Ginnie Gandy and Alex Hoffman

Gandy: Alex and I have similar experiences in getting into labels because our families got us involved. Channeled Resources is a family company started by our grandfather, Calvin Frost. My mom is the CEO, Alex’s dad is the COO, and his mom works in customer service, so all our family is very involved and that is how I got plugged in. I was home for a summer and my mom started talking to me about the business, and lo and behold here I am a year later. 

Hoffman: My story is very similar. The pandemic actually helped facilitate my entrance into the company. I was supposed to go to Amsterdam and intern for AWA, and I obviously could not make it over there. I was interning for them and living at home and my dad, just like Ginnie’s mom, started talking to me and I ended up joining the company. I’ve been with the company for eight months now.

Gandy: My favorite part of the industry is the people. I was working for a tech company in HR before this, and I worked with a lot of software engineers. It was a great experience, but the people weren’t as genuine or down to earth as I’m experiencing here. It’s something about our industry. Anybody I talk to, whether its purchasing, sales, or customer service, everyone is just kind – even if you screw something up and they are mad at you, they are still patient and understanding. The people really differentiate this industry and make it comfortable to work in and easy to connect – no matter where they work or what company they are part of. 

Hoffman: Being in purchasing and building relationships with raw material suppliers, it has been really nice interacting with a whole range of different people and how willing they are to share their knowledge with me. As I’m new in the industry, they have been willing to help me learn and grow. 

In terms of trends, I’m looking forward to seeing how linerless labels grow. Right now, its globally growing about six percent a year. It is a great way for companies to reduce waste and facilitate more efficient shipping patterns, so I look forward to seeing how that develops. This growth is customer driven. It is based on what the end users want and need. While we don’t interact that much with end users, I think there has to be that drive to switch from liner labels to linerless. As that continues to develop, and technologies continue to improve, then it justifies the potentially higher cost. 

Gandy: I work more on our release liner side of the business, and I am looking forward to seeing how we can get more efficient. I want to see how we can get more throughput, reduce waste, and maybe one day be able to reuse liner. 

In terms of sustainability, the biggest thing that our grandfather Calvin has been focusing on is waste to energy – how can we take all the matrix waste or release liner discards and convert those into fuel pellets that we can then use to convert into energy. At our manufacturing plant we collect all our waste and send it to be converted into fuel pellets. It seems like it is a fantastic closed-loop offering that has a lot of potential. 

Younger people are really interested in impact and culture. There are a lot of different initiatives around sustainability and our industry knows that is where we are trending and that is what consumers want. To get more young people, we need to emphasize sustainability efforts and that we offer a good place to work with managers who respect them and where they can be comfortable in their office with coworkers who care about them. Office environment and employee to employee culture is really important. That is what our industry is really good at. The employees at our Chicago office, some of them have been there for over 25 years. I think there is something really special about the culture in our industry and people stay for a reason, and that reason is the people. 

Hoffman: It is easy to see the paper industry as not very sustainable and old. That mindset as a young person can make it seem archaic and uninteresting, but it really is an interesting industry. It takes good training programs and a good culture to bring people in. The ability to work remotely, and how Covid has enabled more people to work from a wide range of geographic locations, has probably benefited the industry in many ways. Now you don’t necessarily have to live in Wausau or somewhere like that to be in the paper industry.

For further info: 

Watch the full interview on the Labels & Labeling YouTube channel.