How Faith, Fortitude and Focus Saved a Family Print Business: The Heritage Signs Story

Success in any business, yet alone in the printing industry, is fret with ups and downs.? Joe Gass knows this all too well.? The President/CEO of Heritage Signs and Displays of Charlotte, North Carolina has experienced his fair share of highs and lows.? But through faith, fortitude and focus he has found a winning formula for both professional and personal growth.

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Like many NPSOA owners, Gass is a second-generation printer, following in the footsteps of his father Allen.? But Allen’s path to printing was hardly conventional or genetic. He was born into a family of independent, self-employed watermen, who made their living harvesting crabs, oysters, clams, and other fish from the Potomac River, in rural Southern Maryland, 90 minutes south of Washington, DC.?

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As a young boy Joe spent summers with his uncles and grandfathers (World War II veterans) catching blue crabs in crab pots and as a teenager worked with another uncle in construction.? He would learn greatly from their work ethic.

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“They instilled in me a passion for serving others, a strong sense of urgency with the things I commit to and a drive that still gets me up before the break of dawn to prepare for a new day,” assets Joe.

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Allen Gass got into printing working at Patuxent River Naval Air Station in the print shop following his four years in the U.S. Air Force.?

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In 1977, he opened his own print shop in the garage of his home in Leonardtown, Maryland, originally naming the company Gass Printing Service. “During high school I remember working in the garage after school and football or wresting practice, pan developing film that I shot on our dark room camera,” recalls Joe.

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All three boys worked in the business as kids after school, each assigned specific duties. Joe operated the camera at the shop, long before desktop publishing and other modern technologies.? He also helped where needed. “I remember hand folding brochures at our dining room table.”? Each of the Gass boys was paid 10 percent of the company’s sales.? “In 1977 total sales were $3,400 and we each made $340,” says Joe.

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“In the early years, while still at our home, mom was the customer service department of the business, dealing with clients until 1985.? Dad was the craftsman who preferred to run the printing press and bindery equipment,” remembers Joe.

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Gass Printing Service continued to be operated out of the family home until 1985, when it leased its first office space in Leonardtown, Maryland.

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Three years prior, instead of going to college, Joe Gass continued the family tradition of military service.? He enrolled in the United States Navy where he would serve for six years as an electronics technician.?

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“I grew up as a person in the Navy,” he says. ?It built the foundation of the man he would become.? Learning communications and team building skills, he attended nuclear power school and survival training school and eventually worked with Special Boat Team 20 in support of Seal Team Two.? Staying focused and learning from the best have always been tenets of discipline for him.

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Gass never thought he would return to the family business.? He thought he would go to college after the military.? But while stationed in Norfolk, Virginia in 1985 and 1986, he would work in the family business on his days off, traveling three hours back to Southern Maryland, knocking on doors to introduce the family business.? He would knock on 30-40 doors a day drumming up business.?

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In his last year of Naval service, he was stationed on a ship in the Mediterranean.? It was here he worked on the business plan with the goal of having three locations and $500,000 in sales within five years.?

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Joe returned from the Navy at 24 years of age and his father signed over the business to he and his brother Steve for $1.? His father was 45 at the time and would work another 21 years with his sons, ever the craftsman.? He retired at 66 and remains the company’s Founder Emeritus.

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Immediately after Gass took charge of the family business in September 1988, he changed the name to Heritage Printing and Graphics, named for the ship he served on, the USS Hermitage.? Company sales at the time with three employees were $150,000.? By 1989 he had achieved the goals of his business plan, opening three locations: Leonardtown (March 1985), Prince Frederick (November?1988) and Lexington Park, MD?(March 1989) and beating his sales goal of $500,000 by ten percent.

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Sales continued to grow and by 1990 had hit the $600,000 mark.? While the trajectory was stellar, Joe determined he needed to focus more on the financials of his business. ?He

joined a peer group with Tom Crouser & Associates in Charleston, WV, where he learned a great deal about ratios and profitability and the concept of “Dead Printer Working.”

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In 1991, the company’s $600,000 in sales were generated by 6,000 invoices of roughly $100 each.? Today it has 10 times the sales with less than 2,500 invoices per year.

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In 1992, Joe consolidated the three locations into a central location and went from 16 employees to six.? Innovation played a key role.? “Your gut is informed by experience.? Look to people with wisdom,” advises Gass.

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In the early 1990s, Heritage was still primarily a two-color offset operation using Ryobi 3200’s and a Ryobi 3302, but evolved into a commercial printer offering publications and direct mail using a Sakurai 272 by the late 90’s.?

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Things were chugging along until 9/11 which hit the DC, Maryland, and Virginia markets hard.? Up until then the company was doing roughly $850,000 a year in sales, with 8-9 employees.

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After several years of struggle in 2002 and 2003 with increasing costs to produce, an inability to refinance debt and increasingly desperate competition that was compressing the pricing models, the company’s sales flattened. Gass had to declare bankruptcy and re-organize Heritage.? Although this was his toughest time in business and in his personal life, it ultimately turned out to be “a source of strength and fortitude” for building an extremely successful business and culture in the years ahead.?

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During the difficult time the question became, if the business were to fail, what to do with supporting a wife and four young children?? It was a time for change, out of Joe’s comfort zone.? After 17 years in Southern Maryland, and after the military, it was time to personally relocate away from the region.? But where to, where would he serve?

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“With sheer determination and trusting God with our future, I stopped asking God to bless what I was doing and asked Him to direct my path in a way that would honor Him and bless others,” says Gass.

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In July of 2005, at 41 years of age, with his wife Angela and four children aged 11, 10, 8 and 7 (Joey, Kaycee, Bethan, and Caleb) the family moved to Charlotte.

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“Out of brokenness, let me focus,” recalls Joe. He served as a bi-vocational pastor to a multi-racial congregation in Charlotte for three years while running his Maryland based business remotely.? He had learned after his restructuring that physically staying away from the business during regular hours benefited the company and himself.? This was long before the Pandemic normalized telecommuting.

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Gass joined the Charlotte Rotary in 2008. ?He had been a Rotarian since the age of 25 and had a chance to interview hundreds of business and community leaders asking them, “I am newer to Charlotte, and I want to know how I can be a blessing to my new hometown.? How do you suggest I go about doing that?”? Similarly, he got involved with the Charlotte Chamber of Commerce.? Before long referrals were coming in with 80 new businesses joining the Heritage family of clients in 2008 and 2009, amid one of the most challenging national financial downturns in US history.?

In 2008, Heritage launched a new website with the goal of becoming more visible in Charlotte.? In the process Gass learned a great deal about the ins and outs of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and inbound lead generation.? His company now has six dedicated people (out of a staff of 34) who focus solely on content writing and “being found,” including a team of four working remotely.

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Later that year two Chamber colleagues suggested Gass get into the sign business.? After walking the local mall and seeing firsthand how ubiquitous wide format offerings were, Gass had the epiphany he needed to jump head-first into the business.? His first major account was Nautica Outlet stores.? “It’s where I cut my teeth and learned a lot about the business, including retail point of purchase signage.”

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Gass has never pretended to have all the answers and is a lifelong student.? “Learn from the people you hire,” which is exactly what he did when he hired the person who walked with him through the mall early in 2009.? By 2010, within one year of launching the sign business, it accounted for 25 percent of the company’s million dollars in sales.

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What Gass found out was the sign business was a very different world from the commercial printing industry.? Different pricing models, different software, different vocabulary but through determination he and his team figured out how to be impactful for their growing list of customers who needed, signs, banners and displays.?

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The wide format side of the business continued to expand from 2010 to 2017 when it finally accounted for more than 50 percent of the company’s revenue.? With the growing priority of wide format printing for the company Heritage added Heritage Custom Signs and Displays as a division.

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In 2015 Joe went to Nepal for the first time with the Mustard Seed Foundation.? The time in this third world country was another game changer and altered the trajectory of his life and that of his company.?

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Within a few days of coming back to the United States he got a call from a larger competitor in Southern Maryland, Beacon Printing in Waldorf, Maryland, that did mostly offset printing using the same half size offset sheet size press as Heritage.? Beacon and its location were acquired, and the Heritage team relocated to their facility Labor Day weekend, 2015.? By 2016 combined sales were $2.9 million.? “Although this was ultimately a great decision, it was extremely painful to combine two cultures into the acquired company’s facility, but we got the transition done in about 18 months” say Gass, noting that consolidations can be quite difficult.

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During the first two years, the price shopping clients that had used Beacon were dropped and Heritage made up the difference by selling sign jobs to their existing commercial clients that appreciated its value proposition.???

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Gass hired eight of the 13 Beacon employees in the asset-only acquisition and brought only four Heritage employees in the move north to Waldorf, within 25 miles of their marketplace in Washington, DC and Northern Virginia and within one hour of Baltimore and 90 minutes from Richmond, VA.? The move was challenging and Gass is grateful to the teammates who were willing to drive an extra 40 minutes each way to get to work.

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Like many NPSOA members, Gass no longer has offset equipment, selling his Heidelberg CD74 two years ago. And he has never looked back.? “It was a great move and the perfect time to get out.? Digital printing and wide format signs are doing awesome.? Our sales grew 35 percent following the decision!” he exclaims.

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In addition to the production facility in Waldorf, where Joe’s younger brothers Steve and Dean still work, the company has had a sales office on Connecticut Avenue in The District for 15 years, giving it prominence in the marketplace.

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The company expanded to Louisville, Kentucky in February 2023 with the addition of Daniel Whitaker – “a great troubleshooter, installer and people person,” says Gass.? “Hire the best, learn from the best!”

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“Louisville has a beautiful showroom where clients can see in person, how we transform environments.? In the first 9 months since launching in the city, Heritage is already very visible in the city, growing a strong client base” says Gass.

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He asserts “you have to adapt and reevaluate regularly how you handle opportunities.”?? He was personally teleworking long before the Pandemic made it palatable.? “Developing a great team culture that values and encourages individual contribution is how we continue to successfully grow and scale our business.”

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The company is growing in Raleigh, NC with a project coordinator “that is an awesome installer and site surveyor,” says Gass. ?

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Gass doesn’t envision new production facilities in the next two years but would not be surprised if a facility will be necessary in the Midwest to support Heritage’s growing client base in the Louisville, Indianapolis, and Cincinnati region.?He does see more regional satellite showrooms developing with a team of installers in each location.?

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Something is obviously working.? Heritage had the privilege of producing a lot of signs and graphics for the 2019 NBA All Star Game as well as work with the Carolina Panthers and other prominent Charlotte area sports franchises.? “Our customers find us through our reputation.?? Our business focus is to always improve our culture and our professional abilities to enhance the results we provide our clients by visually transforming their commercial interior and event environments from design to installation,”?he explains.

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Last year Heritage grew 35 percent to $5.1 million in sales. Gass projects gross sales of $6 million this year (up 20 percent) and hopes to be at $7 million in 2024.? A $10 million goal is set for 2026.

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What does the future hold for Joe personally? Well retirement is not in the cards for the energetic, fit 59-year-old.? “I get to show up at a work playground every day with amazing teammates and clients.”?

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A deeply devoted follower of Jesus Christ, Gass believes it is important to ‘honor God by serving others.”? And he puts his money where his mouth is.? He has made numerous trips to Asia identifying communities and local catalysts that can help start schools where teachers are able to help children receive a solid education, two meals per day and health care. Currently Heritage supports five schools with a total of 21 teachers in several Asian countries, that are changing the lives of 600 students. “Pay it forward to achieve a brighter future for children who formerly had little chance for a tomorrow that included success and hope,”?says Gass.

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Is there a third Gass printing generation in the works? The future looks bright.? It is perhaps too soon to tell but Joe’s son Caleb has been working in the business the past two years in Charlotte after receiving his college education from East Carolina University.? Joe’s nephew, Eric, is also making a positive impact on the business as the production manager at the Waldorf, Maryland facility.?

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Rewarded for his perseverance, dedication, and service in the community, Gass was recently named a 2023 Most Admired CEO by the Charlotte Business Journal.? “I came to Charlotte with very few financial resources but with a strong desire to make a positive impact on the lives of others.? It is a great honor and privilege for me and our company to be able to live with this purpose everyday.”

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Ever the student and learning from others, it is Gass that now can share the wisdom of his experiences.? Asked by the Charlotte Business Journal what is your best advice for future leaders, he replied, “Pursue a career with companies that have a great culture, a meaningful purpose and excellent leadership development programs. Seek mentors, with shared faith and values, to challenge and encourage you to pursue excellence as you develop as a leader in your company, family, and community. Find a faith community, with an excellent discipleship and small group structure, to serve and support.”

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Sounds like a winning formula.