Blue Mountain Arts Publishing Co. of Boulder, Colo., has purchased Ogden-based Paper Expeditions Inc., a 2-year-old greeting card company that publishes the Elephantz and LadyBugs lines.
Financial details of the transaction were not released.Doug Clarke, co-owner of Paper Expeditions with Teresa Johnston, said the company started cutting its 15-employee work force earlier this year in anticipation of the sale. With closing of the deal, only Clarke, Johnston and one other artist will be working for the company in Ogden.
"We're basically creative people, and running this business, we found we couldn't do the things we wanted to do," Clarke said Thursday. "(The sale) gives us the opportunity to continue to create."
The Elephantz line, which was created in 1984 and purchased by Paper Expeditions in 1997, specializes in humorous cards. LadyBugs is a "country charm" card line created in 1997. The two lines will officially relaunch under Blue Mountain Press on Jan. 1, 2000.
Blue Mountain officials said they were happy to gain Paper Expeditions' accounts, since many of them are in the West and about 70 percent of them are not current Blue Mountain customers.
Blue Mountain has about 120 employees and 250 contracted sales representatives. The company's popular electronic greeting cards Web site was sold to Internet company Excite At Home earlier this year.