packagePRINTING Talks With Clarence W. Schawk, Chairman of SGK
The story of Clarence W. Schawk is a classic American success story and a uniquely Chicago one, spanning six decades and five continents. It includes the Great Depression, WWII, entrepreneurship and family, along with successive revolutions in the worlds of printing, technology, marketing,and branding.
Clarence W. Schawk, now 87, is the chairman of SGK. Almost every day he drives ten minutes to the global headquarters of his company, a business he started in his aunt's basement 60 years ago. The Des Plaines, IL, venture has grown from making offset printing plates for black-and-white reproduction to creating strategies and packaging designs for such iconic brands as Coca-Cola, Unilever and Merck. Much of this expansion has happened in the past 20 years, as the brand services industry has undergone huge changes. SGK (formerly Schawk, Inc.) anticipated these many changes and benefitted from them.
Change and adaptation that has defined the company's history was ingrained in its founder from the beginning. As a young U. S. Marine Corps veteran in Albany Park, Schawk landed a job at a local printing company. He applied for a job in the bindery department, "because that's where all the overtime was." Instead, he wound up in the platemaking department, which turned out to be a lucky break. There he learned more complex skills and began to understand the nuances of graphics workflow—today, a defining expertise of SGK.
Mr. Schawk has seen the evolution from black and white to color, from analog to digital, from packaging to multi-media, and where his own company is concerned, from prepress to leading-edge global brand development and deployment for Fortune 100 clients.
Today, SGK is led by CEO David A. Schawk, one of five children resulting from Clarence's marriage to his childhood sweetheart, Marilyn Rieck. From its humble beginning as Schawk Litho Plate on Kedzie Avenue, the company is a global player with revenues of nearly $500 million and offices in Chicago, New York and San Francisco; London and Brussels; Shanghai; Singapore; Sydney; Sao Paolo; and more. What follows is a unique perspective from a man who has seen monumental changes in the business of brand graphics services.
pP: What drove you to start your own company?
CWS: I think the same thing that drives most entrepreneurs. I realized I could provide a better product to the marketplace. I had also just gotten married and wanted to start a family, so that provided additional motivation.
pP: As a trade shop in the early years, how did you build relationships with your printer customers?
CWS: Back then, business was local. It was much easier to develop relationships face-to-face with the printers. Now that business is global and more complex, it takes a lot more effort. But in the end, it's about inspiring confidence and trust and sharing a mutual goal; delivering excellence to our shared clients.
pP: What advantages could your company provide to printers versus these customers doing their own platemaking in-house?
CWS: Our platemaking services offer many advantages for printers. First, we have substantial technical resources that work with partners to drive innovation. SGK customers also benefit from our economies of scale. Plate and platemaking technology have advanced considerably in the past decade, and we've been able to make the investments required to stay on the leading edge, which would be very challenging for many printers. We also have an edge in quality due to our deep process knowledge and experience in digital imaging. Our platemaking process is an extension of our expertise in prepress and separations, and our customers enjoy the benefit of that expertise in each plate that we produce.
pP: What factors led to your company's evolution from a prepress trade shop to a design and branding company with an international presence?
CWS: It was pretty simple. If we wanted to thrive long-term, we had to chase—and create—the opportunity. Over the past 60 years, we've built or bought capabilities that our clients needed. Whether it was a digital asset management and workflow solution like BLUE, a print quality management platform like ColorDrive or brand development services that we offer through Brandimage and Anthem, we have been expanding beyond our premedia expertise for almost 20 years now.
pP: What are some of the significant milestones in your company's growth and success?
CWS: There are several, but I think the ones that have had the biggest impact on our business were placing employees on-site in client offices in 1992 to service accounts, having boots on the ground in Asia in the '90s and entering the brand development business in 1998.
pP: How did you make your company distinctive over the years?
CWS: That's a very good question for any company in a mature industry whose products are becoming commoditized. Producing a quality product is just the price of admission. So is great service. We did three things really well that I think helped (and continue to help) set SGK apart from others. We always accept accountability for the end result; we anticipate challenges and opportunities for our clients; and today, we help drive brand performance through our brand development and brand deployment offerings.
pP: How did you make the transition from an entrepreneur to a company manager? This is a sometimes difficult transition with different skill sets required.
CWS: It is a difficult transition because no one else has the same stake in the company that you do; the dream is yours, the buck stops with you. My experience as a U.S. Marine instilled much more in me than just discipline, organization, administration and improvisation—it taught me leadership as well. Over the long haul you figure out that you've got to hire good people and let them do their jobs. No one may do as good a job as you think you can, but if you hire smart people and give them the opportunity, they'll do a good job. Someone once said to me, in talking about their own situation, "if you don't step back, it doesn't allow anyone else to step forward."
pP: What are some of the most significant technology developments that have impacted the various segments of your industry?
CWS: The biggest theme in technology for many years has been the conversion of mechanical processes to digital. In the '70s we transitioned camera-based separations to digital scanners. In the '80s we moved to digital re-touching, color and page assembly. In the 1990s, Postscript digitized artwork creation and digital proofing, and in the 2000s we moved to all-digital platemaking. The implementation of digital print is the completion of a transition to digital production that began over 40 years ago. It's changed every aspect of graphic production.
pP: Successful companies don't typically have a totally smooth journey. What were some of the failures or challenges you faced along the way?
CWS: Sure, we encountered some bumps and bruises along the way, and we still do. But we are relentless about establishing best practices and continuously refining them. One of the more challenging was integrating the branding and design agencies we acquired. We were great at integrating other premedia companies—there was less culture shock. But the culture shock to the design agencies was considerable. We learned pretty quickly that they couldn't be handled the same way.
pP: How would you sum up your keys to the success of SGK?
CWS: Focus on the customer. Not your competitors. Your competitors may follow you, but they won't be leading.
pP: As a person who has seen a lot of improvementS in conventional printing technologies, what do you see for the future of digital printing technologies?
CWS: I think digital will play an increasingly important role in the packaging print market. It's currently used for short run and personalization projects, but the speed and quality of digital is improving rapidly. This will begin to push it into mainstream production in the next several years. The innovation we're seeing in digital print is an exciting development for marketers and brand owners, as it will allow them to increase the frequency of changes to their on-pack messaging.
pP: What advice would you give young people moving into this industry?
CWS: Get into it because you love packaging. If you only like packaging, think about becoming a dentist. Packaging is becoming more important than ever. It is the most direct expression of the brand. The process required to elevate the brand's expression on packaging will only become more challenging, not less, so you better love packaging.
pP: What will SGK look like in 25 years?
CWS: That's an interesting question to ask an 87-year old man. Probably very different! It's already far different from the company I started in 1953. We've done a good job of evolving to meet our clients' changing needs such as moving from black and white to color, changing from analog to digital, expanding from packaging to cross-media and stretching from premedia to brand development. We will follow client value and anticipate change, so where that will lead us in 25 years, who knows? But I do hope that we'll be the dominant brand trusted by leading companies to drive brand performance.
pP: What is your greatest source of pride?
CWS: My family and our family foundation, The Clarence W. and Marilyn G. Schawk Family Foundation. Since David has taken over the reins of running the company, it has allowed me to spend more time on the foundation's efforts, which lends support to quite a few organizations and the inner-city schools of Chicago. I'm also proud of the fact that SGK has a blue-chip client base with many long-term relationships. I believe it's the result of 60 years of producing a quality product, providing outstanding service to our clients and doing business ethically.
pP: Any final comments?
CWS: God first, family second and business third. pP
- Companies:
- Schawk, Inc.