The J.M. Perrone
Company: What separates the best players in a crowded field of direct mail and marketing companies is the understanding of what motivates a response and the ability to execute all phases, deliver results, and do it all at a fair price. The leadership at the J.M. Perrone Company in Hingham, Mass., has Today, the J.M. Perrone Company is recognized nationally as a sophisticated printing and direct mail company that consistently helps clients yield results ranging from increased alumni giving, to identifying potential markets and customers that Perrone clients can pursue. Investments have paid off handsomely for the company — from the early days of alternately investing in one piece of printing equipment for each piece of mail equipment, to its latest purchase of a Xerox iGen3 high-speed digital production press. From its 50,000 square-foot production facility just off Route 3, the company’s 85 full time employees process more than 100 million pieces of direct mail annually, and produce internally the vast majority of that printed material. In all, annual total gross revenues exceed $10 million, vastly different from the early days when John Perrone worked in his basement office, and Matt joining him to print the work his cousin had sold. Love of work is the total package John rose to corporate vice president at Dickinson Direct. Fancy title aside, he became owner Don Dickinson’s go-to guy on every facet of the business. John Perrone was destined to try his own hand at entrepreneurship. And with a cousin working as printer, why not?
Matt Perrone never considered where that venture would take him. Today, he serves as president of the J.M. Perrone Company, while John Perrone is chief executive officer. From a humble beginning of part-time at night to the executive in charge of all sales activities as well as day-to-day operational activities at a multi-million dollar company, Matt never envisioned becoming the face of the organization. John, the more reserved of the two men, was unavailable for this article. Matt attributes the company’s success to John’s understanding of how direct marketing could increase sales. “He started with lead generation, fulfillment, creative services and more. His love of the work was the total package of direct marketing,” Matt said. “It was around that time I started working for John and his ‘little agency’ as I used to call it. I worked part-time at night and did all of the printing, but at one point, he handed me a bunch of Rolodex cards with names and phone numbers of people and he asked me to start calling them.” To avoid freezing up with fear, John suggested his cousin treat the Rolodex cards like playing cards: hold a shuffled pile of cards in one hand, flip one over onto the table, and then dial that number as quickly as possible and launch into a sales pitch. It wasn’t the most sophisticated sales strategy ever, but it worked. With each call, Matt’s fear subsided, and eventually a few jobs were won, and a new sales guy was making his bones. Matt tallied more than more than $450,000 in his first full year of sales then more than doubled that in the second year.
“As we grew we would add a piece of printing equipment and then a piece of mailing equipment,” he said. “We always alternated: one print piece, one mail piece. We grew the business evenly in terms of print and mail capability. Among our first major investments was a two-color Diddie press, then a Cheshire label machine.” Business units are growing Barry, who worked with John Perrone at Dickinson Direct and joined the company about 20 years ago, leads a team of four sales representatives and support staff that generates more than $4 million in annual revenues. Much of that sales activity comes from working with alumni and development offices at colleges and universities across the country. The company has served this market for more than 14 years. Barry is a well known and sought after speaker at national gatherings of the Council for Advancement and Support of Education (CASE). He travels the country to meet with annual fund directors to determine how J.M. Perrone Company might assist their direct marketing efforts. “Paul is very consultative in his approach and all the while he explains the solutions we can provide.” Barry’s consistency has made J.M. Perrone a nationally recognized leader in direct mail fund-raising. Clients include Brown, Harvard, University of Miami, Oregon State University, the University of California, San Diego, Gonzaga University, Rice University and others. “Paul’s ability to capture that market has been huge for us,” Perrone said.
Conventional print and direct mail
“He has been fantastic and he has never looked back,” Perrone said. “Stuart is a generalist, and I say that with the highest degree of respect. He sells to non-profits including hospitals, universities. He provides excellent project management for clients. He takes great pride in his work and he has a phenomenal reputation within the industry. Stuart is the consummate print and direct mail sales person. He keeps clients for years.” Additionally, Swanson championed the internal effort to get the company certified by the Forestry Stewardship Council. He got everyone energized. He made sure the company met all the requirements before the audit began. Perrone said it helped that the company has always had a good corporate culture where employees take pride in their work and recognize the value internally to meeting FSC requirements. “We recognize that clients want to see that we are responsible company and have a commitment toward environmental stewardship,” Perrone added. “We also recognize the growing importance of that and that it is mandated for some clients within their organizations that they do business with vendors who place a high importance on environmental stewardship.” Like Barry’s Non-profit Client Services division, Swanson’s department contributes about $4 million to the company’s gross annual revenues. Good management and leadership Out of 85 full time employees, about 55 are dedicated to production. Most run production equipment, are involved in mailing, or work in the digital production department.
Three to four employees are programmers. Much of their work involves handling databases from clients that are crucial to successful variable data print campaigns. Three or four other employees are devoted to digital production work, between keeping the iGen3 humming along, or preparing files that are run through that machine and other high-speed toner-based equipment such as two Konica-Minolta production machines. The company also employs two full time proofreaders. Perrone jokingly refers to them as “nitpickers,” but adds that they serve as a vital internal quality control mechanism that ensures high standards of excellence. Project management is driven by an internal computer system that Matt developed using Filemaker Pro. It serves J.M. Perrone well as a complete computer-based project management tool. The customized client module appears to be as good as any available MIS system. “Integrating variable data into printed format and working its way through the entire production process is a timely and efficient manner makes us special to our clients and different from our competitors,” Perrone said. A job of average complexity might include an outer envelope and a three-point match in terms of variable data.
“It’s not always easy to do that to a major mailing, but our ability to manage the most complex job distinguishes us in the marketplace. One mismatched envelope is the unforgivable sin in this business,” Perrone said. “Clients appreciate that we understand the dynamics of the whole project.” Fall and Spring are the two busiest times of the year for the biggest and most complex direct mail jobs that are conceived produced and executed on-site at the Hingham facility happen during those busy periods. The company usually has 80 to 100 jobs in the pipeline during those times. With John slowly cutting back on work hours, Matt’s plate is full between managing sales, overseeing the entire operation and managing his own sales accounts. He’s quick to point out that the company has a solid core of managers who understand how all parts of the company need to be in smooth synchronization with each other in order to be effective. The senior management team includes Eddie Woods, chief operating officer; Bob Loscuito, chief financial officer; Tom Villanova, vice president of printing and binding; sales managers Paul Barry and Stuart Swanson who both carry titles of senior vice president; and Matt and John. Several of these managers participate in a daily production meeting to go over the day’s work orders, check the status of jobs already started, and develop a production schedule for the days and weeks ahead. A Web-to-Print portal is in the company’s future. “It’s getting to the point where we need that option. We’re such a national company in terms of client base that we need a platform. That is one of our goals over the next six to eight months,” Perrone said. The company currently has a full time webmaster who, when not busy keeping the company web site up to date, is involved with personalized URLs on direct mail campaigns. PURLs are an integral part of one direct mail campaign right now for a continuing education client. One thing that’s changed is that many clients want results and updates in real time. PURLs obviously help the company respond to that expectation. Biggest scare for the company One episode brought the company to its knees and created for Matt Perrone a glimpse at a potentially bleak future. Sometime after 9/11, the deadly bacterium Anthrax was detected at a U.S. Postal Service facility in Maryland, which led to a nearly complete shutdown of postal operations across the country. “Postal equipment such as trays and bags circulate across the country all the time,” Perrone said. “When Anthrax hit, people were not mailing. Business just stopped. It was much more severe than people realize. It was a very difficult time for us, and for other mailers as well.” Then it happened. A production worker noticed powder on one of the thousands of mail trays that regularly flow into and out of the Hingham plant. The worker was fearful and notified a supervisor. All work stopped. Postal inspectors and other health professionals responded. A bit stressed, and a bit frustrated, but confident that deep down he would be proven correct; Perrone took decisive action and rubbed his hand through the mysterious powder.
“As much as I knew it could have been spray powder, I wasn’t positive. It wasn’t something I did out of fear. It might have been more out of frustration.” Before the workplace could return to a sense of normalcy, postal inspectors made Perrone sign affidavits stating that the powdery substance was not harmful. He signed the documents, and got the company back on track. “For me, that was the only time in more than 30 years that I was truly unnerved. This could have put us out of business completely,” he said. Undaunted by the future Now, it is not so simple. Not much keeps Perrone up at night, but he does lose occasional sleep wondering what would happen if one of the firm’s bigger clients didn’t pay its bill. “Like many businesses, we sometimes have clients who slip to 90 days before paying their invoice, and those are the thoughts that keep me up at night.” Perrone can’t recall any bad decisions or missed opportunities over the years: not because they haven’t made any, but because of a simple philosophy. Neither cousin dwells on the past. “I tend to be an optimist,” Matt Perrone said. Perrone is undaunted by the future. He welcomes it. Both he and his cousin have had adult children working in the company. John has cut back on his work hours, but Matt plans to stay at the helm for the foreseeable future. “The personal exit strategies for both John and I are constantly evolving,” he said. “Neither one of us have plans to retire. The only thing I may do in the next few years is throttle down on the energy and intensity level, but I still like it. The deadline to get a quality project done and on the postal truck that’s scheduled to leave the loading dock before the end of the day, and then to have a project for a client exceed their expectations: I find those experiences thrilling and very rewarding on a professional level and it makes me feel good for our entire staff.” As for future challenges, Perrone thinks societal changes have bred unfathomable opportunities for the direct mail industry. “The Internet has changed the world as much as moveable type changed printing. There are unbelievable opportunities on the horizon over the next 10 years. It’s going to be a lot of fun.
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If you
don’t have the best list of a target audience, if your timing
is off, or in some cases, you don’t have an enticing offer to
spur the recipient to act, your effort is doomed for failure or, at
best, lower than expected returns. 
measured
their success in terms of their clients’ growth. The tandem of
company founder John M. Perrone, and his cousin Matthew Perrone, guided
the company in its early days even before the recognized official start
in 1980. For many years now, an executive leadership team has helped
the cousins lead the company into new and profitable markets.
Matt
exhibited the same tenacity as he held several jobs in the area as a
pressman and rose thru the ranks at Spencer Press when that company
was in Hingham. Soon after laying the groundwork for his own business,
John asked Matt to join him. 
In the
early days of growing a family business, there is little time off. When
he wasn’t selling and John wasn’t writing pitches and hatching
plans, the men looked for equipment. They acquired the contents of a
small in-plant operation in Boston, and rented 2,500 square feet of
space on Finnel Drive in Weymouth. They took any jobs they could get
—odd jobs, job lot work, some direct mail work from The Boston
Globe.
Barry is
also focused on new opportunities, in particular athletic based fund-raising.
“It’s a market that needs our expertise and we’re
poised to offer it.” 
A more
complex job like one just completed for a mid-size public university
in the Atlantic Coast Conference involved a 60,000-piece mailing that
was further segmented between in-state and out-of-state residents, new
and older alumni, and even grandparents of alumni. 
Not much
has knocked the company off stride over the years. It’s weathered
slow economic times, kept current with technological advances and sharpened
its value proposition and survived the economic transformation brought
on by the Internet.
He declared
that the white substance on the mail tray was spray powder commonly
found in commercial print operations.
“I
love this trade. I’ve always taken a shine to the printing press,”
he added. “And here in New England, we are among the best printers
in the country. From Printers Row on Congress Street in Boston, New
England has always been a hotbed for that, and this industry has spawned
a lot of quality people. I’m proud to be a part of that.”
