(Watch Cary Sherburne’s video interview with Ben Grossman here.)

The Grossman Marketing Group was originally founded in 1910 as Massachusetts Envelope Company. Over the years, the company has kept close tabs on industry trends and evolved the company to take advantage of those trends. In this interview, co-President Ben Grossman tells the story.

WhatTheyThink: Ben, let’s start with a little bit of company history.

Ben Grossman:  We're a fourth generation, 111-year-old family business. I run the business today with my brother, Dave. We were founded in 1910 by my great-grandfather, Max Grossman, originally Massachusetts Envelope Company. Today, we do business as Grossman Marketing Group, but we've been in the envelope and commercial printing space for more than a hundred years. Now, the vast majority of our revenue comes from branded merchandise, promotional products and large-scale e-commerce programs to help our generally Fortune 500 clients distribute marketing collateral to their salespeople, their event teams, their HR organizations. We also help a lot of large enterprise-level nonprofits raise money through selling merchandise direct to consumer.

Ben and Dave Grossman at work.

WTT:  As I understand it, you joined the company about 2006 and around 2008, you started doing a series of acquisitions. So talk a little bit about the acquisition strategy and some of the key acquisitions that you've made over the years.

BG:  My brother and I took over the company a little over 10 years ago in early 2011, when our dad was elected to statewide public office in Massachusetts, and he moved on from the company. He’s still involved in an advisory capacity today. At that time, we decided that we wanted to invest significantly in acquisitions to grow our footprint, to acquire new capabilities, to bring on additional talent. We realized that we had a pretty good infrastructure. We had a really strong team, and we have a culture of service and quality and excellence. And we felt like we could try to flex that model by growing not only organically, but also through acquisitions. So we've made eight acquisitions actually over the last eight years. Most recently we closed on an acquisition in New Hampshire in September 2021, Symbol Marketing and Promotions.

WTT:  Is there a similarity or common theme to the acquisitions?

BG:  They are not all the same, no two deals are alike. Sometimes an owner wants to retire and find a good home for their people and their legacy, their client relationships. Sometimes an owner wants to de-risk and take some money off the table but remain involved in a sales capacity. Sometimes an owner wants to move on to other endeavors and just realizes that they no longer want to run the business day to day, but they want to find a good strong partner who not only can provide their current services, but also potentially help cross-sell and upsell their clients. And we found that some of these sellers generally cite similar reasons for why they've come on board with us. The first thing they cite is that we're a stable, fourth-generation business, that we’re family owned, and we operate with little debt as well. So we can be nimble, especially in downturns. They cite the fact that we have very low employee turnover, that that's a sign that we try our best to treat our colleagues well. And then they also cite our technology capabilities and our in-house pick, pack, fulfillment, and logistics services.

Novel Knits

WTT:  So as I understand it, you're not doing much of your own production. It’s all pretty much through partners, right? Talk a little bit about the kinds of products that you provide to your customers through your partners.

BG:  You’re exactly right. For the vast majority of the goods and services that we sell, we work with strategic partners. The majority of our revenue comes from branded merchandise, or as some people call it swag. Some people call them ad specialties, where we’re a promotional products distributor, and we’re working with factory partners in apparel, textile mills, and the like, to procure goods and then have them decorate it. And then we generally either ship direct from factories or bring them into one of our network of warehouses around the country to handle pick, pack, fulfillment, inventory management, and logistics services. We’re still very much in the print space, but we work with a number of partners on that around the country. So we really operate more as a marketing services, marketing execution provider. We’ve been in the direct mail business for over a century, and we feel like we have some subject matter expertise in that area. And we continue to provide those services to large companies, as well as non-profit organizations. Then we also have an in-house design agency. As I mentioned earlier, we offer e-commerce services, and then experiential marketing services, including banners and signage, other sorts of onsite, services. Sometimes we even get involved helping clients run merchandise booths at trade shows or other events.

Example meeting kit.

WTT:  One of the things the pandemic did was really disrupt supply chains that were already kind of broken anyway. And a lot of the promotional products companies were bringing product in from Asia that’s been disrupted by the shipping backlogs. Are you mostly manufacturing using partners that manufacturer in North America? Or how are you dealing with that issue?

BG:  We operate with factory partners, both in the United States as well as around the globe, some in South America, some in Asia and other regions as well. Managing a complex supply chain is challenging, and especially today. Everyone has seen that new car deliveries are delayed because of the lack of chips, for example, and supply chains are impaired right now. We just try to plan ahead with our clients. We try to counsel them about what the challenges are and be as transparent as we possibly can to help them make decisions as far in advance as possible so we can place orders as far in advance as we can. We treat our suppliers like gold as well. We don’t treat them like vendors; we treat them like partners. And as a result, they generally will bend over backwards to help us in service of our clients. We build mutually beneficial supplier/partner relationships; we pay suppliers really quickly, sometimes in 10 days or less, because we know that our supplier partners sometimes need those funds to pay for raw materials. And so by showing them the respect they deserve and treating them like partners that they are and can be hopefully over time we’re able to provide best-in-class service and execution capabilities for our clients.

Kits for Kids!

WTT:  A lot of the producers that are in north America, especially in the wake of the pandemic, are looking for new revenue opportunities; and working with somebody like you as a trade partner could be attractive. If somebody wanted to talk to you about being a partner, how would they go about doing that?

BG:  We love hearing from potential partners, especially to enhance what we can offer to our customers. They can go to our website, GrossmanMarketing.com, and fill out the Contact Us form. In addition, I have a personal website, BenGrossman.info. And I’m active on Twitter and LinkedIn.

View the full video interview here.