Images Magazine Digital Edition July 2018

www.images-magazine.com JULY 2018 images 71 INDUSTRY INTERVIEW One step beyond At Fespa in May, Images sat down with the new CEO at M&R Companies, Danny Sweem, to discuss his background, his goals for the company, and what the future holds for both M&R and the screen printing community D anny Sweem, M&R’s new CEO, has big boots to fill. The outgoing CEO, Rich Hoffman, founded the company in 1985 and is a well- known and respected industry figure on both sides of the Atlantic. Within a few minutes of conversation, however, it’s quickly apparent that Danny, who is from South Carolina, US, is more than capable of taking on the challenge of running the print machinery manufacturing company. His credentials are impressive: he joins M&R from ink company Nazdar, where he was vice president of the textile division, and the extensive knowledge he has gained in the variety of positions he has held since entering the industry gives him a unique insight into what printers want from their machines. Danny started out in the industry during the late 1980s working in a sporting goods store that he eventually bought. He then added a second store, which he admits didn’t do so well. “We fell on some challenging times. I realised that we were outsourcing a lot of screen print for uniforms and local clubs and the printed things that we sold in our actual stores, so we brought that in-house. It turned into the most profitable part of our business. Ultimately we wrapped up the retail side and became a screen printer – that’s where I learned screen print.” In 1993 he took a job working in the lab at Rutland Plastic Technologies, answering calls and helping run experiments. He moved up through the business, ending up as director of sales and marketing, before taking a job with a large, private label screen print and embroidery business. “They did a lot of institutional print programmes for people like Adidas,” Danny explains. “I learned about the other back end of the printing and textile business, beyond just inks, beyond being a small printer, beyond being a retailer.” He moved back to Rutland as vice president of sales and learned how to interact with private equity companies. He joined Nazdar in 2009, a company he stayed with until his move to M&R. There will be a crossover period for Danny and Rich of an as yet unspecified length, he says. “Rich and I have talked about the right amount of time and I was pretty honest with him, I said I’m going to be following him around quite a bit with a notepad and absorbing as much information as I can. The timing will be what the timing is, I don’t want to put a date on it: it could be as early as 30 days, but it could be much longer than that depending on what my needs are, and I don’t know what I don’t know yet.” Tomorrow’s solutions His current goals for M&R – those that he’ll share publicly anyway – are to ensure that the company is creating solutions for its customers before they know they need them. “I’m fascinated with the trajectory of the industry. People are going to wear clothes for many years to come, and they’re going to be embellished and manufactured and decorated in different ways than they have been for the last 20 years. So much of that is going to be down to automation. M&R is in a unique position, as are a number of other companies, to develop that technology. Danny Sweem [left] with outgoing CEO Rich Hoffman