Wise: A Trade-Only Forms and Label Manufacturer Since 1969

Wise is a trade-only manufacturer of business forms, industrial and prime labels, and digital print, serving print distributors, commercial printers, and marketing services companies across the eastern United States. We have sold exclusively to the trade since our founding in 1969. We do not sell to end users, and we never compete with the customers we serve.

That single commitment has shaped every decision we have made for more than five decades. When a distributor partners with Wise, the customer relationship stays theirs. We handle the manufacturing, the engineering, and the fulfillment behind the scenes.

How Wise Started

The Wise story begins with a newspaper. In 1903, the Wise family purchased the Butler Eagle in Butler, PA, a paper the family still owns today. In 1964, David Wise acquired Eagle Printery, the newspaper’s commercial printing arm.

David quickly ran into a problem. Hundreds of commercial printers were already competing in the Pittsburgh area, and the market was saturated. If the business was going to grow, it needed a direction with room to run. So in 1969, David Wise reinvented the company as a trade-only printer of business forms, and Wise Business Forms (now commonly known as Wise) was born.

More than 50 years later, Wise remains trade only, employs 200 to 250 people, and ranks among the top 10 independent forms manufacturers in the United States by sales volume.

Family Ownership Across Generations

Wise is a family-owned business, now led by the second generation. Bill Prettyman and his brother, Jeff Prettyman, nephews of founder David Wise, own the company today.

Bill joined Wise in 1980, brought on by his uncle to expand the company geographically. He launched the Indiana operation in 1981 and the Georgia operation in 1985, went on to become Executive Vice President, and took over as President and CEO in 1994. When David Wise retired in 1994, the company moved its headquarters from Pittsburgh to Alpharetta, GA, where it remains today.

The third generation is already at work. Bill’s son, Will Prettyman, joined Wise in 2017 to lead the label division and serves as General Manager of the Anderson, SC labels plant. You can read more about Bill, Jeff, Will, and the rest of the leadership team on our Executives page.

Growth Through Acquisition

Wise has grown both organically and through a series of strategic acquisitions that have expanded its footprint and its capabilities:

• MPX (2002)
• Woodbury Business Forms (2005)
• Brandmark (2017)
• Datatel Resources (2017)
• Shawnee Systems (2019)
• Mini Data (2024)
• Phoenix Data (2024)
• Victor Printing (continuous and unit set forms assets, 2024)
• APEX Color (business forms assets, 2025).

Today, Wise operates five manufacturing plants: Alpharetta, GA; Butler, PA; Fort Wayne, IN; Portland, ME; and Anderson, SC. The plants sit along key transportation routes across the eastern half of the country, so wherever a distributor is located, a Wise facility is close enough to serve them efficiently.

What Wise Manufactures

Wise produces three broad categories of product, all for resale only.

Forms: We manufacture continuous forms, cut sheets, unit sets, jumbo rolls, checks, and more, with particular strength in short-to-medium-run custom work.

Labels: We produce industrial, durable, and prime labels in runs as long as the millions and as short as one, including serialized, security, and RFID labels.

Digital: We produce short and medium runs on the same substrates as our flexo presses, so a run of 500 carries the same durability as a run of 500,000. While we do not offer print-on-demand commercial work, we do run digitally produced programs for high-volume, recurring business forms jobs such as statements, notices, and internal business documents.

Explore the full range on our Forms, Labels, and Digital Printing pages.

What Makes Wise Different

Plenty of manufacturers can print a label or a form. Here is what sets Wise apart for the distributors who partner with us.

1. We are trade-only. We sell exclusively to distributors, resellers, commercial printers, and marketing services companies, and never to end users. Your accounts stay your accounts.
2. We solve problems other manufacturers can’t. Wise specializes in the work that isn’t in a catalog, from dual-substrate label carriers that eliminate packaging mismatches to tags that survive extreme heat treatment. When a distributor brings us a challenge that stumped their last supplier, that is the work we want. See our case studies for real examples.
3. We offer both forms and labels under one roof, an unusual combination in the trade that lets a distributor serve a customer’s operational print and durable label needs through a single partner.
4. Our quality is certified and consistent. Our Anderson, South Carolina labels plant has held ISO 9001:2015 certification for 24 years, and we are a UL-authorized label supplier with expertise in the UL 969 standard.
5. We help distributors sell more and reorder more. Our WiseLink portal gives distributors 24/7 order management, pricing, reorder tools, and cooperative marketing materials, and our Repeat Order Predictor Engine (ROPE) forecasts when a job should reorder based on its history. Over the past 10 years, more than 500 Wise jobs have repeated more than 20 times each.
6. We help distributors build expertise. Through Wise Bootcamp, we train resellers in prepress, print, and finishing so they can talk about operational print like experts, even if they have never sold forms or labels before.

Learn more about all of our competitive differentiators on our Why Wise? page.

Get in Touch

Want to learn what Wise can do for your business? Request a quote, email us, or call (888) 815-9473. Wise offers dedicated support for resellers seeking pricing, custom capabilities, and fulfillment solutions.