File Room Job Launches 32-Year Print Career

Mark McCready admits he didn’t have any firm life goals when he graduated from high school in 1991. With a tentative plan to study business, he enrolled at Black Hawk College in Moline, Illinois, but his heart wasn’t in it.

Mark McCready

“I just kind of lost motivation for school,” he reflects.

After just a year and half, he had left college and was working at a pizza shop, unsure of what direction life would take him. He certainly had no idea he would end up as manager of Print, Mail and Distribution for Modern Woodmen of America, the nation’s third-largest fraternal benefit society with nearly 700,000 members.

Fate pulled McCready from the pizza oven one day in 1993 when a close family friend who worked at Modern Woodmen told him about a job opening in the company’s file room. Though he liked his pizza shop job, McCready knew he “needed to start getting on with my adult life.” He saw potential in joining one of the Quad Cities’ top companies, so he took the job.

He did well there, and after a year or so the same family friend recommended him for another opening as a second shift mainframe operator.

“I had no idea what that meant,” McCready confesses, with a laugh. “I took a chance and did it. That kind of springboarded me into … where I am today.”

In that job, he did batch processing on the mainframe and handled the printing of transactional jobs like reports, letters, and premium notices, as well as sorting and delivery around the building.

“That gave me a really good introduction to … how the company worked,” he says. “So it was really good exposure for me.”

It was also his introduction to Xerox, whose printers the company has used for many years. He grew to appreciate “the tangible aspect” of the printed materials he was producing for the company.

“We were just young kids producing this stuff, so that was kind of satisfying,” he says.

Promotion to Supervisor

In 2004, McCready was promoted to operations supervisor, where he expanded his expertise over the next 14 years. In 2018, when the company retired its mainframe system, he advanced to manager of Print, Mail, and Distribution and relocated to the 18-employee in-plant. There, he oversaw the migration of transactional printing into the in-plant.

Mark McCready (left) and Chris Stein stand outside Modern Woodmen of America’s headquarters on the Mississippi River.

“It was an entirely new world over here,” he says. The 54,000-sq.-ft. facility included a large warehouse as well as offset presses, two HP Indigos, mail inserters, and a full bindery — equipment he was mostly not familiar with.

“What made it work, and what has allowed me to be successful is, we had a very experienced supervisor here, Chris Stein,” McCready says. Stein handles day-to-day production issues, while McCready is in charge of strategic planning, business management, budget issues, and other high-level decision making.

“It’s been almost a partnership,” he says of his relationship with Stein. “We consult daily on almost everything.”

Moving Into Inkjet

In the years since assuming his current role, McCready and Stein have expanded the in-plant’s capabilities. One big change came in 2022 when they moved into production inkjet with a Xerox Baltoro, and used it to print high volumes of transactional materials, such as premium notices, annual statements, and member correspondence. The shop continues to see the need for its four-color Heidelberg, he notes, to print company magazines.

The in-plant’s wide-format expansion has been a big win, McCready says. The in-plant prints event signage for Modern Woodmen’s annual sales conference, its national convention, and various field representative travel events using its Mimaki JFX200-2513 EX UV-LED flatbed printer and UCJV300-160 UV-LED roll-to-roll printer. The shop prints foamcore signage, yard signs, canvas photos, posters, banners, repositionable wall graphics, and more. Wide-format, McCready says, provides between 10-15% of the in-plant’s revenue, and helps make up for a gradual decrease he’s seeing in the transactional work.

He further expanded the in-plant’s wide-format abilities earlier this year when the shop added a Colex Sharpcut Pro SX1732 automated cutter.

“That’s probably been one of the biggest successes,” he says.

The shop has already used it to produce magnets, yard signs, and jumbo head photo cutouts for a sporting event, and McCready has plans to use it to make awards, room signs, and custom name badges.

Though the in-plant’s printed pieces have won In-Print awards for quality, McCready is even more proud of his team’s ability to produce high volumes of materials on deadline, and handle quick turnaround requests.

“We hate to say ‘no,’” he says.

‘A Great Company to Work for’

He’s pleased that his staff enjoys working at the in-plant and there have been few departures during his time there.

“I’m really proud of the fact that we do not have a turnover situation with employees,” he remarks. “Our company is really a great company to work for. I’m living proof of it. I’ve been here for 32 years.”

Mark McCready

One thing McCready and Stein do to provide a congenial atmosphere is hold cookouts for the staff.

“We’ve got a grill,” he says. “Actually we’re having one today. We’re trying to sneak one last one in before the weather turns on us. So we just do potluck style cookouts.”

McCready has attended the In-plant Printing and Mailing Association conference five times and values the networking with fellow managers and the ideas he brings home. “By the time the week’s over, you’ve made a lot of connections with other managers,” he says.

Married to his wife Stacey since 2004 with three children, McCready has been spending his nights working toward finally finishing his college degree at St. Ambrose University in Davenport, Iowa. When he’s not studying, one of his big hobbies is collecting vintage stereo equipment and vinyl records. He’s the proud owner of every album released by the rock band Kiss.

“I’m trying to buy the entire Kiss catalog in the Japanese pressings,” he says. “The printing is so much better on the Japanese versions.”

Did McCready make the right choice in becoming an in-plant manager?

“There’s no way I could have ever predicted this is where I would be,” he says, “but I can’t imagine really doing anything else. It’s been rewarding.”