Livingston-based printing company Printing For Less is now one of the most prominent employers in the city.

“These last eight months have been the strongest sales period in the company’s history,” said Dave Hawkins, who became the new CEO of PFL in January. “We have become more focused on serving primarily large enterprises through direct mail automation and print and fulfillment.”

Keeping employees inspired and motivated at PFL is one of the keys to the company’s success, helped by traditions of taking dogs to work, maintaining an on-site childcare facility, company horseback rides, whitewater rafting trips, winter potlucks, summer barbecues, monthly “primetime meetings,” employee anniversary kits, open-plan offices and competitive benefits packages, officials with the company say.

“Most of our employees do consider it a very family friendly environment,” said Suzie Lalich, PFL’s vice president of employee success. “There’s lots of opportunity for professional growth.”

In fact, some of the children at PFL’s pre-K daycare grew up and went on to take summer jobs with the company or serve as interns, Lalich said.

“We have a lot of related people working here — but no spouses reporting to one another,” Hawkins said.

Dogs roam freely in portions of the Livingston headquarters — a tradition that began in 1999, when the company’s founder, Andrew Field, brought his border collie/black lab, Jessie, to work.

On Wednesday, some of the office dogs preferred to stick by their owners, while others were more adventurous, greeting people in the hallways or “making the rounds” to particularly friendly workstations.

“There’s a few that are very persistent about their biscuits,” Lalich said.

One of PFL’s elder canines, 11-year-old Tater, was on hand Wednesday with his owner, Maria Siebeck, who also has some longevity with the company. Siebeck is a production coordinator and has been working at PFL for over 21 years. Asked what’s kept her at PFL for so long, she smiled and said, “Bringing my dog to work.” Tater is the second of her dogs who has accompanied her to the office, she said.

The 21-year-old life with the company was very different.

“We were crammed into one little, teeny weeny building,” she said from the cavernous office area. “We have a lot more room now. A closet that I used to share with six people was a great idea. [21 years go]. To push back your chair, you had to ask the guy behind you to suck it in.”

Siebeck is originally from Chicago and loves Montana.

“I love Livingston — small town,” Siebeck said.

An upper story, outdoor break area at PFL headquarters gives employees quite a view of the mountains — just one of the features of western Montana that make it desirable for many locals who opt to stick around. Peyton Kimmel thanked PFL for the opportunity of staying in her woods.

“One of the main reasons why I chose PFL was because I could stay in a place I love,” said Kimmel, who works for PFL as a customer advocate.

Kimmel is a Big Timber resident and started her career at PFL after graduating in 2022 from Montana State University. She has a degree as a marketing business major. Snip her five year old dog was lying on a mattress under Kimmel as she spoke to the Livingston Enterprise.

“She’s retired from being a cow dog to an office dog,” Kimmel said.

Keith Jacobik (senior vice president of production) was available Wednesday to walk the Enterprise through various sections of the 55,000-square foot facility that was built a few decades ago. The building, which doubled PFL’s capacity, houses two laser engravers, three digital print machines, kitting area, fulfillment area, mailing area and more. Jacobik reported that the UV flatbed box printer located on the second level was printing a 750 unit order. The previous 10,000-box print took approximately four days.

Jacobik is a Paradise Valley resident and has been with the business for fourteen years.

“It’s been great — just awesome people, great challenges all the time,” Jacobik said. “It’s really nice to have a great place to work in a beautiful spot. There’s been lots of opportunities given to me along the way.”

Hawkins was appointed to PFL as chief financial officer and promoted in 2022. Hawkins, a Michigan native, lives in Ann Arbor with his three children, all of whom are now in their 20s. He also shares his home with his wife, who is only an hour away.

Hawkins, though he calls Michigan his home, spends much of his time in Livingston where he makes connections with staff.

“People do a lot of stuff together outside of work,” Hawkins said. “Me and a few guys were at the bar doing trivia night [at the The Owl Lounge] We won $300. Last month, we won 500 — it was a bigger crowd.”

Hawkins worked in several executive positions with tech-backed private equity firms before joining PFL. His focus was on growing companies and helping them to achieve sustainability. He was most recently the CEO at ImageSoft, which is a major provider of electronic filing and document management software for courts.

“The reason I agreed to come [on board with PFL] is I saw tremendous opportunity to impact millions of people through the power of effective engagement,” Hawkins said. “We serve a lot of big-name customers — Google, Microsoft, Salesforce, Blue Cross, AT&T.”

Hawkins stated that PFL includes banks, universities and health care companies as its clients.

“While our e-commerce print business thrives serving SMBs (small and medium businesses), our MarTech business sells software subscriptions to Fortune 500 companies, enabling them to include print and direct mail as an integral component of their hitherto digital-only marketing efforts,” said PFL founder Andrew Field in a Wednesday email. “These customers spend hundreds of thousands to millions each year, because they see such outstanding results on the programs they run with us.”

Some residents became alarmed after they saw that PFL had sold one its buildings. But this sale, in fact, wasn’t a sign of trouble but a smart business movie, Hawkins told The Enterprise.

“We sold the building to free up $11 million in cash to invest in further growth,” Hawkins said. “It was a really healthy thing for us to do.”

This practice of selling a building to a third party and renting it is known as a sale and lease back transaction — a way to raise funds to expand operations, Hawkins said.

In recent years, another business decision was to bring in Goldman Sachs as an investment.

“They do not have a controlling interest, so they have a partial share of ownership, and that happened in 2018,” Hawkins said. “It enabled us to expand our software development and sales and marketing functions.”

PFL has many roles, including those in accounting, finance, childcare and procurement. Lalich stated that the company has a little over two dozen positions open as of Wednesday.

A full product and software team was also created by the company in 2014. In addition to designing software that helps companies automate and personalize direct mail processes, PFL’s software engineers also created the database program used by employees throughout the company. Some interfaces this software with machinery located on-site in Livingston.

“We have a really strong partnership with Salesforce,” Hawkins said. “They consider us to be in the top 10 percent of all their partners. They work together to help us sell our products. As they sell to their prospects, they mention they can add our software into theirs and create more functionality for their customers.”

Field retired as PFL’s CEO a little over a year ago and sits on the company’s board of directors, but isn’t involved in daily operations these days.

After a friend who was a fisherman suggested that a printing shop be started, Field founded the business in 1996. Field, at that time, was selling automotive supplies to business. But, Field also had previous experience with Meyers Printing, Minneapolis, in the 1980s and Sir Speedy. Six weeks later, Field discovered only two printers were available in the Livingston region.

Field hired six employees, bought a $425,000 Heidelberg sheetfed press, and saw the business’ revenue reach $80,000 a month in short order. More than 220,000 customers have been served since the company’s founding, and in the last two years alone, it’s sent 58 million pieces of mail, according to Jennifer Bellin, the company’s chief marketing officer.

“He was a very active leader,” Hawkins said of Field. “There’s not that many people who can say they grew a company to nearly $50 million in annual revenue.”

Lalich claimed that Field is someone she really knows, as she was with PFL over the 16-years.

“He was such a visionary,” Lalich said. “He built an amazing company and was also very passionate about his people, and I would say he left a very strong foundation for us to continue to build on.”

Lalich indicated that PFL remains in safe hands with Hawkins taking over as CEO.

“He’s really embraced who we are,” she said. “He’s come in and really listened to our employees and is really focused on trying to make the employee experience a really exceptional one, and I think he’s really helped with the growth and the strategies behind driving our growth.”

Hawkins said company officials had contemplated changing PFL’s name.

“We had thought about it last year but decided not to,” Hawkins said. “We have a lot of brand equity in the PFL name, it’s been around for 25 years — a lot of people know us.”

Hawkins said the company wants to continue growing, but isn’t looking to change its vision of “improving lives by connecting people through authentic moments.”