 2001, as fear of anthrax-contaminated mail spread. CreativePro’s article of November 29, 2001 offered designers ways to make direct mail less alarming to recipients. Among them, it said Mail-Well had created the Visulope “in response to the public’s fears about biological terrorism transmitted through the mail”: its windows wrapped around the bottom of the envelope so that postal workers and recipients could see inside. The company said it was working on more products to improve mail security and safety.

A second envelope idea appeared in Chief Marketer on August 1, 2002. The two had different purposes:

	Visulope	Rub n Reveal
Reported	CreativePro, Nov 29, 2001	Chief Marketer, Aug 1, 2002
Idea	Windows wrapping around the bottom so contents are visible	Previously hidden messages shown when the recipient activates them
Purpose given	Reassure recipients worried about contaminated mail	Encourage recipients to interact with direct mail
What the report does not show	Sizes, materials, any safety testing or certification	Materials, process, or independent response data (the company cited only its own research)

Common mistake: Reading “see-through” as “tested safe.” The report describes visibility only; it gives no evidence of protection against contamination.

Takeaway: Treat the Visulope and Rub n Reveal as dated trade-press reports of product ideas, not as specifications.

Mail-Well Label and Printed Packaging Context

The label division was built from March 1998, classed as non-core and for sale in 2001, and the prime label segment was sold in May 2002. In March 1998 the company bought the label division of Lawson Mardon Packaging, then the label division of International Paper in May, and in mid-1999 the London-based label maker Porter Chadburn plc. The company history describes the business as a supplier of glue-on paper labels and graphic services to the food, beverage and household products industries.

One example is in Packaging World of April 30, 2001: Mail-Well Label supplied the front and back labels and a tamper-evident neck band for Marie’s Pourables, a Dean Foods line of refrigerated salad dressings in PET bottles. The next month the company changed course: its 10-K for 2001 reports a strategy review completed in May 2001, a decision to focus on commercial printing and envelopes, and a plan to sell the label business, which had $219 million of sales that year. The 10-K for 2002 records the sale of the prime label segment in May 2002. A separate printed office products group, kept by the company, went on supplying custom and stock labels, mailers and business forms through distributors.

Glue-on and pressure-sensitive labels are different technologies; the labels section and the comparison of pressure-sensitive and wet-glue labels explain the difference.

Takeaway: Mail-Well’s label history runs from 1998 to the May 2002 sale of its prime label segment.

From Mail-Well to Cenveo in 2004

Mail-Well announced its new name, Cenveo, on May 17, 2004. Chief Marketer had reported the plan on April 19, 2004, with the tagline “Vision Delivered.” The company’s release of May 17 added the website cenveo.com and the NYSE symbol CVO, and said the single name replaced 40 trade names the company had used over ten years. It followed an October 2003 reorganization that, according to the 10-K for 2003, grouped the company into commercial and resale segments.

The full company history separates the preview, announcement and publication dates and shows how the business structure changed from 2001 to 2004.

Takeaway: Cite May 17, 2004 as the date Mail-Well announced the Cenveo name.

Verified Sources and Editorial Note

Internet Archive records show what this address used to be. Its capture index lists eight successful captures of mail-well.com/index1m.html between December 13, 2001 and February 7, 2004, and “not found” responses from January 2005 onward. The December 2001 capture is a frameset: a top bar, a left navigation frame and a main home frame, with page metadata covering commercial printing, envelopes, labels and printed office products. The framed pages themselves were not retrieved, so their content is not described or copied here.

What this reference does not cover: events after May 2004; sizes, materials or availability of the Visulope; and any independent data on Rub n Reveal. It offers no products, addresses, ordering or customer support, and it speaks for no company. Company and product names are used only to identify the history.

Facts on this page come from the sources listed below, all accessed on October 10, 2026, and each date given is the date of the event or of the report as stated. How sources are chosen and checked is set out in the editorial policy; who runs this site is explained on the About page. To report an error, use the contact page.

Takeaway: This address now holds an independent, sourced summary; the company history has the detail.