Eric Pro: The Pursuit of Reinvention

You could say that Eric Pro has ink in his blood. He came into the printing world in 1980 via his dad’s printing company, Experience Inc., a Philadelphia-based color house.

Eric Pro

“I could run a single-color Harris printing press before I could drive a car,” says Pro, now manager of the Copy and Mail Center at the American College of Physicians (ACP), in downtown Philadelphia, located just down the street from the Liberty Bell.

While he learned a great deal from mentors at Experience Inc., Pro furthered his printing knowledge at Montgomery County Vocational School, just outside the City of Brotherly Love. When Experience Inc. merged with another printer skilled in black-and-white printing, Pro knew he had to evolve and continue proving his worth.

“Being a young second pressman, if you will, either someone had to get fired, die, or retire [for me] to move up,” Pro says. “I started putting myself out there so I could advance myself up to becoming a pressman — which I did. So I was running four-, five-, six-color Millers, Harrises and Heidelbergs.”

In the ’90s, Pro says, the industry was turbulent, with high equipment costs, the emergence of PCs, and printing companies going out of business.

“I remember one particular place, you walked up to the door in the morning at 6 o’clock, and there was a sheriff’s notice on the door: ‘Call this number.’ That’s how you found out you didn't have a job,” he recalls. “So it was a tumultuous time, but again, some of these mentors — men and women — said, ‘Eric, you got what it takes to do it, but don't start your own printing business, because it's going to be tough.’”

That’s when Pro turned to the in-plant world. He never looked back.

Decades of Growth

When he joined the ACP as in-plant supervisor 21 years ago, Pro says the shop was doing four million black-and-white prints a year with two machines and one employee. But the director who had brought him on board was “basically shutting down the press end of it” and moving to black-and-white digital copiers.

Around the time of the Great Recession, the lease on the copiers ended and the shop invested in digital printers. Luckily, the in-plant got a five-year lease on the new machines, which Pro says helped it operate at a low cost through the recession.

And the shop continued to grow. Bindery services were brought in-house, Pro says, and a folder was purchased, which brought in $48,000 of new business in the first year. The in-plant also added color printing capabilities.

In June of 2014, Pro was promoted to manager. Today, together with his three employees, he runs the 1,000-sq.-ft. shop on less than $500,000 a year, with the crux of the operation being two pieces of Canon equipment: an imagePRESS C9010VP and a varioPRINT 140.

In 2018, Pro made another push for the shop to adapt.

“We got into BCC Mail Manager [software] so we can start doing direct mail in-house versus, once again, being subbed,” he says. Last year, the shop processed about 150,000 pieces —  about a third of what ACP was sending out.

But it doesn’t stop there. Pro says he’s investigating bringing apparel decoration and wide-format printing into the shop. The in-plant is also replacing the vendor it uses for fulfillment and bringing that service in-house.

“I'm looking at the next levels to make us a one-stop shop,” he says.

Preparing the Staff for the Future

On the people side of things, Pro says his staff is great to work with, especially given the fact that “you’re with your coworkers more than you probably are your own family on a given day.”

In an effort to prepare them for anything, Pro says he’s implemented cross-training to make sure jobs get done even if someone is sick or on vacation. In the long term, cross-training goes hand in hand with his efforts to document everything he does for his job. While he’s kept good notes through the years, maintaining updated records is critical in case someone needs to step in for him — for instance, upon his retirement.

Pro is currently planning to retire in five or six years, but he says he won’t do so until he knows the in-plant is in good hands with a new manager who is confident in his or her ability to run the shop.

Reflecting on the Journey

One of Pro’s biggest successes was merging the copy and mail centers in 2014. That meant piecing together an operation without records from the previous mail manager, and with limited information about the mail side of things from the accounting department. Because of that, he says, the first year was a major challenge.

“But then it got better and kept getting better,” he says. “Then we had the right people with the right attitude, and you taught them well, treated them right — and we set the world on fire.”

Pro is extremely proud of all the money the in-plant has saved the ACP.

“We're a nonprofit organization, and you can save money, be more efficient, every day,” Pro says. “You don't have to wait till the next economic crisis — I'm doing it every day. And you can see the results: stability of staffing, good equipment.”

Pro adds that the effort he’s put into tracking the in-plant’s work — and proactively putting the numbers in front of decision makers — has paid off, with the in-plant getting approval to insource work from schools, churches, and even other nonprofits.

“When you build your reputation, they want to listen to you; they're going to stop and listen to you,” Pro says. “Whatever decision they make, they make —  but at least they were informed decisions.”

Pro’s tendency to take initiative has helped him keep the in-plant from the dreaded fate of outsourcing.

“I never had a sense [that] we were going to be outsourced or anything like that, because every time it came up, we found a way to reinvent ourselves and go forward,” he explains. “You’ve got to be able to honestly have those conversations with your directors or your CFOs and tell them: ‘This is where we're at, and this is why, and here's what I'm proposing.’”

Pro has taken reinvention to new heights, even outside of work. He enjoys restoring old furniture, and sometimes converting furniture into something new. Once, he transformed a dresser into a TV stand; another time, he turned an old ink mixing pot into a wall-mounted planter.

Pro still lives in the Philly suburbs with his wife and son, who recently graduated and now works as an engineer. His daughter, an elementary school teacher for kids with special needs, also lives nearby.