Personal Injury Attorneyin Rock Hill, SC.

A thousand workers bustle around-the-clock in the wee few days left before Christmas. They cut, combine and check, creating truckloads of personalized gifts they’ll slip into small boxes for delivery. Holiday memories depend on them.

No, this isn’t some “once upon a time” tale or children’s cartoon. It’s every day from Thanksgiving to Christmas, every year, at the massive Shutterfly plant in York County.

“The holiday season, the Christmas season, is the busiest that we have by far,” said Dave Bull, vice president of manufacturing at the company’s 300,000-square-foot production center in Fort Mill.

There are Christmas cards and gifts, but also other turn-of-the-year celebrations like Hanukkah, Kwanzaa and New Year’s Day that prompt people to create. At Shutterfly, they’ve seen them all.

“These are products that create memories,” Bull said. “So whatever that memory is for you, we make it.”

Santa Clara, California-based Shutterfly creates photo books and prints, cards, calendars, canvass prints and other custom gifts. Customers can upload photos online and put them on anything from glass ornaments to pillows, plaques or pint glasses.

In 2013, Shutterfly moved its paper printing operations from three Charlotte facilities to the Fort Mill location just off Interstate 77, at Shutterfly Boulevard.

A former plant that duplicated VCR tapes and had a flea market on the side transformed into the largest line of digital printers, at more than 40, in the country. The Fort Mill site produces items for Shutterfly customers east of the Mississippi River.

Today, Shutterfly has more than 20 press areas with printers in Fort Mill that are all transferable between items.

They still make cards and photo books. They also make custom fabric. Most of the year, about 350 employees on four shifts work 24-hours-a-day, every day but Sunday.

Then, fall hits.

The last six to eight weeks each year, Shutterfly pumps out orders seven days a week. The site runs with about 1,000 workers across its four shifts.

Some seasonal workers return each year. Others come from York County or south Charlotte manufacturers whose operations lull when Shutterfly’s demand peaks.

“Every position in this facility grows larger,” Bull said.

The Fort Mill site produces more than 2 million cards per day between Black Friday and Christmas. Another 15,000 photo books and 5,000 canvas prints join them. Fort Mill creates about half of all the items packaged into orange Shutterfly boxes across three company facilities.

California production moved to Arizona in 2009, and a new Arizona facility opened in 2015. A Texas site followed in 2020.

Together, the three locations create more than 5 million cards, 45,000 photo books and 8,000 canvas prints per day during peak holiday season.

The Fort Mill site fills more than 100,000 orders per day this time of year.

Bull is working his 15th holiday rush at the Fort Mill plant. It’s the eighth year for site director Nikki Kral.

Both of them took The Herald through the massive plant recently and answered questions about the reams of photo products zipping along rollers and production lines toward packing stations.

▪ What keeps them up at night during the busy season?

It’s the adventure of each orange box once it leaves Shutterfly. It typically takes four to 10 days from when a customer clicks to submit an order to when it arrives on the doorstep. Production only takes two or three of those days.

“Then it’s transportation time,” Bull said.

▪ If folks who live in York County place an order, will they get items faster since Shutterfly is in Fort Mill?

Shutterfly algorithms optimize which delivery system to use based on increasing speed and decreasing customer cost. They also depend on how fast customers need items.

There’s a “super rush” option on orders that will push them to the front of the line, Kral said, but it’s much more expensive than standard shipping.

UPS is the primary option, sending out three or four truckloads of items daily from the Fort Mill plant. Once items leave the site, they may go to a regional hub in Tennessee or somewhere else, depending on the delivery carrier. So local customers get their items the same way anyone else would.

“Unfortunately, we don’t have a pickup service,” Bull said.

▪ Have there been any dramatic moments during the holiday rush?

Among the vast number of employees are 30 on-site machine technicians. Production lines can quickly transition from one print product to another if needed, too.

“We can’t afford a day of down time,” Bull said, “or an hour of down time.”

For a company that makes calendars, it’s the calendar that can pose some of the toughest challenges. This year, for instance, there are six fewer days between Thanksgiving and Christmas than some prior years had.

▪ Do you look at people’s pictures while you’re making items?

It’s too busy to look through people’s photos for the fun of it, but workers do see photos when they check items for print quality, Kral said. Without giving specifics, yes, there is the rare order Shutterfly can’t produce due to the image a customer uploaded.

“I don’t think people always realize somebody has to print them and handle them,” Kral said.

▪ Are the discount promotions late in the year an attempt to get people to hurry up and order already?

That’s part of it. Pre-Thanksgiving orders for Christmas delivery are a big help for Shutterfly in leveling out peak production orders. It isn’t just Christmas. Customers tend to wait until the final hours before ordering ahead of most major holidays.

“It’s across the board,” Bull said. “Procrastination is real.”

▪ After Christmas, what are the biggest holidays or rush times?

Father’s Day is next. Then it’s Mother’s Day and Valentine’s Day. The main peak season apart from end-of-year holidays comes in late spring and early summer. Shutterfly bought Lifetouch in 2018 for more than $800 million, creating a surge of demand for school pictures, yearbooks and graduation photos.

▪ Is it hard finding all those seasonal employees?

Shutterfly will bring on more workers than it needs to get enough who will stay through the peak season. Years ago Shutterfly needed about 1,200 seasonal workers at the holidays. Automation cut that number in half.

Many manufacturers work on the same holiday retail schedule that could limit worker availability, Bull said. But other manufacturers don’t, so hiring agencies are able to shift some workers who want more hours.

Though Shutterfly creates millions of items each day, it’s the sentimental nature of each order that helps in getting and keeping workers.

“It means something to people,” Bull said. “You’re not making parts to a machine. You’re making memories for people.”

This story was originally published December 20, 2024, 9:47 AM.

The Herald

803-329-4076

John Marks graduated from Furman University in 2004 and joined the Herald in 2005. He covers community growth, municipalities, transportation and education mainly in York County and Lancaster County. The Fort Mill native earned dozens of South Carolina Press Association awards and multiple McClatchy President’s Awards for news coverage in Fort Mill and Lake Wylie.

School board officials say these changes will be going into place starting in July of 2025.

ROCK HILL, S.C. — Rock Hill Schools says it's making administrative changes that will go into effect at the start of the 2025 school year. Officials explain the changes are happening so they can provide more funding for school-level positions instead.

This change was initiated at the June school board meeting when a motion was made to “a proposed budget to restructure the district office organizational chart – so additional funding could be directed to schools and classrooms instead of the district office.”

Following that motion, the school board decided to start “reorganizing” and “reducing force.”

School officials said to stay within the budget, the school board will pull or eliminate funding from district-level positions and refocus them on school-level positions.

While some teachers in the district are seeing pay raises, other positions are being “reorganized” or “reduced.”

“We know that in order to attract the best educators so our kids get a fantastic education, we have to pay them and pay them well," school board chair Helene Miller said. "So, priority to pay a school-based staff rather than having a large district office staff was priority."

So far, the district has confirmed the Virtual Academy option will not exist next school year and schools will be losing the Day Treatment Center – which is a short-term mental health treatment center for students.

The district has also confirmed they are looking to outsource some school therapists but didn’t confirm what organization they will be outsourcing from.

“We know this is important, it is a priority to us and we also know it’s not a budget-friendly sustainable option to continue doing things the way we’ve been doing them," Lindsay Machack, the district's executive director of communications and marketing, said. "So we are trying to make sure we can keep the service and still maintain the budget that we have."

Parents in the community said they use the currently-available mental health resources and hate the idea of a potential change.

“So much less running around you have to do," one parent told WCNC Charlotte. "You have to make it easy for the parents to get the help they can get. There’s so much added pressure as a parent when you have disabled kids. There’s so much more you have to take care of."

"One of my children was suffering from severe anxiety at school because a teacher embarrassed them," Sarah Horton, another parent with kids in the district, said. "The guidance counselor suggested the mental health counselor and it was so incredibly helpful.”

Horton added that “this [change] will certainly impact the students who need it.”

School board officials say these changes will be going into place starting in July of 2025 and more changes could be underway before that point.

Contact Anna King at aking2@wcnc.com and follow her on Facebook, X, and Instagram.

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McKesson Medical-Surgical in Rock Hill has announced another round of layoffs, its second time cutting jobs in the past three months. They’re part of plans to close McKesson’s Rock Hill facility.

The company plans to lay off 179 workers by early March, according to a WARN report filed Dec. 13 with the South Carolina Department of Employment and Workforce. Large employers eliminating positions or companies reducing a large percentage of their workforce have to file those reports by state law.

McKesson filed a similar report in September, announcing 13 layoffs to be completed by mid-November. The combined 192 layoffs would tie McKesson with another York County company, Stanley Black & Decker, for the seventh-most jobs cut this year among 54 WARN reports filed statewide.

McKesson will make changes to its broader operations to become more efficient while simplifying its infrastructure, according to a statement issued to The Herald. “As part of these initiatives,” the statement said, “we have made the difficult decision to close our distribution center in Rock Hill.”

Employees were informed in September, the same month the initial WARN report was filed, according to the company. Workers who are losing their jobs will receive severance packages and other “career transition assistance,” according to the company. A full site closure is expected in March.

Located at 885 Paragon Way, McKesson is a distributor of medical and surgical supplies for hospitals, doctor offices and other health fields.

McKesson Medical-Surgical based in Virginia is part of the larger McKesson medical distribution and healthcare technology company based in Irving, Texas.

In 2014, McKesson Medical-Surgical announced $27.5 million plans to open a new York County distribution facility in Riverwalk Business Park.

The 300,000-square-foot facility would bring more than 140 jobs to Rock Hill, according to the announcement. The project received state job development credits and a $200,000 state grant for construction.

The Rock Hill site would serve doctors, surgery centers, long-term care facilities and home care businesses across the Carolinas, according to that announcement.

WARN reports list notices either as permanent layoffs or permanent closure.

The Black & Decker announcement, for instance, was listed as a closure to be completed by year’s end. Both McKesson notifications are listed as layoffs.

With the latest WARN report from McKesson, York County has 385 jobs impacted by layoff or closure notifications this year. Only Charleston (898 jobs), Georgetown (753) and Lexington (441) counties have more.

Only Greenville County, with five, has more permanent layoff notifications this year than York County.

York is one of three counties with three permanent layoff notifications this year, and that’s grouping the two McKesson filings together. Wisconsin-based Lost Boys Interactive announced a single layoff impacting a York County job.

This story was originally published December 17, 2024, 9:55 AM.

The Herald

803-329-4076

John Marks graduated from Furman University in 2004 and joined the Herald in 2005. He covers community growth, municipalities, transportation and education mainly in York County and Lancaster County. The Fort Mill native earned dozens of South Carolina Press Association awards and multiple McClatchy President’s Awards for news coverage in Fort Mill and Lake Wylie.

COLUMBIA, S.C. (WCSC) - When South Carolina students from kindergarten through high school return from their winter break, a big change will greet many of them.

Starting in January, every public school district in the state is required to start implementing a student cellphone ban, if they have not done so already.

Earlier this year, lawmakers included a temporary law in the current state budget, called a proviso, that directs school districts to craft and enforce a student cellphone policy by the second half of the 2024-2025 school year.

But months before that directive came from the State House, Rock Hill Schools put its own policy in place.

“Our educators were giving the feedback to our superintendent and our school board members that the cellphones were a real distraction in the classroom,” Lindsay Machak, Rock Hill’s Executive Director of Communications and Marketing, said.

So beginning in August 2023, Rock Hill Schools told students from the morning bell to the afternoon dismissal bell, their phones had to be turned off and put away.

“There was that angst, that anxiety, and feelings of dismay over change. But once we really got it rolling, it was fine,” Machak said.

Rock Hill’s policy is essentially the rule students across South Carolina will have to follow, starting in January: No access to devices during the school day.

That includes cellphones, smartwatches, tablets, and gaming devices, with very limited exceptions, like permission for use in learning.

“What we know we’re doing here is giving students the freedom to focus. It’s the gift of focus, as opposed to something we’re taking away,” State Superintendent of Education Ellen Weaver, a chief proponent of this measure, said.

This fall, the State Board of Education adopted a model policy with those bell-to-bell restrictions, and every district’s policy had to be at least as strict as the state’s.

Exceptions would be allowed for students with IEPs and medical plans if the device is needed for medical or educational purposes, as well as for students who serve as volunteer firefighters or in other emergency organizations, with permission from their district superintendent.

Some school districts might opt for even stricter measures or put their own restrictions on students having their phones on buses or at after-school activities.

They are also allowed to decide what the consequences are for students who break the rules.

“We’ve encouraged districts all along to try to look at policies that remove the phone from the situation and not the student from the classroom,” Weaver said. “And so what we’re going to see over the next four or five months of the second semester as this is implemented in January, what’s working and what’s not working. And so we’re going to take a very close look at evaluating implementation and be able to make additional recommendations to districts to fine-tune their policies after that.”

With their policy now in place for three semesters, Rock Hill leaders attest it has sparked changes in behavior.

“Coming out of the pandemic, you saw a lot of kids who were on devices, on their phones, not really talking to one another,” Machak said. “But now, you go out to one of our high schools during class exchange or during lunch periods, or you see kids reconnecting over books, reading books, or having conversations.”

Districts that fail to adopt and adhere to a local cellphone policy could put their state funding at risk.

Weaver said the Department of Education will be in communication with districts and teachers to ensure these policies are being enforced.

Copyright 2024 WCSC. All rights reserved.

The manager shared that so far, monetary donations are nearing $2,000.

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ROCK HILL, S.C. — Neighbors in Rock Hill are continuing to come together for the families affected by the tragic shooting that took place just one week ago at Budiman’s Smoke Shop on Cherry Road.

That shooting took the lives of 27-year-old Celci Johnson and 49-year-old Emad Saadalla.

“You can tell how much the community does care and how much they want to help,” explained Kayla Stanek, the front house manager at Richie’s Italian Bistro and an organizer for the donation drive.

Since the shooting, the community has stepped up to collect donations for the victim’s families to ensure they’re taken care of for the holidays. People have taken the time to bring bags of gifts and essentials to the restaurant to be delivered to the family.

Stanek also said so far, monetary donations are nearing $2,000.

“This is the least we can do. We can’t take the pain away from them but if we can just make them smile and ease the pain – even if it’s just for an hour or 15 minutes - that’s all that matters,” she said.

The donation drive was initially scheduled to end Dec. 13, but Stanek says since the turnout has been so amazing she’s extending it throughout the weekend.

If you would like to donate, organizers say they’re still looking for diapers, wipes, and clothes specifically for a 15-year-old and 11-year-old.

You can drop off all donations this weekend at Richie's, located at 819 Terrace Pak Ste. 103 in Rock Hill.

WCNC Charlotte wants to hear about your loved one

If your loved one was impacted by this incident, WCNC Charlotte hopes to make this process less painful with our More Than A Number initiative. With your help, we want to share who your loved one was with our viewers in North Carolina and South Carolina. When you're ready, fill out the form below or send us photos, memories and other details about them to desk@wcnc.com.

Contact Anna King at aking2@wcnc.com and follow her on Facebook, X, and Instagram.

You can stream WCNC Charlotte on Roku, Amazon Fire TV and Apple TV, just download the free app to get the news that impacts you.