Doug and Dave Kletke are brothers and co-vice-presidents of Calgary’s Oil City Press Ltd., together managing a family-run printing company that has been successfully serving the oil and gas industry and other diverse commercial markets—all local—since the city’s earliest boom days.
The Kletke ownership of this operation took hold in 1953 when the brothers’ grandfather and father (both named Ron) first acquired the company that had been a one-man shop. The father and son team had traveled west from Winnipeg bringing years of printing experience with them. Immediately after acquiring the business, the moved it into a downtown building, gradually requiring more and more space as the company grew.
In the 50s Calgary was the fastest growing city in Canada, exploding from a population of 100,000 in 1947 to 200,000 by 1955, reaching 325,000 by 1965.
In the early 70s the Kletke’s continued expanding the downtown shop, but a decade later they found themselves once again bursting at the seams. So in 1985 they purchased a space on the outskirts of Calgary and relocated there.
“Back then, the area had only a couple of buildings,” recalls Doug Kletke, “but now it has really grown into a major commercial zone with furniture stores, Costco, Ikea and an auto mall.
“What really helped our father and grandfather grow the business [in the early years] was when they were approached by a couple of large business-forms companies that had 20 salespeople between them,” explains Doug. “They were looking for an offset printer to do smaller stuff for their clients like business cards and stationery, and they asked us to be a trade supplier for them. So our business went from consisting of just my father and grandfather to adding another 20 salespeople. And as the forms guys increased their own market share, many of them became independent print brokers, who for many years were a mainstay of our business.”
Doug first joined the company in 1973 (during a short hiatus from studying architectural drafting) to do manual paste-up, typesetting and camera work. Dave followed, joining as a bindery operator in 1981, after previously working at a radio station. With the family’s encouragement, both stayed. Their grandfather, Ron Sr., died in 1975, so their father has been company president ever since.
“The forms companies of yesterday are no longer around or have diversified into their own offset and document-management companies,” notes Dave. “And the brokers of yesterday aren’t around as much either, because print has become a leaner, meaner world where it’s harder for them to work as independents. But when the brokers retired, they handed off the business they’d built to us, and we have also gained new business, mostly by word of mouth.”
“Over the course of the company’s history we’ve never had a commissioned sales force,” adds Doug. “We still don’t. Although Calgary is starting to change now, it still has a small-town atmosphere in the way businesspeople relate to each other. We see a lot of turnover in other printing companies—especially salespeople who are usually the first contact. But our biggest advantage is that we’re family owned and operated and our employees are long term, so we’ve developed great relationships with a lot of customers. Customers feel a big comfort level knowing that when they call they can always talk to the same person.”
“We also do trade work for other smaller printers, both by word of mouth and referrals,” says Dave. “We’ve tried to create a complete one-stop shop here, so we’re capable of a lot of specialty work like foiling, embossing, die cutting, taping and saddle-stitching in house.
Using our facilities gives smaller printers an opportunity to quote on those kinds of jobs, and they’re comfortable dealing with us because we don’t have a commercial sales force out there. We’re a trade printer in their eyes, not someone out to steal their customers.”
Oil City Press is a Heidelberg shop, with four Speedmasters (a six-colour CD74, five-colour SM52, and two two-colour presses, an SM74 and SM52) and a Quickmaster. Digital colour is a scant sideline, amounting to just five percent of their business.
Currently the company yields $3.8 million in annual sales and employs 26 staff. Father Ron remains president and still comes in regularly, but he has long since relinquished the reins to his sons and serves mainly as their sounding board.
“Right now in Calgary we’re finding more competition, because the bigger printers and 40-inch guys are losing business and diversifying into our market, creating price wars,” Dave reports.
“But in the last five years we’ve kept the shop up to date with major technology purchases,” adds Doug, “so although we talk daily about what we should be looking at in the future, we’re in the fortunate position of not needing to make any large expenditures anytime soon—a good thing in this bad economy.” CP
Victoria Gaitskell is a freelance writer based in Oakville, Ontario. She can be reached at victoria.gaitskell@sympatico.ca
