On February 4, 2013 OffWhite slipped not-so-quietly into our 28th year, opening our 10,300th project and looking into a future that remains as bright and uncertain as it was on a cold winter day in 1985. We started with a business plan written on a borrowed typewriter, a piano bench as a desk. We made a promise that we would do excellent work for excellent clients. The secret of our success is basic. Adapt. Improvise. Overcome. Don’t quit, ever. (Ok, so I was a Marine.)
Survival is about delivering first-class client service with the willingness to change, to learn, and to grow. And we have, each day. Since 1985 I have seen the outcome of the big bang – the advent of personal computers and the Internet, changing the face of business and life as we’ve known it, knitting us together as a global market, opening opportunities to serve the world from our storybook office in Southeastern Ohio. And we have. Our core business has not changed; we’re a marketing firm. Information that sells. To secure the future, we have invested in people – young, smart, passionate about our work and committed to taking care of our clients by offering proactive support, tactical solutions and therapy. We don’t work for other companies; we work for other people. Today, OffWhite continues to set the stage for the future. Our corporate architecture includes a seamless transition plan to optimize roles within the firm. We will empower a younger, smarter management team and continue to move them to the forefront. As the co-founder, managing partner and CEO since day one, I am committed to hiring people who are smarter than I, guiding them with an experienced hand, listening to them and opening my mind to new ideas, supporting client relationships and providing an infrastructure that permits us to do more with less. Technology aside, this is the OffWhite model that has served us well for 28 years.
In the coming year we will expand our team, unveil new titles, spend more money on tools, technologies and training. We will continue to optimize our amazing digital marketing platform, Ed.it™2, an OffWhite generated system proven to change how clients manage a complex world of electronic publishing, Intranet and social media, none of which existed when Warren Offenberger and I hatched this idea. For me, OffWhite remains a labor of love for the work we do, for the clients who sustain us, and for the people surrounding me in this beautiful building on the banks of the Muskingum River. We would send you a postcard, but we’re living in it. Come visit us.
