Vanguard Direct President Bob O’Connell’s keen perception of the marketplace has multiplied the company’s bottom line, but it’s his connection with people that makes him a success.

Bob O’Connell walks in long, purposeful strides down Eighth Ave., near W. 36th St. Every few moments, he slows and waits patiently for me to catch up. I’m not used to navigating the narrow sidewalks and darting between oncoming pedestrians the way O’Connell does. The Long Island native and president of distributorship Vanguard Direct has worked in the city for 29 years. Its rhythms are natural to him. “I love being around people,” he says. “That’s why I’m attracted to Manhattan. You have every personality and nationality on earth in a four-block radius.”

After its former offices were destroyed in the wake of 9/11, Vanguard relocated to this neighborhood, when it was still up-and-coming. We pass buildings that once were vacant and dilapidated but now are renovated and teeming with office workers. When Vanguard first moved here, it occupied one floor in its building. Since then, it has expanded to the floor below. A tour of the office reveals just how diverse the definition of a distributor has become. Today, Vanguard resembles an ad agency more than a traditional distributorship. The open spaces and vibrant colors encourage commingling and creativity. Here and there are purposely designed spaces that foster interaction: A table in an open hallway for impromptu meetings, a lunchroom with a scenic view of the Hudson River, and the Think Tank—a meeting room without tables, where employees and customers can literally write on walls made of dry erase board material.

From O’Connell’s office window, you see the Empire State Building rise above the surrounding skyscrapers. The office itself is clean and orderly. O’Connell’s desk and shelves are clear except for a small stack of magazines, photos of his children and a few mementos. A frenetic red abstract painting hangs on the wall, the one item that seems somewhat out of place. “This doesn’t really reflect my character,” O’Connell says, smiling at the painting. “I’m more serene than that.”

O’Connell’s self assessment isn’t precisely what you hear from those close to him. “Not knowing him, you might mistake Bob for the staid and quiet CPA type. You’d be very wrong. He’s an extrovert with a capital E,” says Mike Fisher, CDC, a member of the executive committee of DMIA’s Board of Directors and CEO of PrintConcepts, a distributorship in Allentown, Pa. “Bob might not be the loudest guy in the group, but when he says something, heads turn because it’s a spot-on comment—funny or smart or both.”

As a businessman, O’Connell describes himself as “not one of those small business owners who will have a heart attack from anxiety. I keep things in perspective. I don’t get hung up on little things. When Vanguard faces challenges, we just go to it.”
O’Connell the association leader also is outwardly low key, yet quick to size up issues, pitfalls and best courses of action. Says Fisher: “I’ve never met anyone who can see the forest through the trees as quickly as he can. [In DMIA board meetings] Bob will say something, only a few words, but it’s the conclusion; it’s what the consensus is going to be in a few minutes after everyone has thought about this or that issue and discussed details. Most people are still processing the information when Bob has already figured it out and said it.”

We swing by Executive Vice President and younger brother Donald O’Connell’s office. The desk, shelves and floor are cluttered with papers, folders and boxes. “That’s the difference between us in a nutshell,” O’Connell says. “I think we complement each other very well. He’s a great idea guy—I need him for that. He needs me to crunch the numbers and make sure the ideas make sense.”

The sliding glass doors to O’Connell’s office are almost always left open. “By design, we’re not a structured organization, meaning that if employees have a challenge, they can always come see me,” O’Connell says. “And they do.”

I’ve spent the day meeting many of these employees. In fact, my interviews went longer than expected, and now we’re behind schedule, which explains the rush down Eighth Ave. Our final destination is O’Connell’s summer home in Mantoloking, N.J. To reach it, first we have to catch a commuter train to Newark, N.J., and pick up a car. From there, the drive is an hour if we’re lucky. We race to the train station, but it seems that everyone in New York decided to start the weekend early. The lines at the ticket booth stretch through the corridors.

O’Connell takes one look and decides we’ll pay extra to buy our tickets on the train. The trains run almost every 15 minutes, but falling behind even that much can mean an extra hour of driving, he explains. He chooses our course of action quickly, but he never seems rushed. It’s as if he saw this coming. Whether it’s wisdom from experience, his background in accounting, or a combination of both, O’Connell seems to calculate risk and return before the rest of us even recognize the variables at play.

Reading the Tea Leaves
Earlier in the day, Bob and Donald sat in a meeting with members of Vanguard’s executive and operations teams. The company recently bought a 100,000 square foot building in the Newark area, where they’re transferring warehouse and production operations that are currently housed at the Brooklyn Army Terminal. Since the 1967 riots, in which 26 people were killed, Newark has had a reputation for being one of the worst cities in America, but signs of its resurgence have flickered on and off for years. O’Connell believes the revitalization is for real this time. Anyone who knows him would say odds are good that he’s right.

O’Connell has a knack for anticipating the future. It’s why Vanguard’s offices look the way they do. It’s why Vanguard’s customers rely on the company to provide “creative communication solutions” rather than fill job orders. It’s why Vanguard offers design and copywriting, as well as print, electronic and promotional products, e-commerce capabilities, and kitting and fulfillment. And it’s why Vanguard’s revenue has grown to $43 million since Bob and Donald bought the company from their family 14 years ago.

The company lives up to its name—a distributorship on the cutting edge. Its expansion to the Newark area is just another sign that Vanguard is ahead of its peers. The meeting about the new building takes place in one of Vanguard’s conference rooms. Participants sit around a large table with a floorplan unfolded in front of them. Each has a spreadsheet detailing the projected renovation costs. Donald runs most of the meeting. He probes for information about how the building will be designed and where capital improvements are needed. At one point, he suggests knocking down a wall to make room for the new warehouse’s rack and conveyor system.

Bob occasionally chimes in, but for the most part, he listens. He leans back in his chair and touches the top of a pen to his lips, watching intently with deep-blue eyes. Toward the end of the meeting, he asks a telling question: “How’s employee morale?”

The move to Newark poses a problem for employees who live in New York City. The new commute will be grueling, but many of them will do it regardless. Some even plan to move to Newark so they can stay with Vanguard. It’s a testament to the O’Connell brothers’ emphasis on employee satisfaction that turnover is so low. One example: They plan to offer free bus service to commuting employees for one year after the move to the Newark area.

At the head office, the expectation that employees will grow with the firm is even more palpable. The O’Connells have installed a library and reading room where the staff engages in professional development. At Vanguard, professional development is not only a good idea, it’s a requirement. Employee bonuses are tied to the pursuit of self-education, whether it’s by reading a book on business or printing, taking an online course, such as DMIA’s Print University, or attending vendor education sessions.

From Factor to Fortune
Talk to long-time Vanguard employees, and they describe O’Connell as a paternal figure, someone who cares as much about their well being as the bottom line. “He’d take the time to talk to strangers and help them if they were in need,” Donald says. At the same time, they credit O’Connell’s vision with the company’s successful transition from forms and paper supplier to marketing communications firm. “If you fell asleep at your desk in 1985 and woke up today, you wouldn’t recognize the company,” says Joe Corbo, vice president of operations. “When we lost our first major paper contract, I went into panic mode. Bob said, ‘Listen to me very carefully. This is going to be the best thing that ever happened to Vanguard.’” Corbo echoes a sentiment that many Vanguard employees share: “When you go into battle, he’s the guy you want to know laid out the plan.”
Bob O’Connell treats employees like family, maybe because nothing is more important to him than his family. We take a moment to relax in the air-conditioned rail car on our way to Newark. A man seated in front of us talks loudly on his cell phone. The conductor rolls his eyes and asks him to hang up. We pay for our tickets, and O’Connell launches into a story about his children: Ryan, 19; Kristen, 16; and Kevin, 15. School hasn’t yet let out, so they’re grudgingly but respectfully meeting us at the beach house so Print Solutions can take family photos.

We reach Newark and begin the drive to Mantoloking. It soon becomes clear that we’ve beaten the worst of traffic and should enjoy a relatively easy ride. O’Connell’s sense of timing turns out to be right once again. However, during the drive he tells me the company’s success wasn’t always guaranteed.

After graduating from Villanova in 1978, O’Connell became a CPA while working for Deloitte for four years. Tired of auditing clients’ financial records, he joined Vanguard Direct, a business forms and computer paper supply company that his father and two of three older brothers had founded. One year later, Donald joined the company as well. When Bob was hired, his father wanted his accounting expertise, but he didn’t want to pay for it directly. Instead, he gave Bob a sales position and had him do the accounting in his spare time. “My father was an old-fashioned salesman,” says O’Connell. “You got paid for selling.”

O’Connell is reluctant to tell the next part of the story, but it’s difficult to appreciate Vanguard’s current success without knowing this fundamental fact: It had serious financial problems. “Donald and I approached our father and brothers and conveyed our desire to own Vanguard,” he says. “Everything fell into place. My father was going into semi-retirement, and the financial health of the company was in trouble.” Big trouble. In the early ’90s, the company’s bank pulled its credit line. Vanguard closed its Long Island office and instituted pay cuts for all employees from top to bottom. O’Connell found himself begging for credit. The best he could arrange was asset-based lending, a form of “factoring.” The company paid 16 percent of their accounts receivable to a lender for two years before it regained financial stability. “We put our nose to the grindstone and showed financial restraint,” O’Connell says. The transition was not easy, but employees kept their faith: “We tried to have the right culture and attitude,” he adds. “I think they believed in me. They knew I had the financial expertise to make it happen.”

The company rebounded with a new business model, one centered on house accounts as a means to improving profitability. Many distributorships still pay their salespeople a significant commission on every sale. If they do the math, they might realize just how thin their profit is after calculating overhead. Vanguard’s focus on house accounts allows the company to build in profitability and still reward salespeople and their support staff. A key to this model’s success is O’Connell’s reliance on the company’s senior managers. “We’re interchangeable in many respects,” he says. “I could hand over my best customers and I’d be confident that it’d get done right.”

The O’Connell Clan
Jean, O’Connell’s wife of 20 years, greets us in Mantoloking with the children. The house, which sits on a quiet street, opens onto a deck that abuts a canal. We relax under an awning, and Jean serves fresh shrimp with a wedge of lemon. She is perhaps O’Connell’s greatest example of foresight. They met for the first time in a pub called Finnegan’s, where O’Connell’s adult softball team was hanging out before a game. “They called it a pray-for-rain party,” Jean recalls.

O’Connell bought his future wife a drink and asked her on a date. She promptly said no. She already had a boyfriend and didn’t quite trust O’Connell’s motives: “I thought at first he was very happy-go-lucky, out to have a good time, but he was very respectful, very much a gentleman,” she says. He persisted. She eventually relented and met him for lunch. Though their meeting was pleasant, Jean still was dating someone else, and they left it at that.

A year passed and the two met again at a club called The Juke Box. Jean was no longer in a relationship. “I think we knew the first time we met that it was something special,” Bob says. “When we saw each other again, it was like, ‘Okay.’” The couple married and O’Connell chartered a 54-foot sailboat in St. Martin as a surprise for his bride. “He didn’t tell me where we were going for our honeymoon,” Jean says. “Which was my first mistake,” O’Connell says. Jean spent the first day seasick. They boated for five days total and ended up at Rock Resort on St. John Island, a getaway known for is privacy. By the end of the stay, “We were desperate for interaction,” Jean says. “Jean was desperate to get away from me,” O’Connell laughs.

Although Vanguard is a family business, O’Connell generally leaves work at the office. His children have never been to the warehouse, and there’s no expectation that they’ll work for the company one day. In fact, for a long time, what he did was a mystery to them. “I always thought that he sold rugs,” Kevin says. “At one point, I thought that he sold wallpaper,” Kristen echoes.

O’Connell laughs and poses a question to his children: “What’s the rule about working at Vanguard?”

O’Connell loves to banter with his children. When Kevin mentions that he’d like to play college soccer or basketball, O’Connell suggests he go to Villanova. “Anywhere except UConn,” he says. Then he turns to me: “I say that a lot. It’s kind of a joke, but they think I’m serious.”

Tackling the Association
A breeze blows in from Barnegat Bay, across the man-made canals, past the waterfront houses and onto the deck of the O’Connell’s summer home. Next to us, a Sea Ray Sundeck and a jet ski rise and fall with the waves. Flashes of lightning and the firecracker rumble of thunder are off in the distance. We decide not to take the boat out tonight and risk getting caught in a storm.
Instead, Ryan lights the grill and soon the sizzle and smell of searing burgers surrounds us. O’Connell leans back in his chair, and I ask about his plans for DMIA. “My goal is to continue what we started in terms of turning the association into something that properly services its members. The association is not in line with what its members offer,” he says. “Rebranding is a big part of the strategic plan, and I’m interested in making sure the association offers the products and services that mirror the rebranding.”

Inevitably, some companies will choose not to move forward, O’Connell says. “I think there’s some of the old regime out there who aren’t accepting how the industry has changed,” he says. “Our association has to understand it, embrace it and be part of it.”
Part of how he’ll measure his term’s success is by looking not only at the quantity of members but also the membership’s composition. “The number of members is a gauge, but the number of new and different types of members is another gauge,” he says.

The Unexpected Extrovert
The next morning, the O’Connells and I board the Sea Ray with our coffee mugs and motor through the canals and out to the Bay. We angle toward a group of houses where Bob thinks one of his friends has just moved. He slows the engine and we putter through a canal in search of a sign that his friend is at home. The house appears vacant, so we give up and return to the wide open bay.

O’Connell is unfazed, but part of him might be a little disappointed, because he loves to socialize. O’Connell is happiest when he’s interacting with people, which means he keeps a busy schedule. After boating with me this morning, he already has plans to attend the graduation of a friend’s child this afternoon. He and Jean also are active in their church, where they offer pre-marital counseling to engaged couples. At Vanguard’s holiday parties, O’Connell is always on the dance floor or behind the microphone, singing karaoke.

He constantly is organizing activities and making new friends, but his real gift is nurturing and maintaining those relationships. He still keeps in touch with friends he made in high school and college. “To this day, some of my best friends are my roommates from Villanova,” he says. And he’s been golfing in an informal competition with the same neighbors for the past nine years. To celebrate the competition’s 10th anniversary, the group is considering a trip to Ireland or Scotland.

In high school and college, it was O’Connell’s mission to bring people together. He tried to include everyone in social activities. “We took everybody in and kept them close,” he says. “I wanted everybody to be friends with everybody else.”

Though he enjoys people, even O’Connell occasionally needs time away, and Mantoloking is where he comes to relax. The bay is a source of inspiration, a place to rejuvenate. It’s a hub from which to maintain perspective, a reminder that challenges can be overcome, obstacles are surmountable and that life is meant to be lived.

The boat cuts smartly across the bay, wind tousling the hair of contented passengers. At the helm, O’Connell smiles at the horizon, a portrait of serenity with Jean in the seat next to him and Kevin lounging in the stern. No doubt his thoughts are moving quickly too, as he imagines the future and evaluates the possibilities it holds for Vanguard, the association, his family and himself.

Human Capital

Vanguard Direct invests heavily in its employees

President Bob O’Connell’s financial expertise helps Vanguard Direct grow profitably, but that doesn’t mean the company runs with a paint-by-numbers approach. Creativity, problem-solving and calculated risks are part of the company’s culture, which relies on a dedicated and well-trained staff. In fact, Vanguard’s office includes a library where employees can go to read industry magazines or business books. They’re expected to spend two hours per month of their work-time engaged in self-education activities; bonuses are tied to whether they complete the requirement.


Pabst	Camacho	Dash	Caska	Greico

Bob and his brother Donald are responsible for hiring almost all of their employees, many of whom have been with the company for more than a decade and many who have manufacturing experience. For example, Susanne Pabst, senior customer service representative, was first hired by the O’Connells’ father 27 years ago, when Vanguard Direct was a one-room operation. Millie Camacho, director of customer service, has worked at Vanguard for 22 years, taking on progressively more responsibilities.

Jack Dash, senior client services manager, works in the creative department, managing workflow and prioritizing projects. He previously owned a design firm that worked with Vanguard. Before Tom Caska joined Vanguard as director of commercial production, he owned 2-color presses and was one of the company’s vendors. When his printing shop was sold, he looked for new job. Other places he interviewed were too quiet, he says: “There’s always a hum at Vanguard.” Caska leads the commercial production department, which Vanguard relies on to manage client relationships and engage in inside sales opportunities. Paul Greico, senior production coordinator, works in the commercial production department. Another veteran of the manufacturing side, (“When we bleed, it’s in 4-color”) Greico combines technical expertise with customer service. “We make sure that customers feel at ease about what they don’t know is necessary to make their files ready for print,” he says.

Andy Brown is managing editor of Print Solutions magazine. Email comments to abrown@PSDA.org.

Think Fast, Calmly

Human Capital