No Quad Blues, But Quadracci Upholds Another Tradition

Joel Quadracci went white-collar today to ring the opening bell at the New York Stock Exchange, but he still managed to pay tribute to his company's history and culture.

Quadracci, the head of printing giant Quad/Graphics, was joined by family members and key executives on the floor of the stock exchange in celebrating Quad's new status as a publicly traded company. You can see them in the video above, though you'll want to skip past the first 49 seconds.

But Quadracci apparently left his "Quad blues" uniform -- the one he wore to announce the "new Quad" on Friday as discussed in The New Quad/Graphics Still Has The Blues -- and Soul, Too -- back in Wisconsin. He did pay homage to his late father, company's founder Harry V. Quadracci, by wearing a bow tie, as his father often did (but, I'm told, as Joel Quadracci rarely if ever does).

Nice try, Joel, but I'll bet your dad would have worn a bow tie and a Quad uniform. Then again, your dad never gobbled up a company that was much larger than Quad or led a multimillion-dollar IPO.

Meanwhile, there were sporadic reports of layoffs this week among corporate, sales, and office employees who came both from Worldcolor and from "old Quad". But there's no news yet about any plant closings or cutbacks.