Don Webber owns Webber Printing in Brandon, Manitoba (pop. 41,511), the province’s second-largest city, some two hours west of Winnipeg. The surrounding community of some 100,000 people experiences the most sunny days in the nation during the warm weather months, and currently Webber says the area is undergoing a building boom, and their university, college and the local Keystone Centre (a 90-acre facility for sports, entertainment, conventions and agricultural events) are all attracting far-flung traffic and trade.
In the early 1900s Webber’s grandfather Walter, who immigrated from England, worked as lead pressman at the Brandon Sun. Eventually he started up a letterpress shop with a partner, but it failed in the Great Depression. In 1932 Walter opened another shop as a solo venture in the basement of his house in Brandon’s east end.
The second business not only took root but has grown steadily ever since, assisted by family members and staff. Webber’s father, Harry, worked there before and after his air-force stint during World War II (their area housed the Commonwealth Air Training Program, one of Canada’s biggest contributions to the war effort). Harry took over the business after Walter’s death in 1953. Around that time, Webber recalls his dad’s purchase of their first offset press: “Back then, when you bought an offset press, or it changed hands, you had to register its new ownership with the RCMP as a deterrent against printing counterfeit money!”
Webber also remembers being assigned to watch the press as early as age four, when he was already learning everything he could about printing. By the time he left high school in the mid-60s to join the family business full time, he had mastered typesetting, operating the linotype machine and camera work for offset printing. From then on he’s tackled practically every aspect of the business.
Laughing, Webber remembers how awkward it was to operate out of a residential basement. The narrow stairs were a pain for bringing equipment in and out, plus he rarely had time away from work, because customers assumed that printing was his hobby and knocked on his door at all hours to collect their jobs.
A major transition occurred in 1979, when he bought out the business and moved it to a new facility he built in a local industrial park. Although he has enlarged the original building twice since then, he says the surrounding lot affords still more room for expansion when needed.
Now Webber employs 14 staff—four in sales, three graphic artists and the rest in production or management. One of Webber’s sons, Steven, 33, oversees production and shows promise of being the fourth generation to carry on the business. These days their traditional offset equipment—one single-colour and three two-colour offset presses and two letterpresses—is supplemented by Xerox black-and-white and colour machines, plus a recently upgraded digital wide-format Mutoh inkjet printer.
In the last five years Webber says his business has been gaining more or less steadily, both in volume and geographic reach. “For 25 years we’ve been producing the same kind of stuff, general business type of printing,” he says. “But in the last few years, we’ve expanded our clientele in southwestern Manitoba, where our salespeople have built it up, and in Alberta via e-mail business. I think one reason is that labour rates are high in Alberta, so it’s more economical for them to order work from us and put it on a truck. Decals for car dealers are also a growing facet of our business.
“There used to be six printers here,” Webber explains, “but now the local competition is down to us and just one other guy. He absorbed one and we absorbed three of them. The last time was about two years ago.”
Webber’s acquisitions have yielded him a second sales office in nearby Portage la Prairie (pop. 12,728), site of one of the world’s largest oat mills and two major processing plants that produce French fries for global fast-food chains.
“I’m always looking into training and retraining and buying new equipment. If I do invest in the near future, it will probably be in more digital equipment, since customers seem to be going that way,” says Webber. “But we may just coast for a while on alliances I’ve made with some trade people out of Winnipeg who can do some of the jobs and processes we can’t—things like foil embossing.”
With so much going for him, what’s Webber’s biggest business challenge? “We receive supplies two to three times a week by truck from Winnipeg, except during a few days in winter when the highways are impassible with blowing snow and ice. But there isn’t any air service here—for 25 years it’s been a great promise that never materialized. So we’ve learned to carry quite a bit of inventory on the floor—because the freight will kill you.”
Victoria Gaitskell’s InConversation column profiles the people of our industry. If you have a story to tell, contact Victoria at victoria.gaitskell@sympatico.ca
