Looking Beyond The Label

Russell Gayer has found success right in his own home town.

Russell Gayer is devoted to his home town. That's not surprising considering he's the fourth-generation owner of the family house in Springdale, Ark. His great-grandfather bought the property as a homestead back when "frontier" meant a mortgage rate even lower than the current dip.

"I met my wife here," says Gayer, print services manager for Tyson Foods Inc. "We both had roots here, and we're very fortunate for all the opportunity that's here. I could probably go somewhere else, but there's no reason to."

As a place to carve out a niche in the printing industry, Springdale is ideal. It is home to two of the Top 50 in-plants, Tyson and Wal-Mart, and has become something of a small, booming city thanks to those two corporations.

Gayer, a father of two and an outdoorsman, got his start working for a five-employee shop called Zip Print while he went to school to study graphic arts. After that, he got on board at the University of Arkansas' in-plant, working with camera and plates in the prepress area while lending a hand with the shop's huge Goss web press.

Then Gayer made the move that would define the rest of his career.

"After U. of Arkansas I went to this place called Packaging Specialties, which printed on film with flexo[graphic] presses," he says. The experience he collected working in flexographic printing with labels is precisely why Tyson hired him in 1986 as a buyer and estimator.

A New Method

"When I came to Tyson, they were printing on paper labels and then gluing them onto the packages," he says. That's not a great system for an in-plant that gets 80 percent of its $12 million in sales from label printing. So under his guidance, the shop began to accrue some more appropriate equipment, including a trio of six-color, 10˝ label presses.

"After five years at that post, I was

promoted to assistant manager," he continues, noting that he held his post as assistant manager for eight years. "Then the gentleman that I reported to retired, so I took his place."

Gayer says the first thing he did as manager was restructure the pricing scale for the essential labels.

"The old system helped the small-volume customers, but hurt the large-volume customers," he says. He adjusted the pricing system to be volume-based, and consequently more fair to all of his customers.

Gayer says his in-plant has also started printing heat-resistant labels. The poultry vendor needed a way to mark its packages of ready-to-eat chicken with labels that could withstand a deli's heat lamp.

Taking On New Challenges

Gayer says it's important to the in-plant to turn out the best labels possible. The fact that his operation has earned five In-Print awards over the past 10 years stands as proof of that focus on quality. Gayer gives most of the credit to his staff, and he tries hard to keep his 56 employees motivated and their morale high.

"I just try to be fair and consistent with everyone," he says. "We have monthly birthday and anniversary celebrations, holiday parties—especially during the summer."

The whole in-plant is going to have to keep working together well to take on what Gayer says is the biggest challenge the in-plant has faced so far—Tyson's acquisition of IBP, another large food corporation. (Its claim to fame is ham, not poultry.)

More difficult than printing labels for a new variety of meat, however, is trying to establish with the new branch of the company the great relationship the in-plant has long enjoyed with Tyson.

"The culture is changing, and you're dealing with folks that have not dealt with in-plant printers before," says Gayer. "To me that's a real challenge."

But Gayer expects to be at the helm of a much stronger in-plant once all the kinks are ironed out of the merger. Right now, he's working with the new division to find out what work is ideal for the in-plant and what is better off being outsourced. It's just one more change in a company—and a town—that's seen a lot of them. But Gayer has managed to weather it all.

"I still feel like my best is yet to come," he says.

By Mike Llewellyn