This profile is in active compilation — some details are awaiting a cited source.

Lees Printing is an independent commercial printer founded in 1973, for most of its life at 804 Central Avenue in Kansas City, Kansas, and now operating from Basehor. It runs both offset and digital presses and does the unglamorous work that keeps small businesses, advertisers, political campaigns and tax preparers supplied — envelopes, letterhead, business cards, carbon-copy forms, booklets, brochures, mailers — with typesetting and binding in house. It is a union shop, and it is one of the small locally owned printers still carried in the Wyandotte Economic Development Council’s local-owned business directory.

Description

Lees Printing is a small-format commercial printer — the kind of shop that a metro’s businesses, churches, unions, campaigns and accountants have run on for decades and that almost never gets written about. Its own site states its capabilities flatly: full offset and full digital, with a job list of single-colour and multi-colour work, booklets, brochures, business cards, carbon copies, envelopes, fliers, letterheads, post cards, posters, invitations and announcements, plus typesetting and binding.1

Its service pages are organised by customer type rather than by process — print for personal, print for business, print for advertisers, print for political, and income tax supplies.1 That last category is a tell about the shop’s actual clientele: small accounting and tax-preparation practices needing forms and carbon sets, a market the national franchise print counters do not serve well.

The shop’s long-standing address is 804 Central Avenue in Kansas City, Kansas — the commercial spine of the Central Avenue district — and that is the address at which the Wyandotte Economic Development Council still carries it in the printing category of its local-owned business directory.2 The company’s own site, however, has published a Basehor address on Parallel Road since at least 2023.3 The relocation is documented below and flagged as the main open question on this page.

Goods and services

  • Offset printing — full offset capability, single and multi-colour1
  • Digital printing — full digital capability1
  • Business stationery — business cards, letterheads, envelopes1
  • Forms — carbon copies and carbonless sets1
  • Marketing print — brochures, fliers, post cards, posters1
  • Booklets and bound work1
  • Invitations and announcements1
  • Political printing — a named service category1
  • Income tax supplies — forms and materials for tax preparers1
  • Typesetting and binding in house1

History

Lees Printing Company, Inc. is recorded in business-directory data as having been in commercial lithographic printing since 1973, at 804 Central Avenue in Kansas City, Kansas.45 The company’s Facebook page has described it as serving the greater Kansas City area for 47 years, consistent with that founding date.6 No first-party history page exists on the current website, and no press coverage of the shop was located.

The Central Avenue block carries an unresolved thread. A separate business listing exists for “Eaton Cunningham Lee’s Printing” at 798 Central Avenue — two doors from 804 — which suggests either a merger with, or succession from, an Eaton-Cunningham printing business on the same block.7 That would be an ordinary pattern in this trade, where small letterpress and offset shops absorbed one another across the twentieth century, but nothing was found documenting it and it is recorded here only as a lead.

At some point before November 2023 the company’s published address became 14690 Parallel Road in Basehor, Kansas — still in the Kansas City metropolitan area, in Leavenworth County, roughly fifteen miles west of the Central Avenue plant.3 County and aggregator listings have not caught up; WYEDC, Yelp and Dun & Bradstreet all still carry the Central Avenue address.245 Whether the Central Avenue location closed, was sold, or still operates alongside the Basehor plant is not documented.

Sources

Footnotes

  1. Lees Printing — official site, home and services and leesprinting.com — asserts: “If you are looking for high quality offset or digital printing, we at Lees Printing will give you the attention and personal service you can expect and deserve”; capability headings “FULL DIGITAL CAPABILITIES” and “FULL OFFSET CAPABILITIES”; job list — single colour, multi colour, booklets, brochures, business cards, carbon copies, envelopes, fliers, letterheads, post cards, posters, invitations, announcements, typesetting, binding; service navigation by customer type — Print for Personal, Print for Business, Print for Advertisers, Print for Political, Income Tax Supplies; phone (913) 371-0569. (Retrieved by direct fetch 2026-08-14.) ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4 ↩5 ↩6 ↩7 ↩8 ↩9 ↩10 ↩11 ↩12

  2. Wyandotte Economic Development Council — Local-Owned Printing Businesses in Wyandotte County directory — asserts: “Lees Printing Co. Inc.,” 804 Central Ave., Kansas City, KS 66101, phone 913-271-4082, carried by the county economic development council in its locally owned business directory. Entity detail page: wyedc.org (Retrieved by direct fetch 2026-08-14.) ↩ ↩2

  3. Lees Printing — official site, Contact — asserts: “Phone: (913) 371-0569; Address: 14690 Parallel Rd, Basehor, KS 66007; Hours: Mon-Fri: 8am-4pm.” Page metadata shows a last-modified stamp of 2023-11-17, establishing the Basehor address has been published since at least that date. This is the current-address evidence and it contradicts every third-party listing. (Retrieved by direct fetch 2026-08-14.) ↩ ↩2

  4. Dun & Bradstreet — Lees Printing Company, Inc. company profile, Kansas City, Kansas — asserts: the registered legal name “Lees Printing Company, Inc.”; Kansas City, Kansas location. Additional D&B directory record: dandb.com ↩ ↩2

  5. ChamberofCommerce.com — Lees Printing, Kansas City, KS 66101 business profile — asserts: established 1973; approximately 6–10 employees; “Union Shop”; a large assortment of printing services including envelopes, letterhead, mail pieces and business cards; 804 Central Avenue address; phone (913) 371-0569; hours Mon–Fri 8:00 AM – 4:00 PM. This is the source of the 1973 founding date and the union-shop claim; both need first-party or documentary confirmation. (Note: direct fetch of this page was blocked by a bot interstitial; content is from the search-surfaced summary.) ↩ ↩2

  6. Lees Printing INC — Facebook page — asserts: the company has served the greater Kansas City area for 47 years (as of the undated post carrying that figure), consistent with a 1973 founding. ↩

  7. Yelp — “Eaton Cunningham Lee’s Printing,” 798 Central Ave, Kansas City, Kansas — asserts: a business listing under the combined name Eaton Cunningham Lee’s Printing at 798 Central Avenue, two addresses from Lees Printing’s 804 Central Avenue. Aggregator listing, recorded as a lead only — it is not evidence of a merger, and the relationship between the two names is undocumented. Companion Yelp listing for Lees Printing at 804 Central Ave: yelp.com ↩

Categories

On the record — ks.city/registry/lees-printing · record updated 2026-08-14