Member Profile
setup, I tell them, ‘Great! Get the next one, too!’” Hugo Hernandez, a 16-year employee, is plant supervisor. “I’m personally proud of him,” says Brewer. “He came here as a temp making $6.75 an hour; he knew nothing about the box business.” Hernandez adds, “I started on the hot melt machine. I know how to run every machine now.” Hernandez is an evangelist, of sorts, for the corrugated industry, encouraging new hires in the dynamics of the box business. “I tell everybody out there we have a job for a long time. Not just one week, one month, a year. If you run a machine, you’re going to have a job for a long time.” It was 13 years ago when Mike Roach, designer, came on board at Package Crafters. “He used to work with me at Carolina Container,” Brewer explains. “He ran a Langston Saturn III flexo folder gluer and holds several production records on it.” Roach, being modest, acknowledges only two he can remember: 32 setups in one eight-hour shift and 1.4 million square feet. Why did Roach join Brewer at Package Crafters? “Gary needed a designer, and I needed to keep a job,” he says. When asked about his role in the “hustle” philosophy engrained in the company, Roach says, “I don’t like making a customer wait. I’m just like everybody else here: Try to get [the customer] the best answer as quickly as possible.” Challenges and Future Path Talking to Brewer and his team, one senses a commonly held understanding, not only of the challenges facing the industry but of the vision for the company going forward. “Most obvious is the labor challenge,” says Brewer. “Look, we’re a ‘get-er-done’ kind of company, right? The customer’s due date is what drives our ship. And it works backward from there. If someone doesn’t want to come to work, if someone walks off the job, whatever it might be, everybody else has to fill the void.”
42
BOXSCORE July/August 2021
Adds Bragan, “The industry’s booming right now. Everyone’s busy, and no one can get any workers.” Extended lead times on materials are also dogging the corrugated industry, and this affects any company’s ability to deliver on time. Deal says, “I think the challenge for us from the sales team point of view will be managing the customer’s expectations for delivery. That’s a fancy way of saying we have extended lead times due to materials and the amount of work we have to get through the plant. Everybody’s banged right now.” Potter agrees, offering the example of triple wall and other packaging materials purchased from outside vendors. “The customer was accustomed to placing the order and receiving product in two weeks. That two-week period turned into, like, 26 weeks!” Deal says another challenge for the corrugated industry is the need for increasing technical knowledge on the part of its sales professionals. He believes Package Crafters and Creative Packaging are a step ahead of the crowd on this point. “We built our sales team on technically based people: former customer service from other companies or former designers. I have two salespeople who came out of the tooling side of the business, and our main designer here, Mike Roach, was an award-winning flexo operator in his former position.” Brewer sees the future of Package Crafters and Creative Packaging growing first, internally by dint of their service and capabilities, and second, geographically. “I would like in my career to make one more acquisition,” he says. “Somewhere in the Southeast. It would help me to increase my footprint—make a service triangle.” Talking about the kind of company he may have in his sights, Brewer says, “Somebody size-wise that is roughly my size; I’m not looking to swallow someone bigger than me. It has to be something manageable, somebody that does what I
do because that’s what I know. I think I have enough bandwidth left.” A successful AICC member, Brewer serves on the Association’s board of directors and last year was tapped for its executive committee. In 2025, he’ll assume the chairmanship of the board of directors. Looking back on his decision to join, he says, “Chuck Fienning [former CEO of Sumter Packaging in Sumter, South Carolina] talked me into it. I always knew about AICC, but I felt like I was too small to join. And I look back on that and realize it was a total mistake.” He cites the AICCsponsored CEO Advisory Groups as “the best single thing I’ve done in AICC.” “There are issues you have or want to address, and you can’t have that conversation inside the four walls of this building, nor would I want to,” Brewer says. In a CEO Advisory Group, he adds, “you can put it in front of your peers and get tons of advice.” Our discussion with Brewer brought out many memories for him, memories likely shared by many AICC-member owners and operators. “I literally sold everything. My wife, Ginny, was the only income. You talk about some sleepless nights. I look back on it and say, ‘If it were easy to be an entrepreneur, everybody would do it.’” Yet he also credits his original team, giving them their due as well. “I was smart enough to know that I didn’t have every card in the deck. Without my father, it wouldn’t have gotten started, and without that original team of six people, it wouldn’t have gotten started.” What started at Package Crafters in 2002—a third-day delivery promise— continues to serve the company and its customers well. “It’s all about the hustle,” says Brewer. “It’s all about the hustle.” Steve Young is AICC’s ambassador-at-large. He can be reached at 202-297-0583 or syoung@aiccbox.org.
