PPB September 2019

Chr i s Huebne r From The Ground Up Chris Huebner, president of distributor Mac Mannes, Inc., started in the mailroom and worked his way up to the top leadership spot. by Danielle Renda I f there’s anyone who understands the ins and outs of Mac Mannes, Inc., a Bethesda, Maryland-based distributor, it’s Chris Huebner. Huebner is president of the company, a position he’s held since 2006, but he’s also fulfilled a number of roles throughout his 33-year career there, having started as an assistant to the assistant mailroom director. Over the years, Huebner has both witnessed and experienced the changes stirred by technology, which made it possible for the majority of Mac Mannes’s 15 employees to work remotely— and, of course, transformed the mailroom entirely. Mac Mannes carries a unique story of its own. The company, as it stands today, offers an expansive range of services, including creative, promotional and merchandising, and expanded offerings, such as logistics, trade-show booth design, product safety and compliance, and e-stores and fulfillment. But when it opened its doors in the late 1930s, it functioned as an eponymous retail gift shop named after owner Mac Mannes. The shop was located on G Street, just a few blocks from The White House in Washington, D.C. It specialized in gifts and housewares, with a product selection inspired by the Hammacher Schlemmer landmark store in Midtown Manhattan; a retail and catalog company that started as a hardware store providing specialty items and tools to carpenters and cabinetmakers. Mac Mannes, Inc. transitioned into promotional products with the help of John Mannes, the owner’s son, who, in 1957, was quoted saying, “I’d never seen an imprinted specialty item and had no clue how to do it.” After 20 years of working for his father at the gift store, says Huebner, one of John’s friends showed him a knife with a recessed blade that he wanted to distribute during a trade show. John recognized the manufacturer as a company he had worked with previously. “He called the factory, negotiated a price and learned how the piece could be imprinted—and made the biggest sale in Mac Mannes’s history,” says Huebner. The order was for 2,500 printed knives. It was after this, also in 1957, that the retail gift store closed and the promotional business took over. Some 30 years later, in 1989, The original Mac Mannes retail gift shop, which opened in the late 1930s in Washington, D.C. 92 | SEPTEMBER 2019 | CONNECT