8 - How to build an empire from scratch

St. Joseph Printing, the giant corporation that started in a basement

-Mr. Iannuzzi, do you remember when I first came to the Corriere Canadese printing plant?
-Of course, Mr. Gagliano. It was 1956, if I'm not mistaken.
-No, it was 1955. I remember because it was a few months after my arrival in Canada and I had already spent all the money taken with me from Italy. At the time, Corriere was looking for printers, and I came to you for a job. But yours was an industrial plant, and I had no skills. You were unable to give me a job, and yet you helped me by referring me to another Italian printer, on Dufferin Street, where I was able to find work and earn a few dollars. Do you remember?

The recent encounter between Dan Iannuzzi, founder of Corriere Canadese, and Gaetano Gagliano was a warm one. Not only are they friends; both are men to whom this country is indebted.
Gagliano had described himself as an "unskilled" man. Yet with a dauntless spirit guided by a kind heart, he was able to create a veritable printing empire, St. Joseph Printing Limited, from scratch.
It was only natural for Canada to honor Gagliano for his contribution to the Canadian economy. Last month, Governor-General Romeo LeBlanc presented the entrepreneur with the Order of Canada. The same award had been given to Iannuzzi seven years ago.
Thus Gagliano's story has a happy ending, in the best North American tradition. And the fact that the protagonist is Italian should make our community proud, a community that has always taken a primary role in the development of this country.
No one can tell this exemplary story better than Gagliano himself:
"I was born in Cattolica Eraclea, in the Sicilian province of Agrigento, in 1917. In my youth I spent two years at Alba, in the region of Piedmont, where I stayed with the Pauline Fathers. There I learned the value of Catholic life. After that, I went back to my home town, got married and started tilling the small land that I had inherited. Children came right away. But the more they grew, the less the land yielded for us.
"I began thinking I was cursed: the grapes were suddenly struck by downy mildew, and the bunches started wilting away; also, a storm destroyed my wheat field. I had five children at the time, and I realized that we could no longer go on living like that. One of my brothers in-law, Domenico Contino, had emigrated to Canada and wrote that there was a lot of work in that country. So I asked him to sponsor me. My family and I arrived in Toronto on August 15, 1954. I told myself, 'I will be successful here, because I have arrived on the day of the Madonna of the Assumption.' And so it was, thank God."
As he talks, Gagliano patters lightly across the printing-plant floor, located on MacIntosh Boulevard between Jane and Highway 7. The building is simply enormous. Over 600 people are employed there, moving in synchrony around the five rotary presses that produce millions of sheets of paper a day; they toe around the wire stitchers, the drawing rolls, the layout computers, and in front of the electronic panels that regulate the machines' operations. The only thing missing is the deafening sound that typifies most printing plants. Here everything is soft, calculated and quiet.
The floor level, which exceeds 3,000 square metres, houses the mainstay of the factory. The first floor houses the offices, where efficient secretaries and top-notch managers coordinate the work.
One special room is home to Gagliano's personal museum: a linotype, a manual printing press, a proof press, a composing stick, and a chest of drawers containing the mobile lead characters. They look like archeological finds, but actually they were commonly used only two or three decades ago.
Gagliano affectionately caresses the small printing press. "I used to keep it in my basement," he recalls. "And practically my entire family took turns using it. My children grew up on milk, pasta, and printing. On this machine I used to print business cards and letterheads; I would slide the paper in with one hand, watch the roll slide over the paper, and then pull out the printed sheet. It was a task requiring a lot of coordination. There was always the risk of getting your fingers cut off by the machine.
"I specialized in printing wedding invitations and those small cards people put in the bomboniere, with the name of the bride and groom and the wedding date."
But how did you, a farmer by trade, come here and work as a printer?
"After Iannuzzi referred me to the Italian printing press on Dufferin Street, the owner asked how many children I had. I answered that I had five. He then told me to go away because he would be unable to support my children, my wife and myself. So I said, 'Don't worry about my family. Just pay me for what I do.' He tweaked his nose a little and told me to clean up. So I did. Do you have any idea what it means to clean up an artisan printing plant? To make the long story short, 15 days later the plant looked like a Swiss factory. But you know what they say, by walking back and forth to the court house, Punch became a lawyer. The same held true for me: as I cleaned up, I kept an eye on what the other workers were doing. Thus I learned to be a printer."
And then what happened?
"With my first savings I bought a small press and some type, which I used to 'compose' what I had to print. I was paying for them in $10 monthly instalments. I would work in the plant, cleaning, and then come home and work 10 more hours on my personal printing press. Everything you see here began in my basement."
Meanwhile, your children grew older and more children came: 10 altogether. And then came the in-laws. And you had them all working here.
"Oh yes. If my family had not given me a hand, everything you see would not be here. And since you're going to write an article on this, allow me to give you the names of this wonderful family that the good Lord has given me. But I'll include only those who work here, otherwise there wouldn't be enough room on the paper. Do you know I have 31 grandchildren?"
Gagliano takes a deep breath before listing, with great pride, his assistants: "First, let's start with my wife, Giuseppina, who is the angel of the home; then my children-Franco, Joe, Giacinto, Tony, Giovanni, Pina, Gesua, Franca, Giovanna and Maria. The sons in-law who work in the factory are Rudy Desiato, Pierino Deiana, and Sandro Gagliasso. A daughter in-law also works here, Mary Ellen, wife of my son Joe."
Do any of your grandchildren work here?
"Not at the moment. My children and I agreed that, prior to coming to the factory, my grandchildren must go elsewhere and learn their own lessons, away from fathers, mothers, and grandparents. They need other experiences, because once they come here, those experiences will be valuable to all of us."
Gagliano speaks sotto voce, without emphasis, as if what he says is so simple that it requires no special inflection. He has no idea how many business people need his kind of common sense applied to their companies.
Mr. Gagliano, are there unions in this factory?
"Do you think any union could do more for our workers than we do? No, there aren't any, because no one feels the need for one."
What is it you give your workers that a union could not?
"First of all, a smile. Always. And this means always sticking by our workers. Then our philosophy: in this company, the worker is always number one, because you can't do anything if your workers are dissatisfied. Then comes the manager, because there's no way one can compensate for a manager who doesn't know what he's doing. Then comes the owner, because if a worker is happy, and the manager is competent, the boss might as well not even be there."
He pauses for an instant. "Come," he says, " I want to show you something."
Gagliano walks down a corridor and opens a door leading into the gym. "This is where the workers keep in shape between shifts," he explains. "Or, if they prefer, they can exercise before going home..Come, I'll show you our university."
About 30 meters down the hall, he opens another door. Inside, about 20 workers are attentively following a lecture given by a manager. "When we hire workers," he says, "we provide them with a training course so that they know how our company works and how we want the work to be done. They still get paid, but during the training period all we expect them to do is learn. The teachers are chosen from the very best managers, like the one you see behind the desk. In other words, we treat our employees well. What else can I tell you? Our cafeteria is managed by the famous Peter and Paul restaurant, and a full meal, with all the calories a worker needs, doesn't cost more than $5."
The company has three sites: two in the Toronto area (one in Concord on MacIntosh Boulevard, another on Benton Road in North York); and one in Ottawa. The latter was purchased following the privatization of the government's printing departments; it has 67 branches.
St. Joseph produces printed material for the government (income tax forms, for instance) as well as magazines, catalogues, brochures, advertising material, etc.
Annual revenues exceed $250 million. Altogether, this company employs over 1,200 people.
Mr. Gagliano, you are a very religious man. How has your Catholic faith affected your life?
"Immeasurably. Were it not for my faith, I wouldn't have been able to overcome the many difficulties I encountered. Thanks to the two years spent with the Pauline Fathers in Alba, I was able to understand that the Catholic religion is the most complete religion. I respect all the other faiths, but I think that Catho-licism can help you most to understand life. I see the hand of God everywhere. And I decided to call my company St. Joseph, because Saint Joseph is the man whom God entrusted to care for his son on Earth. If you want an example of how the Catholic faith helped me, I'll give you one. The Gospel says: 'Grow and multiply.' Well, I never stopped doing that. I wasn't happy with two or three children, so I had 10. I kept all the children that the Lord has given me, and, as I said, my children have been my fortune. I believed in the family, and the Lord has rewarded me."
And, may we add, so has Canada.

Publication Date: 2002-12-22
Story Location: http://tandemnews.com/viewstory.php?storyid=2184