Speaker 1:
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Jerimiah Janssen:
Welcome to the First Business Bank Podcast. I am Jerimiah Janssen, Vice President of Business Banking here at First Business Bank. I have the honor to visit with Marty Ochs today as your host. Marty's a successful business executive and passionate leader that continues to push the industry farther. Even though he says he's in retirement, I'm not so sure about that. His accomplishments include graduating from UW Stevens Point with a degree in business economics and public administration, 40 years of experience in the paper and printing industries, founding A. M. Mailing, where he was a Wisconsin State Business Award winner, serving on many boards throughout his career, including being a current member of First Business Bank's Northeast Advisory Board, and also the Hope Center, and most recently founding the Green Bay Innovation Group, also known as GBIG almost five years ago. GBIG is a business-to-business consortium of enterprises working in the paper, packaging, printing, converting, and related industries.
This is where we like to spend the majority of our time today, discussing Marty's passion for the paper industry, and how GBIG is bringing paper-related companies, in particular Wisconsin-based companies together and positively impacting our communities. Looking back myself, growing up in De Pere and graduating from St. Norbrook College, I have always been surrounded and influenced by the paper industry. Both my parents and most of my extended family worked in the mills. Marty, from our conversations, I know that you also grew up surrounded by the paper industry as well. Tell us about your background and how you got started in the industry.
Marty Ochs:
Well, like yourself, many of us grew up in the paper industry, as you know, from Fox Valley to all the way down, multiple, multiple paper mills. But I grew up in Peshtigo, Wisconsin with Badger Paper Mills. All my family members worked in the mills. Around Peshtigo, we had multiple mills in Marinette, multiple mills, Menomonie, we had multiple mills up in Escanaba, we had mills in Niagara, Oconto Falls. When we grew up up there, paper was the central force economic driving force for the community. I don't know what to say other than the size and magnitude was just huge.
What drove me to go to Stevens Point was basically forestry conservation ended up in business. I started my career with Consolidated Papers. Consolidated Papers was the largest coated paper mill in the world at the time. They were state-of-the-the art in all aspects. After that, I went to work for a carpenter paper company. We were basically a wholesale paper outlet. We worked with wide variety of paper mills, and I really extended my knowledge in all ends of paper from conventional paper and offset and such to specialty grades. Again, we utilized a lot of paper mills in Wisconsin. I moved into the printing industry, started with a small printer. I just kept growing in the bigger, bigger printers as I progressed. I ended up setting up a manufacturer rep organization that I worked with a number of large printers, and then, after that I started A. M. Mailing, which is basically a both printing and mailing shop. We were doing work across the United States with major, major accounts.
Jerimiah Janssen:
Yeah, very, very impressive, Marty. Here at First Business Bank, we have a passion, not just for banking but for business as well. We are a business-focused bank that really tries to understand targeted industries. I personally lead our manufacturing industry practice group with my area focus on companies tied to the five Ps, and regarding the paper industry, I believe it was about four years ago that we met originally where I was attending a paper-related seminar with several clients on the state of paper in Wisconsin. To me, the event was a big eye-opener on how impactful and important the paper industry is to Wisconsin. Looking back for yourself, what was your inspiration in starting the Green Bay Innovation Group?
Marty Ochs:
Well, again, I'm originally from up here. I was fortunate to live in Chicago, Denver, and Madison, and work with companies across the United States. I was a member of a wide variety of industry groups. That gave me a tremendous opportunity to meet, greet, and understand. I moved back to church. There's kind of a little laughing matter. I was a greeter at church and it seemed like every other person I met worked in the paper industry. Before long, all of a sudden, I found out four or five of my friends, again, were in the paper industry. We would kind of kid to say, "We all want to go to work at Fort Howard," which paid real well.
But the point is this, as I did some research, I looked, there was not a business-to-business association specifically dedicated to printing, paper packaging, converting plastics, and pulp. We had some very strong other organizations, for instance, like the Wisconsin Paper Council, we had New North, okay, we had New Manufacturing Alliance; tremendous groups. But we simply focused on one sector and obviously that sector, I had a lot of experience, a lot of knowledge.
Again, as I looked at, I kept finding more and more companies that basically started their industry because of paper. I kid people, or I heard the comment, that "Paper basically built Lambeau Field. Is that true?" Well, it probably had a big impact. The economic impact of the industry is huge. Every day I find more and more companies that are involved in these industries.
At that point, we sat down, put together information of what we're doing, this, that set of program, moved it forth. You can see all that information on the website, but again, it was basically a business-to-business group. I was a little bit tired of seeing out-of-state organization that were in some of these groups, but they didn't focus on Wisconsin. The biggest impact that we're going to have is bringing businesses together. Let the state legislators, let the state know the big size and impact that these industries are in Wisconsin.
Jerimiah Janssen:
As I dive into this and I look more and more and grow my knowledge, it's amazing how much industry clusters we have tied to these organizations. When we first met several years ago to the GBA Printer Showcase just a few weeks ago, we have seen a lot of growth within the organization. What do you attribute that growth to?
Marty Ochs:
Well, again, our focus is Wisconsin, number one. Number two, we're looking at specific industries. Number three, we have no fees for memberships. We are totally sponsorship-driven. Half of all our revenue from sponsorships go back to the food pantry, homeless shelters, and education, so our focus is basically to support Wisconsin, number one.
Number two, again, I refer to church. So many of us have been in the industry. So many of us know one another. So many of us, like yourself, have multiple generation in this industries. I've had national associations say, "How do you bring all these people together?" and I say, "Well, basically it's three, four, five generations of families, and we all know one another, know somebody, a dad, grandpa, whatever," so again, it's one big family in the industry, and that's the key to pull us together.
Jerimiah Janssen:
Yeah. You talk about one big family. It really does seem like that meeting with individuals throughout the group and also in the industry. Every organization has goals. What are the goals for GBIG?
Marty Ochs:
Well, the biggest goal is bringing all our industry leaders together. Again, I find that there's companies down the street from one company, they don't even know one another, so as we bring them together, many companies find out they have customers in their own backyard, number one.
Number two, we look at some of the technologies and we all know we need to basically automate. And in one case, I met a couple, two, three companies, and we could take all their equipment, put it in line, and quite frankly, reduce labor force from 12 to four. Today, it is going to be automation. We're going to compete in the world we need to basically bring all our great manufacturers together to look at equipment and work together to build new technologies and new innovations for the industry.
Jerimiah Janssen:
Yeah, we're definitely seeing automation being a big part of many manufacturers that we're working with, and it always seems like once they jump on that train, they continue to push that forward.
Marty Ochs:
Well, one thing that would just amaze so many people here, okay, a case in point, Amazon, some of their biggest suppliers are here. McDonald's, some of their biggest suppliers. We're so integrated with our technologies. Now, many of these companies can't say anything, okay, due to confidentiality, but if you look at the sheer size and magnitude production of these facilities, you can almost walk anywhere east side, west side, south side of De Pere, huge factories. You go into Appleton, you go into Niemuth's, Menasha. You can't go in any direction that you won't find multitude of companies in the printing, paper, packaging, converting.
I did something called the De Pere Walk, and I'm going to continue with that, but there were like 25 companies in that area from Green Bay Packaging, to RR Donnelley, to Belmar; you're talking huge companies that are kind of under their radar. Again, as I did more and more study, and I just recently took a trip up to little Fellows, Wisconsin, 1800 people with three huge plants up there. Again, there's many little towns in Wisconsin you can go to, and they got one big plant, and they basically are the chief economic drive for the city.
Jerimiah Janssen:
Yeah, yeah. You bring up an excellent point there, Marty. Being in Wisconsin, traveling through the state, there are great companies throughout the state that are really tied to these clusters, and it's amazing when you hear the stories and also you know what they're building within their walls, as you point out, they can't go out and market themselves and show how big they are and who they're working with, but once you're inside there, is amazing what they're doing.
Marty Ochs:
Well, what we could do with GBIG is bring the information across the country and into the nation. We produce a biweekly newsletter, I should call publication, 'kay? We bring in stories across the state to show people our capabilities, our size and magnitude. We have a meeting coming up that, quite frankly, is with Amcor, and when you think of Amcor with five facilities in Wisconsin, at a $14 billion company that makes a statement. You look at basically the Green Bay Packaging, you look at Paper Converting Machinery Corp; these are mega companies in billions of dollars in sales, and were all in Wisconsin, and many of the companies are within half an hour, 45 minutes of one another. We find if we can bring all the leaders together and be a very strong advocate of our industries, we all will benefit.
Jerimiah Janssen:
You brought up the website for GBIG, it's greenbayinnovationgroup.com. It has a wealth of resources and obviously the weekly 5P newsletter. What resources can people find on there?
Marty Ochs:
Virtually everything. Our goal here is to build a very comprehensive website for resources. We've got over 120 sponsors. You can click on the sponsorship website. We drive people to our website. Recently, I did some Google searches. GBIG basically comes up in the top four continually. Our goal is to bring people to that website to drive them to a number of companies in Wisconsin, so it's a great tool. In addition, we're building some very select targeted email databases. When people are looking for something, we can immediately send us the information, click, and it goes to the right sources, so we have that. In addition, we're very educational. If you look at all our topics, our subjects, it really brings a wide variety of the industry to many people who didn't understand another part of the industry. Again, we're linking people together to have a better understanding of the size magnitude of the industry in Wisconsin.
Jerimiah Janssen:
You're talking about education. I know the organization puts on events, tours, open houses, and I really enjoy taking part in them. It's been an opportunity for me personally to learn from industry leaders and expand my knowledge of the news and events that are really impacting the clients I work with. Also, it's just great to see the attendees in the building relationships with one another and really connecting. It's amazing what these companies are creating within walls. When you think about these events, what are your biggest takeaways and what is the feedback that you are hearing from individuals that are attending them?
Marty Ochs:
Well, first of all, many people say, "John, I haven't seen you in 10 years." "Jim, where have you been?" We find these events bring many people together who may not have seen one another, whatever. Again, I go back to interlinking families, but we bring a lot of one-on-one warm relationships. We bring, quite frankly, sometimes some people feel their competitors. Well, technically, they aren't there in different markets; they produce different products, they use different substrates, they have different type of converting equipment. Not long ago, one person brought in a project to us, and the size and magnitude would've taken three flexible printers to do it. Fortunately, I had the reserves to go out and talk to these people. This gives us some great opportunities. Again, even if somebody is a competitor, a large project comes in, let's work with two different people, but let's keep the jobs in Wisconsin, utilizing all Wisconsin resources.
Jerimiah Janssen:
Yeah, you've told me many stories about how companies are coming together, working together. One of the things that, even looking at your website and attending these events has really show me how large of an impact that women have within the five Ps converting and supporting industries. I know within GBIG, you have the Women in Five Ps, industry group. Tell us more about this part of GBIG.
Marty Ochs:
Well, Casey Dietrich heads it up and Ashley basically head up the program. Realistically, we've got to understand the impact of females in our industries. We're seeing more and more women engineers. We're seeing more and more women running companies. A case in point, ASI, Angela Krieger taking over as president of the company that her father basically was involved with. They're doing work in Poland, in Germany, and all across the United States, okay, so we're seeing different companies that the women now are becoming leaders, vice president of sales and marketing, and they're doing an incredible job. The Women in Five P basically is an offshoot that we support both financially and with GBIG. We want to see them grow and build and they have some great programs and get togethers. Again, it's building relationships.
Jerimiah Janssen:
Yeah, there's definitely an impact and a very important part there for women in these industries, and it's great to see GBIG's involvement along with that. Looking forward, what does GBIG hope to accomplish in the future, and who are the advocates?
Marty Ochs:
Well, what we'd like to do is, obviously, I reiterate bringing a lot of people together, making people more aware of our industries, to also get younger people into the trades and industry. We recognize the declining, the baby boomers. We know that we've got to bring people in, make people understand that this is not just an old manufacturing plant. I mentioned, I get into some of these plants. I mean, it looks like they're from Mars, the state-of-the-art robotics, the state-of-the-art equipment, the amount of places that I go to, four, 500,000 square foot manufacturing, and you probably only see 20, 30 people in the whole plant, so the impressiveness of some of these companies, companies like PCMC, what they're making for equipment is so impressive. But again, robotics, it's, again, we need kids and people to step into a higher level of equipment and manufacturing.
Jerimiah Janssen:
Yeah, Marty. Hey, that's just great to hear that you're reaching out to high schools, trade schools and universities. I'm on the board of ATEC, which is a charter school in the Appleton School District that focuses on manufacturing careers. We're going to have a round table discussion with local businesses in the coming weeks. If you are a business owner or have interest in helping your local area school, I would ask you to get involved. It's a great experience for me so far. If our listeners are looking to become more involved, what advice would you give them?
Marty Ochs:
Well, first of all, we're free membership, and we're supported by sponsorships. We ask companies that, if you want to support us, we've got very reasonable sponsorships, no membership. Many of our events are free. Our goal at the end of the year is basically to donate one half of all our revenue from sponsorships back into the community and in scholarships, so realistically, the best thing to support, be a sponsor, number one.
Number two, the events that we have are very reasonable. I mean, we're going into Amcor, going into PlayCon. We're going into some companies, quite frankly, as a individual, you'd never get in there, but as we bring a whole group together, this gives us the ability. Because of what we're doing, these companies see that, and so we can get people in to open up to see what they're doing, and quite frankly, we've got some extremely impressive tours.
Jerimiah Janssen:
Yeah, I know you put on that event a couple months ago, I think early spring, where we were able to go through four or five local businesses, and the discussion was great, conversations were fabulous, and just great seeing that group of individuals working together
Marty Ochs:
Well, and we also promote these companies. Many of these companies, after an event, okay, I'll use this case in point, we went to Charter Next Generation. They're based out of Milton. They have got five plants in Wisconsin, 13 plants worldwide, over a billion dollars in sales. We brought in a number of people in the flexible packaging. We had a guest speaker, George Huber, who's one of the premier guys in the world regarding plastics. We teamed those two together because we're looking at developing a new film that'll be biodegradable, particularly focused on the one-time usage. But again, we brought four or five people and they all want to work together, some of the people who use film, some of the people who convert film, and integrate basically education and technology with industry to come up with new products.
Jerimiah Janssen:
Yeah, no, that's excellent to hear. Also, just talking with attendees and also people that are heavily involved, it's amazing how you've been opening up doors with events or even just making personal connections. I mean, I think you're maybe the number one connector and number one network in the whole industry. It's amazing to watch. Any last thoughts for the audience, or anything that we have left out so far?
Marty Ochs:
Well, you made that comment and used the comment to me about a cheerleader.
Jerimiah Janssen:
Yeah.
Marty Ochs:
If you look at the state of Wisconsin, when you look at the sheer size, we do not have a connector. You're right, my background is very broad, so I understand machinery, I understand technology, converting, printing, paper, packaging, so what I'm doing is going to bring together groups, particularly focused on the paper industry, to how can we regenerate, what can we do in the paper industry? Because the key today is we have lost so much paper capacity in Wisconsin.
My belief is this, that we need to re-look. We've lost a lot of the printing paper capacity as I call uncoated and coated ground wood-free sheets. Well, we don't really have much capacity anymore. We've seen, seen mills basically shut down, move towards specialty packaging, and I can understand the move in that direction, but we still have a huge need of coated/uncoated paper for the commercial printing, for the catalog, for the direct mail, so we need to re-look at this and say, "What can we do as a state, as a group to rebuild some of the paper machines and/or put in new machines?"
Granted, people will say, "Well, we can't find labor." Well, I hear that all over the place. Granted, paper machine is expensive. Well, there's paper machines going all across the world, so yes, environmental is an issue, but we can overcome that. Realistically, can we work with the state of Wisconsin, work with people like the Paper Council and work with the other organizations to say, "Look, can we come back and rebuild some of the paper industry?" Our infrastructure for building and supporting paper machines is unheard of. There's nobody in the nation. When you look at some of these companies, whether it's tissue, tall, whatever, PCMC. Look at what they're doing, look at Infinity Machine; very innovative companies selling equipment across the United States, and we can't sell in our own backyard, but yet we need more capacity.
Unfortunately, again, there's different opinions, but the majority of mills that have shut down are over a hundred years old, and we seem to think that we could just keep rebuilding, rebuilding. At some point as a nation, for our own security and protection, we won't get paper from China, we won't get paper from Europe, so there's a big void in those markets. How do we come forth as a state of Wisconsin to say, "Let's fill some of those capacities"? What is it going to take? Can we put together a statewide business plan? Again, pull in all businesses, not just the paper industry, pull in the printing industry to support more paper production, the packaging, converting. My point is this: Just recently announcement came up that Pixelle shut down. They basically released liner papers. Well, they produced one-third in the country. That impact will be huge on the label industry in Wisconsin, and we're probably number one or number two in the nation, but here's suppliers that produce these products, and one-third of your paper is gone.
Jerimiah Janssen:
Yeah, it's amazing the impact that Wisconsin has on the overall paper industry. In the last couple of years, I've heard us referenced as "the converting corridor." We should have got this maybe a little bit sooner in the podcast year, But overall, how big is an industry, and how much does it mean to Wisconsin?
Marty Ochs:
Well, the industry's billion upon billions upon billions. Obviously, I think I look through GBIG. We're targeting while over 70, 80 billion. But that doesn't include GP, that does include some of the big players, Procter & Gamble, people like that. If you include them, it's a huge, huge industry.
But here's what people don't see: You don't see the amount of manufacturers manufacturing capabilities supporting these industries. The people, unfortunately, we don't recognize them being innovative. We're very innovative in new product, new product designs. Again, I keep referring to PCMC. If you ever go through their plant and all the unique things that they do, I mean, it's just unbelievable. Again, it's a $3 billion company. There's so many companies that are hidden behind. Carbur, for instance, has got a great facility in Green Bay, and they're a billions of dollar company based out of Italy, so many international companies have presence through our valley, too.
Again, when you start taking a look, you say, "Well, Menasha Corp, Great Northern Acoustic, Great Northern Corp, the size of magnitude of corrugated," case in point, we probably have six major corrugated manufacturers with plants in Wisconsin, and whether it's International Paper, whether it's PCA, all these companies. Again, we have our local favorite in the Green Bay Packaging. But understand, here's six major national, international companies with plants for corrugated just in Wisconsin alone.
Jerimiah Janssen:
Yeah, you make a good point there. It seems like a lot of large corporations are reinvesting in Wisconsin. Why do you see that, Marty? Why are they reinvesting back in the mills in the paper industry back here in Wisconsin?
Marty Ochs:
Well, the truth is this, they aren't as much as you think. When I say "they aren't as much as you think," the first paper mill put up, obviously recently is Green Bay Packaging, but it's 40 years since we had a new paper machine, 40 years, 'kay, so realistically, we aren't investing. What we're doing is putting on Band-Aids, 'kay? We as a state, as businesses need to go to see PCA, we need to go to International, we need to go to Menasha Corp, who's a local company, to how do we approach them and say, "Look, can we help you put in some new machines? What can we do to have you reinvest back here?" Recently, Orbit Division of Menasha Corp put up a multimillion-dollar plant in Ohio. The point is this is we've lost a lot of our local leadership and ownership in Wisconsin to outside, out of the state.
But we need to is reinforce our local people to say, "Look, what do we do? How can we reinvest in the paper industry?" Again, we need to do it from the five P point of view. I recently talked to a former WEDC executive, vice president, and he said, "Marty, you're on the right track. What you're doing is not just focusing on paper or just printing or just packaging. What you're doing is bringing together the whole gamut because all of us are dependent on paper. We lose paper, the rest of the industry is going to topple, and we're just going to become more dependent on other factories outside of Wisconsin and/or China or elsewhere around the world," so we have put together a major group business group to support paper.
Jerimiah Janssen:
Yeah. You mentioned a number of organizations, including GBIG, that are really trying to push us forward and bring it to the forefront. It seems like I've been seeing more news, and I think you're a big part of that as far as getting the local news to report more on the industry as well. Can you share anything on that?
Marty Ochs:
Well, ironically, US News World Report in Wisconsin has approached me. We are going to put together a group of meetings to meet with a wide variety of people in the industry. They want to cover Wisconsin. They have one person that's basically going to cover the paper industry. I want to introduce her to a variety of people in the paper industry. In addition, I want to introduce her to converting, to the printing, to the packaging, because it's all intertwined, so I'm very, very excited and pleased that US News comes to us and wants to interview us.
Jerimiah Janssen:
Yeah, Marty, that's all exciting. It's good to see the industry being pushed forward. Overall, I just really want to thank you for joining us today, for being our guest, and thank you for all that you do. I want to thank our audience for listening. I hope that you found it valuable; I know that I did. Always, we enjoyed seeing your passion for the industry, it's at the top, and I personally believe that, again, that you are its biggest advocate.
One plug there we put in for a first business bank is that we are heavily involved with a number of manufacturing events and associations within Wisconsin. One of the largest is actually the Manufacturing First Exponent Conference. We're the original founders of this event, and it's a great conference for companies in the five Ps. A large number of these attendees are associated with the five Ps in some way. Hopefully, you've been able to attend this event, or we'll be able to do so in the future.
Again, as a bank that is focused on business, it is important for us to be involved in these events and these associations that are of interest to our clients and to find the ways that we can assist businesses in growing their own business, so I would encourage our audience, that if you're looking for more information, again, go to greenbayinnovationgroup.com, or we also have a lot of content like this, and we have a lot of different resources on our website as well at firstbusiness.bank, that's firstbusiness.bank. I invite you to experience the advantage of First Business Bank. If there's anything that we can help you with, please reach out.
Speaker 1:
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