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Take Terry Pegram, for example. Rather than wait for an opportunity to show up at his doorstep, Pegram made his own chances by being a risk taker—despite having a low-key demeanor more fit for the Southern gentleman that he is.
Who is Terry Pegram, you ask? He is the founder, chairman and CEO of PBM Graphics, based in Research Triangle Park, NC. In terms of stature and industry recognition, the company is as much a mystery as the peculiarly named city in which it resides. His vision was of a company that could provide the quality and service necessary to retain the printing work that had migrated to other regions.
Yet it was a willingness to take chances and Pegram’s mantra to “be all things to a few people” that propelled this seemingly small-town general commercial printer into a national phenomenon with sales eclipsing $110 million annually. The company so defied relative obscurity to conquer an explosive niche that now, in the words of Dave Richey, PBM’s sales and marketing vice president, a lot of customers fly over a large host of well-known printers in order to reach this picturesque North Carolina town and its wildly successful printer.
In 1991, eight years after its inception, PBM entered the sports and entertainment card market and thrived despite a downturn in that business. It initially performed non-sports card production for SkyBox, which led to more work for some of the more venerable names in the card realm.
“Because of the recognition we got in the industry for being a long-term supplier for several card manufacturers, we moved into collectible card games,” Pegram notes.
It started out innocently enough when Seattle-based Wizards of the Coast tabbed the printer in 1998 for a product called Xena Warriors. Wizards then asked PBM if it had enough capacity to produce a new set of game cards it was introducing to the market.
The game was called Pokémon, short for pocket monster. Almost immediately, the cards grew into a national obsession for children.
“We had no clue just how big Pokémon would become. It was an overnight success that went from an initial run of a few hundred thousand sheets to a three-year phenomenon of printing them day in and day out,” recalls Rick Jones, vice president of national accounts. “We grew our entire card production niche through that.”
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