PPB April 2019

Fey Pr omo Small-Town Roots, Big-Time Growth Now in its third generation of ownership, Fey Promo has made its mark in the promotional products space. by Danielle Renda I t all started with newly- acquired equipment, a poultry processing plant and the wish to provide the people of small- town Edgerton, Minnesota, with jobs that allowed them to return home in the evenings for dinner. The year was 1965, and it was a time of milestones: astronaut Ed White did the first American spacewalk, President Lyndon B. Johnson was elected president and Medicare and Medicaid were established nationwide. At the time, John Fey was operating a print shop in the basement of his Edgerton home, known then as Fey Printing and Plastics, when he was approached by the owner of a vinyl goods company, who was interested in selling his equipment. Fey agreed, and with his new radio frequency (RF) heat-sealing apparatus in tow—a machine that uses radio waves to heat plastic sheets and form a sealant—he moved his business into a vacant processing building, also in Edgerton, and so began the precursor of Fey Promo. No crystal ball could have predicted the organic growth that was to come. Within the first year, Norm Fey moved back to Minnesota from California to join the business. The pair met Bill Vernon, Sr., CAS, the then- chairman and CEO of distributor The Vernon Company in Newton, Iowa, who guided them into the promotional products space. In that same year, Fey Promo joined PPAI®— then Specialty Advertising Association International—and has remained a member of the Association ever since. The company is now in its third generation of ownership, with Norm’s son, Mike Fey, MAS, as the president and CEO. (Norm retired in 2004 after leading Fey Promo for 39 years.) Over the past 15 years, Fey has led the supplier through several acquisitions, starting with Relectix in 2009, a company that makes reflective, personal safety advertising products; Mi Line/Molenaar in 2013, which Mike Fey, center, with sister Michelle Fey Mitchell (first from left), wife Cheryl Fey, mother Ethelyn Fey, and father Norm, celebrate Fey Promo’s induction into the Upper Midwest Association of Promotional Professionals’ Hall of Fame in 2006. 70 | APRIL 2019 | THINK