About Us

My Story, My Vision For Helping Printers

You know you need to market your company, but you just don't have the time! We can help.

Meet Robert Vernon

Founder Of Printers Marketing Toolkit and Printing Company Owner

You may be wondering, who founded PMT and what does he know about printing and marketing? That is a fair question and I would be surprised if you didn’t wonder about my qualifications. After going to school and actually taking printing and design classes I went to work in my early twenties for a community newspaper doing paste up and running the process camera. This was back in the dark ages of printing, LOL. After that I learned to run the web press, at Goss Community to be exact. Soon I realized that I wanted to work for a commercial printer that was printing high quality such as annual reports and that sort of thing. So I got a job and over the years worked my way up to being production manager of a very large shop with over 80,000 sq ft. of production space. I was also managing typesetting and the art department.

I had heard about desktop publishing and was soon experimenting with it on my own to see what all of the hub bub was about. I started to go to trade shows such as Seybold at the time and took it all in. I was fortunate enough to have an owner I worked for to give me a budget and bring in the equipment we needed to replace our traditional typesetting equipment with state of the art imagesetters and Macs. It was an exciting time. Soon we were able to go directly to film and bypass the camera and contact rooms. I believed in it so much that I took out a loan on my house, left the company and started my own pre-press company. I started with just myself and 200 sq. ft of space. My timing was good and printers were being given art on floppy disks instead of art boards. The printers didn’t know what to do with them, but I did! The business started to grow.

Soon afterwards I realized communication was never going to be the same. I partnered with a young computer whiz and we started a multimedia and web company. Within six years both businesses grew and soon we had over 35 team members in 3 locations. Soon I was going around and giving presentations about how the web will be changing everything and it did. Along the way I won some awards, a sales award and two awards from the Business Marketing Association, now a part of The Association of National Marketers. I was also on the board of Printing Industries of America, Mountain States Chapter.

I saw the need for a way to order print through a web browser back in 1998 and our team built one of the first systems to do so. We called it I-Que. It was fully functional in early 1999. About the same time, a company was trying to acquire us but I didn’t think the fit was good so we declined. Around that time a company was doing a rollup of printing companies and we were invited to participate in it. We merged our two companies with 5 others and created a new one headquartered in New York City. Our web to print software was used to differentiate us and to gain market share, which we did. Our goal was to go public and acquire more companies. We started out doing around $48 mmm and within a couple years we would grow to just shy of $120 mmm. My job was that of CTO for the new enterprise and I also was an SVP and a board member.

I left that company and started a new one, yes still printing, that still is in operation. We added marketing to our product mix in 2016. I was frustrated by the lack of a good platform so I tasked our team to build one. We finally have what my vision was for a good platform ready for market last year. We have had marketing clients from a number of different industries over the years. I had a light bulb moment about 6 months ago. I want to help my fellow printers market their businesses. It is a passion of mine. That is why we have launched The Printers Marketing Toolkit. It is to help businesses like yours understand what business they really are in, get their message out there and prepare for the future.

Printing has changed so much over the years and it will continue to do so. If you would like help in positioning your company to be a leader, I can help. My team and I have put together what we believe is the best in class marketing for printers like yourself. I am available for private consultations as well, if you need more in depth help.

Here is what to do if you want help or to find out more:

1. Call or email us for a consultation.
2. We set up a phone or Zoom interview with you and find out where you currently are and where you want to go
3. We put a package together for you based on our conversation
4. After you say yes, a custom marketing plan is created for you
5. You review the plan and make changes
6. We start collecting digital assets from you
7. The plan is initiated
8. Weekly calls are set up to monitor the progress
9. Together we review the progress and make adjustments, if necessary

Here is an article I have written about the importance of marketing.

https://gamma.app/docs/The-Importance-of-Marketing-gicccu38sv8xghe

P.S. We are taking on a very limited number of new clients (one printer per local market) to ensure we deliver best in class service and results. If you are interested it would be a good idea to reach out sooner rather than later. We have a package for any budget.