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Portrait of a Distributor

2007 Member of the Year Brian Governor shares how he and the printing industry have evolved in the past 20 years

The Member of the Year honor is awarded to the member or member company who has made the most outstanding contribution to the progress of DMIA. Here is a profile of 2007 Member of the Year Brian Governor, president and owner of P&W Marketing, Youngstown, Ohio. Governor received his award in May during a ceremony held at the DMIA Spring Management Technology Conference in Palm Springs, Calif.

When Brian Governor graduated in 1989 from Thiel College in Greenville, Pa., it wasn’t with the intent of joining his father, William “Bill” Governor, in the printing business. In fact, the political science and philosophy major wasn’t quite sure what he wanted to do with his life. “I had just graduated from college. I didn’t have a job and I thought I knew everything,” he says. “Lucky for me, my father decided to save me and gave me a job.”

Governor, who had cut lawns and worked at Kmart before joining the family business, would have to take a crash course in the world of salesmanship and print. “I was hired to do sales, but in the first six months it was kind of like in-house training where I learned everything, including how to design forms,” he says. Governor also took classes with DMIA, then known as the NBFA. “In 1990, I officially hit the road and started sales,” he says.

It was an interesting period to get into the field, an era of major transition in the printing industry. “This was around the time when the once-popular dot matrix printer and laser forms were starting to decline,” he says. “To make up for the lost sales, some people went into direct mail, others went into commercial print. I chose to go more toward promotional products. Whereas 15 years ago, forms, tags and labels used to be 80 percent of my business, now promotional products are 80 percent of the business.”

The 1990s would also bring changes to Governor’s personal life. It was during that time that he married his wife, Melinda. The Governors would have two daughters: Olivia, now 11 years old, and Meredith, 4. It was also in the 1990s that Governor’s father died. “I was a regional coordinator in DMIA at the time but I had to resign because of my dad’s death,” he says.

When the traditional forms business started to decline, Brian Governor decided to lean more towards promotional products. The P&W Marketing offices now feature showrooms of the promotional products the distributorship offers.

Despite the loss of his father, Governor would boldly steer P&W Marketing into the future, expanding the company over time. “We’ve grown the business threefold,” he says. “I like to say we’ve got more employees, but more headaches and more everything else too,” he admits with a laugh.

Governor says he decided to go “full tilt” with the promotional products idea and in 1999, P&W Marketing moved into a bigger building where he opened promotional products showrooms that would soon be featured in local TV commercials.
“I had sales people on the road but I thought there were some prospects they probably weren’t touching. I figured that TV would be a good way to reach these people,” Governor says.

While Governor was enhancing prospects for P&W Marketing, he also decided to take a greater role in DMIA, particularly through the Small Distributor Summit. SDS allows distributors with sales volumes of less than $2.5 million to network and brainstorm ideas.

“I did not attend the very first get-together organized by Paul Edwards [president of FormStore Incorporated],” Governor says. “But I attended the second one, the official DMIA one that Dick Gray [president of Xtension Technologies Inc.] chaired and I got hooked on it.”

DMIA’s 2007 Member of the Year Brian Governor shared the honor with his wife, Melinda, and daughters Olivia (left) and Meredith at DMIA’s 2007 Spring Management Conference in Palm Springs, Calif. Governor is president and owner of P&W Marketing, Youngstown, Ohio. The award is given to the member who has made the most outstanding contribution to DMIA’s progress.

Two years later, Governor would be asked to chair SDS along with Bill Lampe, president of Lampe Graphics LLC, St. Louis. “SDS has grown every year and it’s great,” Governor says. “The topics are different from year to year and some of the concerns are different. The distributors that come are definitely excited to be there.”

He ranks SDS as one of DMIA’s best annual events. “There’s nothing like SDS,” he says. “The best way to know that you’re not alone out there is to talk one-on-one with someone who has a business that is the same size as yours, with someone who has the same issues. DMIA has always had an emphasis on networking and peer-to-peer discussion. It’s just a fact. And SDS is a great model for that.”

Now with almost 20 years in the printing business under his belt, Governor says that he is at the crossroads that many small distributors find themselves. “I need to decide what I’m going to do,” he says. “I have to either make more investments by bringing in more people or enhancing our technology to grow the business. Or, I have to downsize and try not to incur too much debt. Or, I could go in the third direction and possibly merge or sell the business.”

Though he’s not quite sure what the future may hold for his business, he’s sure about the direction of the industry. “The industry itself is strong and exciting,” Governor says. “There are lots of different segments now, different avenues where people can go. If a distributor wanted to go in and sew up an account, he or she has the ability to do that thanks to technology and the many products out there.”

Governor also has predictions for himself. “Ultimately, I see myself going into politics locally,” he says. “I’m very involved in my community.”