So how do we take a small local publishing company and bring it to the world of religious goods packaging: let’s fly some more!  If the airports looked the same as when I was selling chemicals, my final destinations were quite different.  Detroit’s industrial park, which can look like a war zone, does not have any common feature with Lourdes’ Grotto or Fatima’s Cova da Iria, in Portugal, where the Virgin Mary appeared.  To put it another way, my road to Damascus involved more planes, fewer bar get-togethers with the chem boys and more meetings with uniformed, highly cultured ordained ministers.

I welcomed the change.  I am a religious man.  Not to bother anyone with my faith, but I believe in God.  Many decades ago, when I was just out of Teccart (an electronics school in Montreal), I went praying at this city’s foremost pilgrimage site – the Oratoire Saint-Joseph – to ask for Frère André’s benediction for my burgeoning career.  Little that I knew that many years later I would come back to the Oratoire with distribution contracts: the Oratoire would become Pubco’s very first customer.

Since then, we have expended our religious goods business into other business fields (please note that it still accounts for half of our business), but I will always have a sweet spot for these medals, cards and religious memorabilia that started it all and that we now print and package for customers in 40 countries.

Since 2007, the U.S. Mint has been minting bronze reproductions of its First Spouse Gold $10 Coin collection, and adding a $1 dollar coin of the corresponding President. Thus, James and Dolley Madison, and John Quincy and Louisa Adams are found together, sealed in a Pubco card along with a historical note.

Surprisingly, it was the inclusion of the unmarried President Thomas Jefferson that caused a sensation in the U.S. numismatic world. The commemorative card that includes Thomas Jefferson, with Lady Liberty as the companion piece, is now worth nearly 30 times the original sale price. This success ranks up there with the cards issued by Pubco for the 2-euro commemorative coins of the Banque centrale du Luxembourg.

Prior to Pubco, I spent an inordinate amount of time travelling the US mostly, from hub to hub and on every red eye there is. I spent most of my adult life representing industrial chemical corporations. It’s in hotel lobbies and restaurants as well as at symposiums and trade shows that I have honed that particular skill called by some «selling». What is «selling» really, but the «art» of knowing your counterpart well enough that his/her needs become transparent to you: meeting and getting to know people is what I really like in life.

There was a point in my professional life when the strain of being everywhere but where I was began to take its toll, ever so slightly. I enjoyed the relative freedom of the road (musicians, circus roadies and business reps share that in some ways), but when Boston starts to look like LA which seems to be a suburb of Secaucus, New Jersey… In the mean time, my company was acquired and restructured in a way that did not leave much space for creative minds: the corporate structure started to be more and more of a constraint than a support structure for its people, as it should be I believe.

I left at 50. This was the best decision I ever made. More on that later.

Every grandfather is proud of his grandson, and I’m not different in that regard. But what makes me tick, and what makes Pubco a special place, is the fact that we work together, and not merely with each other, or for each other: like a family would. My family has always come first and foremost, and I tried my best to make Pubco a homely place. Like any business man I thrive on growth and new markets to conquer. But if you ask why I pursue any business goal with the steady energy of a 57 year old man on the move: I really do it for Alexander the Great, my family as a whole and for all the worker’s families.

Alexander is the very latest recruit. The very first one was my son, Patrick. I say «recruit», but the fact of the matter is that he was not «hired» back in 2004, but that he offered to help out with the new company, taking a real risk with his fledgling career as an industrial engineer. Having put my whole retirement on the line to buy and expand Pubco, I cannot tell you how grateful I was for my son’s vote of confidence and help. This early father and son bond is at the core of Pubco’s current business culture of trust and mutual cooperation.

Next came my wife Nicole, who left a good position within Hydro-Québec – a top notch one – to join Pubco. Her no-nonsense-tell-it-like-is style as much as her caring nature made her the anchor of Pubco when times were rough: someone we could depend on.

Our daughter Tammy has decided to join us permanently a few months ago, just before her son Alexander was born. It was with a certain twinge of regret for mommy and me that we learned she would put her career as a nurse on the sideline to join Pubco: but this company has been attracting so much goodness and good fortune that it was perfectly predictable that in the end our whole family would be part of it.

Hey Alex, Antoine, Lylianne et Annabelle you’re next! Your parents, grand-dad and mom are all working for you!

What’s 2 years in the life of Pubco? More like 5-6 years of my past life…

I’m a fairly fast paced runner, but where I would have taken a stride I now sprint!

In a word: we’ll be moving out of our current facilities, after moving in 2 years ago. We left our previous location, in Montreal, because we needed twice the space; and we will be moving again for the exact same reason.

It would be difficult to tell from the current office configuration that we are about to move. In fact, at the moment, we don’t even work in our cubicles and offices: we are renovating. My own desk is covered with saw dust; my wife has taken refuge from gypsum powder in an aquarium-like space overlooking the whole construction site; our director is sitting at a round conference table in some other corner, furiously tapping on his keyboard, maybe trying to overcome the circular saw whirr.

Managing growth has been fun as much as a challenge. At Pubco, growth and crisis management are interchangeable terms!

When I left the company I worked for 8 years ago, I could not have foreseen all this. As a business representative for a chemical company, the range of my responsibilities did not include paving a parking lot large enough for an 18 wheeler to make u-turns in (the city building code is categorical), nor finding forklifts that have the necessary reach (one story higher).

I love it!

Or is it just hard work?

Nah. For success, one needs a peculiar combination that I do not totally understand, even now.

What lead to our partnership with the US Mint can be considered something of a «controlled miracle». A «miracle», because to be chosen by such a high stake client is a rare event, the result of a complex process of give and take, an arduous road that most of the times leads right back where you started, empty handed. «Controlled» because we at Pubco leave nothing to chance: «Fortune favours the prepared mind».

Let’s give some of the context leading to our first, and then multiple contracts with the US Mint.

First: we had years of experience packaging religious materials, perfecting our production system, applying for patents, improving our designs. I can tell you that religious products consumers are a discerning clientèle: an air bubble in the patented resin cover, covering a speck of the bottom left part of Fatima’s Mother Mary light-blue dress is (righlty so) a cause of concern. The similar bubble in the eye of any of the American Presidents or their spouse (our first series with the US Mint) is equally unacceptable.

Second: we had been dealing with other national mints before we met the American institution. The Royal Canadian Mint had trusted us with many projects, as were the Grand-Duché of Luxembourg, the Monnaie de Paris, the Bulgarian Mint and other national mints. Minting coins is a source of national pride, with exacting standards for any contractor.

One could say that God and money have generated the same high level of expectation from «consumers»: Pubco is at the forefront of packaging and distribution of both of their token forms, be it medals or coins.

And let me tell you one thing: the battle for quality and product standardization is never won for good, but rather a continuing struggle. This is the main reason why Pubco has invested into precision machinery, and is collaborating with Industries Canada technical advisers for engineering R&D purposes.

I will always remember that afternoon phone call, a year ago, that sealed a second multi-year contract with the US Mint. Between that moment and the very first time we met a not-so-enthusiastic rep at a trade show, 5 years had passed. As they say in the Republic: «In God We Trust».

The images on the 17 coins issued by the Royal Canadian Mint include Inukshuks, the human-shaped stone sculptures used as markers by hunters in the tundra. The embedding process patented by Pubco both preserves and magnifies the brilliance of sterling silver and gold coins, while its slight magnifying effect emphasizes the detail of the designs, for example, those of the limited-series hologram coins.

For many years, the Royal Canadian Mint has trusted Pubco to set its most beautiful coins in superior-quality packaging. The commemorative Olympic series will be sold by the Royal Bank of Canada and Petro-Canada, and Pubco will promote it internationally at the World Money Fair [lien vers la page correspondante] next February.

Minted at the French Mint, the Mint of Finland, and the Royal Dutch Mint, the coins are offered in series of a maximum of 15,000 coins. Most sell out the same year they enter circulation. The high-quality laminated case, into which the coins are inserted by hand, bears on its face a painting of His Royal Highness and a French text describing the milestones of his reign. Its presentation each year at the World Money Fair is a major event in the numismatic world.

To date, several national currencies have entrusted their embedding work to Pubco, including the United States Mint, the Royal Canadian Mint, and the Magyar Pénzverő Zrt (Hungary’s national currency).

Pubco is proud to be one of the 239 exhibitors at the 2009 exhibition, which is hosted by the Italian Episcopal Conference and the Vatican’s daily newspaper, L’Osservatore Romano.

This exhibition is the only one of its kind in the world. It will give Pubco the opportunity to promote its wide range of religious bookmarks with insertions. These are published in nine languages—including our new Hindi collection—and feature beautiful illustrations of over 600 saints. Because Pubco is always innovating, we will also be offering some groundbreaking products, including our collection of archangels. This series of religious images, currently in development, revives one of the most ancient devotions, using the most recent computer-design techniques.

For more information on Koinè, please see their Website

Pubco will benefit from an exceptional position at the World Money Fair, given that Canada is this year’s Guest of Honour. Canada was selected in honour of the upcoming 2010 Olympic Winter Games, which will be held in Vancouver. As requested by the Royal Canadian Mint, Pubco has produced a series of commemorative insertions for sport-themed coins ranging from Paralympic curling to bobsledding.

The enthusiasm of numismatists is sure to be aroused again this year, when Pubco offers the new commemorative 2-euro coin for the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg, bearing the effigy of the grand ducal family. In the past, these coins have been so popular that, within a few hours of their introduction on the floor of the World Money Fair, they were worth several time their face value.