Frank and Julie Brown blend passion for printing, invitations and gifts

Enter the doors of Odyssey Printing and Graphics inside Main Street Village in Columbus and the aroma of ink permeates the air. It’s a smell that Frank and Julie Brown have gotten accustomed to through the years, although Frank still takes it to a more emotional level.

“I love it. It’s paper. It’s ink. It’s what I love. To me, there’s nothing like it,” says Frank, 56, a Columbus native who got his start in printing at Aflac before helping someone open a printing business more than 30 years ago. He became a partner in 1990 and then bought the business a decade later. Its primary focus is printing for other companies.

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Julie, on the other hand, earned degrees that put her on the path to a speech language pathology career with the school system in nearby Marion County, where the family owns and lives on their farm. But in 2010, the Buena Vista native decided to give the retail world a try, launching By Invitation, a social stationery, invitation and gift business that today is next door to Frank’s. A small shared break room separates By Invitation (Facebook) and Odyssey Printing (Facebook) at 6298 Veterans Parkway.

“I think it’s just something where I was just ready for a change, and the opportunity arose,” Julie, 46, said of shifting career gears. “I thought: I’ll give it a try and I can always go back if this doesn’t work out. But this has worked.”

The couple and their businesses have turned out to be a match made for the printing world, particularly in an era in which all things digital seemingly are trying to push aside traditional paper. The Browns are here to say, however, that paper’s nowhere near dead. It’s just evolving and they with it.

The Ledger-Enquirer visited with the two recently to discuss their jobs within the business, the challenges they face and why folks might find what they need in a local company that is surrounded by regional and national chain stores and shops. This interview is edited a bit for length and clarity.

Q. What is it like working so closely with each other?

A: Frank: Julie and I ride to work together every morning. It’s a 45-minute drive. We talk business on the way in and talk business on the way home. We talk business at home. But she’s so busy doing her thing at the invitation and gift store, and I’m so busy doing my thing over here, that sometimes we eat lunch together for 15 minutes and that’s all we see of each other.

Julie: (Working here) has allowed me to see things that he’s gone through all these years that I didn’t understand why that would be an issue, or things that would be stressful. Now I see why.

Q. What are your duties on the printing side?

A: Frank: I’m not in production anymore. I haven’t run a press in many years. My real job would be overall management of the company, the accounts payables. I have a customer service person that enters bills and that kind of thing. I decide what gets paid, when it gets paid. I deal with employees, but also I’m the main point for customers. I do go out and make sales calls occasionally. I need to do more than I’m able to do. I just try to grow the business and make everything happen … I do 95 percent of the quoting for jobs that come in.

Q: How large is your staff?

A: Frank: Full time, I think we’ve got 13 regular employees and it bumps up to 18 around Christmas ... But our staff has blended because we’ve cross-trained some of Julie’s employees to cover my customer service rep when she goes to lunch or is out for the day. And we’ve got two graphic designers on the staff that may be doing my work one day and the next day they may be doing Julie’s invitations. It’s just kind of a big blend between the two companies and works out real well.

Q. Do you each have your own strengths?

A: Frank: She’s prettier than I am. (laughs)

Julie: We definitely have our own strengths. (I’m) sitting down with the customer and being able to give them 30 minutes or an hour of pulling out albums and showing them different options. They do spend time over here, but it’s a customer bringing in a business card for changes and they’re out the door.

Q. You’re more people person oriented, Julie?

A: Julie: I think we’re more the social side, and they’re more corporate is how I distinguish the two.

Q: You’re really into the printing profession, Frank?

A: Frank: I came out of high school and went to work for Aflac. I was going to college and took a summer off so I could make some money and buy a car. But I loved the printing industry so much and I tried to leave it a couple of times, but just never could … This industry still fascinates me. You’ve got four colors of ink going on this sheet of paper and it creates this beautiful full-color brochure. It’s just fascinating.

Q. Has the industry changed?

A: Frank: Boy, has it changed. It seems like everything is tending to go more digital, which makes you keep up with computer programs and that sort of thing. People are wanting the same items. A few years back, we would run 10,000 brochures for somebody. Now we’ll run a hundred and then they’ll come back and make a couple of changes and run a hundred more … Technology has just changed. It’s easier to produce it (in lower quantities). I still have a single color press, two two-color presses, and a four-color press, and we still run those everyday. But I also have digital machines that are able to do the short-run jobs as well.

Q: What types of printing jobs do you do?

A: Frank: Just about anything with your name on it. We do business cards, but they’re a very small part of what we do.

Julie: The things that are on the press today, he’s doing a brochure for a town’s art festival. It’s a full-color brochure. We also do three-part forms for doctors’ offices, where you get the pink copy, they get the yellow or whatever.

Frank: We do a lot of little booklets that are full color all the way through it and maybe a 32-page book that’s saddle stitched, that kind of thing. Those are the fun jobs we do, the bigger ones. We do travel brochures, menus for restaurants.

Julie: But then it’s not limited to paper because we also do specialty advertising — cups and koozies, little giveaways that businesses have, such as flashlights and key chains, anything that you want your logo on.

Frank: (Using a laser engraver) we can put logos on the Arctic cups or the Yeti cups and customize them, and I can sell you one or I can sell you 5,000. It doesn’t matter. We can do sublimation and custom print a coffee mug or a license plate or luggage tags.

There’s one job that we do pretty regularly for a company in town. it’s a presentation folder on the outside. On the inside it’s a full-color brochure stating their services. Basically, they’ve got this thick brochure on the inside of the pocket folder, and when they open it up, they can stuff papers in the pockets and they’ve really got something to present to somebody. That’s just one item that we do. By the same token, this afternoon I’ve got to deliver a thousand letterhead (order) that’s two colors to Chattahoochee Harley Davidson. So I don’t have a limit as to what we’ll do. It’s more of what you can throw at us and we love the challenge.

Q. So what are your duties at the store, Julie?

A: Julie: People are walking in and they need a birthday present, they need a wedding gift or they just want to shop for themselves. We have spa items and candles and dishes. If they want it for a gift, we can wrap it and that’s a positive. There’s no extra charge. There are a few (shops) around town that gift wrap. We monogram. We have somebody that picks it up and brings it back the next day. So if they want to monogram a shirt or a towel or baby bib they bought from us, we can do that.

Q: You’re also trying to figure out what people want to buy from a retail standpoint?

A: Julie: That’s right, going to Atlanta to the market. Going to New York occasionally. There’s a market there as well. And there’s also a national stationery show that I try to get to at least every couple of years just to see what new paper lines are out there and new options for printing. So I would say half of my business is printings and invitations and half is gifts.

Q: What’s the most challenging aspect of your jobs?

A: Julie: Just trying to stay on top of merchandise and keep things that are new and different. I don’t want to look like other stores and have the same things as another gift shop in town. We all want to be our own entity. We want things that are at a good price point. I have a few customers that like higher-end items, so I try to appeal to them as well, but then I want to keep things at a moderate price as if I were out shopping.

Q: You have your seasons for selling things?

A: Julie: This time of year we’re gearing up for weddings, so I have brides coming in and placing their invitation orders. Closer to April and May, it’s graduation season, so it’s a combination of graduation invitations and graduation gifts. Through the summer, things get a little quiet. We’re getting Christmas items in and pricing them and preparing to put them out in October. And then we see another push, because here’s Christmas. We do tons of Christmas cards and gift enclosure cards, and Christmas presents, and then wrapping all December. We’re just standing at the wrap counter.

Q: That’s your busiest season?

A: Julie: It is, November and December, followed by weddings.

Frank: It’s almost like we celebrate our Christmas after (the holiday).

Julie: We do. On Dec. 26 we crash. (laughs)

Q: What’s the most challenging part of your job, Frank?

A: Frank: Getting new customers. Keeping your existing customers. We strive real hard to give good service and quality work and, of course, the only way you’re going to grow is to get new customers. I would say that’s my biggest challenge is being able to get out and meet new people, to get the business. One of the things I’ve found as more and more companies are taking over smaller companies, their print needs are being handled by a home office, which is gotten out of Atlanta or gotten from Miami or from another hub.

Julie: Mom and pop businesses are really going away and that’s who our business is.

Frank: The ones that are really depending on the local people to patronize them are not using us because they’re having to get it from a home office. We do our best to shop local. I’ll pay more for something if I can get it locally versus online, and I don’t have a problem with it. I just wish other companies, the bigger companies, would see that same benefit of dealing with local people like us.

Q: It’s as if the Internet has impacted so many things?

A: Julie: I know. And with online invitation orders, it’s easy for somebody that works all day, and they need to order a birthday party invitation for their child, to do it a 10 o’clock at night in their pajamas. It’s hard for them to come in and see me. But I feel like people are starting to miss that human connection. I have customers that come in and say: I have done this online in the past, but I missed having somebody to talk to. If you have a change or correction, you don’t want to type it in and explain it on your computer. You like to speak to someone on the phone or see them face to face.

Q. What’s the most rewarding part of your jobs?

A: Julie: I love it when we’ve worked with a bride from start to finish. Save the date (cards) are popular right now. Wedding invitations. And then they need wedding programs and they need cups and napkins printed for the reception. When it’s all done, they just say: That was so easy, and I was able to do it all right here. (I like) just knowing we took some stress off of them.

Frank: That’s kind of the way we’ve always built our business is somebody comes in hectic because they can’t print their own invitations for their wedding. It won’t go through their printer. We do a lot of dance recital programs, and they’re coming in the day of recital, maybe at 1 or 2 o’clock in the afternoon. The recital’s at 6, and I say: Look, don’t worry, you’ve given it to me. Relax and let me worry about it. So we hope to take the stress off the customer and produce the job, on time, and they get it and it’s great and they love it. For me, the biggest thing that I enjoy is most of my customers end up becoming my friends. Most of my customers have my cell phone number and can call me at any time.

Q: They become repeat customers?

A: Frank: That’s right.

Julie: And the same with mine. I have people texting me at 9 at night: Can I get some note cards by tomorrow? If I see it, I’ll respond at whatever time.

This story was originally published February 18, 2017 at 3:51 AM with the headline "Frank and Julie Brown blend passion for printing, invitations and gifts."