Printshop owner finds the right man for his job

It was the end of an era in Saukville Friday when Don Clark sold Village Printer to Jeremy Haase.

Clark said that for the next month or so he will continue to spend time at the business, located on Progress Drive at the entrance to Saukville’s industrial park, as Haase gets his feet wet.

“I don’t want to see him fail,” Clark said. “I’d like to come back in 10 years and he’s got the whole building, 40 printers here.”

Clark started Village Printer in 1983 with his wife Lisa, who died in 2019, and now said it’s time for him to retire — maybe past time.

“I’ve been wanting to retire for the last two, three years. Too many of my friends are gone,” he said, noting he purchased a retirement home in Necedah last July. Noting he spent all but three weekends there since, Clark said his goal was to live there by the end of 2025.

“That didn’t happen,” he said.

That’s in part due to the fact he hadn’t lined up the right person to take over his business. Clark said he had been in talks with an interested buyer last fall, but those conversations came to an end when it became apparent their business philosophies and goals were incompatible.

The dispute came to a head when that prospective buyer told him he would impose a minimum order for customers.

That, said Clark, isn’t how he works.

Filling orders large and small is the key to his business, Clark said, adding those small orders often lead to larger ones.

He recalled one woman who was referred to Village Printer by the Department of Motor Vehicles, which is just down the street from his shop, to make a copy of a bill to show proof of residence — a common occurrence, he said. She noticed he was working on a calendar, asked him what the cost was and the work involved.

A few weeks later, he said, the woman returned with a thumb drive filled with her design and placed an order for 40 calendars.

“That 50 cent order ended up being a $1,000 job,” he said. “People remember you when you do those little things.”

Clark started Village Printer after working for a Port Washington printing company that he said fell on hard times.

“I hadn’t intended to open my own place,” he said, but his paper salesman and customers kept asking him when he was going to open his own shop.

“I needed a job,” Clark said, so he hung his shingle in the former Port Washington State Bank building in Saukville.

Several moves later, he ended up in his current location, a shop filled with awards and trophy mounts, bulletin boards cluttered with “thank you” notes and inspirational and humorous sayings.

“I still have a handful of customers from the day I started,” Clark said.

He said the key to success is to provide customers with quality goods in a timely fashion — something that’s even more important today in the competitive field of digital printing.

“I never looked down on anybody because they didn’t order enough,” Clark said. “What’s 25 cents today could be a $100 order tomorrow.”

While some people try to print things on their home printers, they soon learn that the quality isn’t there, Clark said.

“People design a flier and they want to do 100 of them. They try to print them, and two days later they come in and say, ‘My machine ran out of toner.’ ‘The color is off.’ Their machine just isn’t up to snuff.

“We do the job and they come in and say, ‘My God, it’s 100 times better.’”

Clark did jobs for individuals and businesses alike.

“Simplicity was a good customer for years,” he said, but then the company was sold and ultimately closed its doors locally.

“It seems like every time I’d lose someone like that, someone else would pop up,” he said.

There were times when he promised his family he would spend time with them on a weekend but then a big job would come in on Friday, with pickup scheduled for Monday.

“At the time, I thought that’s what I should do,” Clark said. “Now, I look back and think I shouldn’t have.”

Village Printer has been a go-to for the community for years, something Clark cultivated.

“I said I want to be the Village Printer,” he said. “There are a lot of guys who don’t know my name. They see me and say, there’s the Village Printer.”

Giving back to the community is a lesson that hit home in 2002 when Clark underwent a kidney and pancreas transplant.

“The community huddled around me when I was ill,” he said. “I wanted to pay it back. It changed me.

“Prior to my transplant, I could be a real prick. I went off the handle real quick. But I got a second chance at life and I told myself I wanted to be a better person.”

His customers mean the world to him, Clark said.

“I love my customers,” he said. “I love what I do.

Creating a business the community depends on was important to him, Clark said.

“I never had the intention to be a Quad Graphics,” he said, referring to the large printing corporation based in Sussex. “I just wanted to pay my bills, have a little left over and enjoy life.”

Clark said he’s comfortable handing the business off to Haase.

“He’s going to take care of my customers like I do,” he said. “Jeremy came knocking on my door the Friday before Father’s Day. We talked for an hour. Monday he came in and followed me around. It didn’t take long and we had it worked out.”

Haase, who lives in Franklin with his wife Terasa and their three children, said he has spent 30 years in the print business, taking on virtually every aspect of the business, including work as a technician.

“My head is spinning,” he said. “There’s a lot to learn here, but I like what he (Clark) is doing here.”

He said he expects to spend the next five months or so getting his feet wet, then may make a few changes.

“There’s a lot of stuff I’m thinking of to grow the business and be a little more automated with things,” Haase said. “I want to continue everything he’s done and add capabilities in the future.

“I have confidence this is right for me. I like the challenges and solving customer problems.”

And the customer base in the Saukville area is great, Haase said.

“It’ll be a profitable business, no doubt about it,” he said. “I’m very confident this is the right thing for me.”