Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Deborah Field. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Deborah, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Let’s start with a story that highlights an important way in which your brand diverges from the industry standard.

We present ourselves to the community as a small, creative, approachable print and design shop. We offer discounts to non-profits, friendly prices to artists, give to Friends of Trees, use recyleable energy to run our presses, and have a line of paper goods called Scrappy” made from our paper scraps. This is one of the things I am most proud of!

In addition, I believe in Open Book Management and have shared the company’s numbers to educate my employees on what it takes to keep a small business operating.

I was once told by a customer that returned to us after going to another print shop and said “I want to work with your shop because you seem to really care about my project”. We add that sense of “caring”– it’s more than just a transaction!

I think this is what keeps me connected to my business — giving customers a genuine interest in them and building our community one person at a time.

We have even been called a “iconic” business in Portland because we are so different than most print shops.

I graduated with a B.S. in Business. I have taken a path practicing the importance of other success factors other than net profit — Planet and People. For example I pay our employees a living wage and was involved in Oregon’s efforts to raise the minimum wage. Paperjam uses alternate energy which is more expensive but better for our planet, and I give discretionary time off including an employee’s birthday knowing the importance of giving my employees time to have a well balanced life.

Deborah, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

I came from hard working parents who taught me the value of always doing your best. I am the middle child and lived up to my name of ‘rebel” That rebellious nature gave me the ability to question the standard and find a path that allowed me to be an individual who likes newness, adventure and most of the time not being a follower. I dropped out of college and travelled for 6 months with a pack back in Mexico and Central America, at the age of 19. My mother thought she would never see me again.

I returned to college and earned a BA in Business and I entered the Corporate World in my thirties but found it uncreative and limiting. I got married and had a son. — this was the beginning of a new direction –the birth of a son created a birth of a business. For the next 30 years, together with my husband, we started our journey in the digital print and design world with a custom product that we sold through stores across the US. We were at the beginning of the growth in software and our timing couldn’t have been better in the market place. We had a beautiful line of photographic custom cards with photos printed on the paper! The market place was ready for us and by the time we reached our peak we were in 600 stores throughout the US and Canada.

So, just as the world continues to evolve — the Deep Recession along with online commerce brought the brick and mortar stationery industry down. And as fighters and hard workers with resilience deep in our souls we changed our path and became our current business, Paperjam Press. This time our business model was Business to Consumer. Small with a big soul! A print shop with an artist touch. We created our niche space with high touch service that really cares about the customer and their print job. getting really good color, and friendly pricing.
Because I love art and the creative process, we offer pricing to artists that is affordable and high quality. Small print jobs are doable! One of my favorite print job is for artists that are printing their art for the first time– they are so scared and I try to make them feel special and encourage them to get their art out in the world.

I am most proud of my commitment to our small and independent business community and our residential neighbors.– knowing that we are all in this thing called “Life” together. We walk our talk and connect with our community by supporting them with our dollars — we shop on our street and throughout my city. And when we travel we purchase from small and independent shops.

I am a small business advocate and have had the opportunity to speak at national legislative events in Washington DC and in my state, Oregon. I found my voice after the Recession. I was angry because I had nothing to do with the monetary events that lead to the recession and yet our sales dropped 50% that year. Our livelihood was threatened.

And last but not least, I am a member of the business tribe that believes that success is not measured just by net profit. Success is also how you treat your People, and how well you treat the Planet. This supports my belief that we are all better off when we are all better off.

Can you open up about how you funded your business?

We didn’t need much capital to start so we used our own money. We worked out of our basement which gave us the opportunity to be with our son in the early years until he went to preschool. As we continued to grow, we used credit cards because it was really hard to get money from the banks. And at that time in the late 90’s there were not other financial organizations lending money. Now there are more but most of them offer a low amount of funding or charge interest at 9%.

When we got bigger and had a five year record of our sales and net profit we were able to borrow $250,000 for new equipment and other operational items. But we had to put our house up for collateral. And when we moved after the recession, we had to pay off that loan with the proceeds from our house.

This is an area I am deeply concerned about — the lack of capital available for small businesses. Did you know that 60% of the business is this country have 10 or fewer employees? If we make up the majority of businesses then why is it so hard to borrow money?

If you ask a small business owner how they got their money to start they will tell you they used their own savings because it was hard to get money and they didn’t want to be in debt. And as I mentioned above, most the time we have to put our house up for collateral. This is at such a disadvantage for small businesses.

I would like the SBA to rewrite their mission statement and lending practices and lend to the really Small Businesses with 10 or fewer employees. Their support during the pandemic with the PPP money and EIDL loans really helped many of us stay in business. In fact, we bought a piece of equipment with the EIDL loan at 3.75% — which is a great interest rate with no collateral required. If they can do this, why can’t they made some changes and give out more loans with these terms?

We often hear about learning lessons – but just as important is unlearning lessons. Have you ever had to unlearn a lesson?

Having spent 15 years in Corporate America I had to relearn some of the authoritarian practices of the traditional hierarchy.

I was demanding and my employees told me I was intimidating. I wasn’t trying to be intimidating but it was the way I said things. I was taught to be stern and business like to be taken seriously — it was almost a weakness to be carefree or have a sense of humor.. I think much of that has changed since the 80″s but that was the environment back then and I wanted to be respected and I thought this approach would make me more promotional.

When I was working for a big International company, I supervised the state tax area and it was not a fun job! One of the other accountants whom I supervised told my mom that I was a tough cookie. I wasn’t sure what it meant but I didn’t think it was positive. I think since I have such a high work standard that I took myself too seriously and didn’t have much patience for errors.

So this lesson about how to be with others at work especially those you supervise took me some years to relearn. It was a process of noticing my behavior, reading books, practicing a new approach and seeing the more positive results that slowly made me change. I think getting older and gaining confidence helped as well. I realized that being sweet and understanding made for more positive relationships and outcomes.

Contact Info:

• Website: paperjampdx.com
• Instagram: paperjampdx
• Facebook: paperjam press
• Yelp: https://biz.yelp.com/home/Tf0K15iUJDI7r4CvKeYL-Q/

Image Credits
Holiday Trees – Christine Rains