By Dianna Brodine, vice president, editorial, PostPress

In the spring of 2024, two new personalities emerged on the print finishing scene: Stevie Varnish and Brycie Boxes. Those in the industry may know them as Steven Roberts, president, and Bryce Poremba, sales executive, of Elite Print Finishing (EPF), Burlington, North Carolina. Focused on print and packaging solutions, EPF offers foil stamping, embossing, diecutting, round edging, laminating and more on its quest to assist its customers from packaging development to final assembly.

An industry powerhouse for more than 30 years, EPF is adding a little swagger to finishing with its Elite Box Boyz social media presence. Launched in March 2024, Stevie Varnish and Brycie Boxes are bringing the fun in every Instagram post – while also educating customers and attracting new prospects. Roberts and Poremba took time from their busy schedules as social media influencers (and their full-time EPF responsibilities) to answer questions from PostPress.

How did the Box Boyz marketing campaign get its start?

Roberts: I’m going to give 100% of that credit to Brycie Boxes. About 2 ½ years ago, he came to me and said he wanted us to start doing videos and online marketing to put ourselves out there and show off what we do. But, I’m the old school guy, and I told him that might be the dumbest idea I’ve ever heard. Then, about a year after he made this suggestion, we got a referral for a new customer that was strictly from word-of-mouth – someone we hadn’t worked with but who still knew what we did had sent us a potential customer. I started thinking about that, and I went back to Bryce to talk more about his idea for marketing. I told him it might be the smartest thing I’ve ever heard!

Poremba: What inspired this idea is that we live in an industry that says print isn’t what it used to be, and embellishments aren’t what they used to be. And we can choose to accept that, or we can figure out how to play in today’s world, and a big part of today’s world is marrying social media marketing with what we do on the machines. There is definitely a place in marketing and branding that involves an online presence and media marketing, and there’s definitely a part of it that marries with print. How can we figure out a way to make them work together with the ultimate goal of selling products or services? And the other part of developing this social media presence, kind of selfishly for us, is that we get to meet a lot of really cool people – whether it’s at FSEA events or PRINTING United or going all over the country meeting with customers. There are some really cool things that we want to document. This is our career. This is our story. This is our life. And how cool is it to be able to look back?

Who is involved in creating the social media posts and videos?

Poremba: Neither one of us has any experience in social media marketing or building videos. I mean, we know how to put CMYK on a sheet, add gold foil on the top, diecut it, fold it and glue it. That seems pretty easy to us, but when it comes to understanding the algorithms of the Instagram space and what people want to see, we wanted to bring somebody in that could help us with that. We looked at hiring a couple of different people, but in the end, we had my fiancée, who is in the graphic design and social media business, interview for the position. Cam helps us to stay on top of our social media in general, from making sure the videos we’re doing are relevant to current events to editing the videos and making sure we have enough content scheduled. We have input on what we want to post and how we want to be perceived, but we couldn’t do the behind-the-scenes stuff without her.

Roberts: The video editing is the key. Sometimes, when we record the videos, I’m thinking what we’ve done is trash. Then, I see what she’s made it into and think, “We’re really good!” But, we’re not really good. Cam’s really good.

What does the planning process look like?

Poremba: We offer a service to printing and packaging companies, but we didn’t want every video to show embellishment techniques and finished packaging. That’s a little dry. So we struggled to figure out how to market ourselves as people – as personalities. People want to work with people that they know or perceive as people they would want to know. So we had to figure out how to build that presence and stay true to ourselves. We decided to focus on the things we love – sports, comedy, traveling, golf and the people we meet in the business. To make that happen, we are in weekly conversations. One of our big goals now is to marry videos with current events. If the NBA playoffs are happening, how can we develop an entertaining video about the playoffs? We use the calendar to lead our video content, because, in a sense, it makes our posts relevant to everybody.

What investments have been made in the Box Boyz brand?

Poremba: The cool part about social media marketing is that there are so many successful people who have zero investment other than time. It just requires time and consistency. We did hire somebody to help us, but anyone can build what we’ve built if they’re willing to put the time in. It may take longer for some than others, and it’s taken us a lot more time than we thought, because we don’t have enough time day-to-day to put in. But, there’s not much financial investment that has to be made to jump into the space.

Roberts: We’re building a brand with the Box Boyz, and it’s still in its birthing stage as we see where it goes. Do we take it into products? Merchandise? A podcast? So far, the biggest investment, besides time, has been merchandise, like shirts and hats, or giveaways, like the basketball goal we gave away in March.

What kinds of engagement are the Box Boyz seeing?

Poremba: We get comments daily from people who tell us they loved a video, but it’s so tough when you get into this space, because it’s very humbling. You can’t become obsessed with counting the number of followers, because, ultimately, we don’t run a business that makes our income based on views and likes. But naturally, as humans, we get super excited when we gain a following after a tradeshow or have a video that’s really successful. I think the most exciting thing for me is that I’m able to constantly be in contact, through our posts, with clients or prospects I haven’t been able to see in a few months.

Roberts: Bryce and I were at a tradeshow recently – totally outside of our market space. We were walking down the aisle and someone saw the back of our Box Boyz jerseys that we were wearing. He said, “Box Boyz! I know you guys! I need to talk to you.” He had been watching our videos and wanting to have a conversation about a packaging application. People are paying attention, and that’s cool to see.

What advice would the Box Boyz give to someone wanting to build a social media presence?

Poremba: I believe in healthy competition, and there’s nothing better for all of us in the industry than getting foil stamping and UV coating in front of as many customers as possible. Social media is a great way to do that, and if someone is ready to jump into this, my advice is to be ready to dedicate some time to it. Stay true to your personality and your character. We’ve built these characters – Stevie Varnish and Brycie Boxes – and it’s been fun because it allows us to be a little bit more silly. We’re having fun, showing off our business and getting in front of clients by knowing what we love and sticking to it.

Roberts: Years ago, when I was looking at digital embellishment equipment for the first time, I told Jeff Peterson, the head of the Foil & Specialty Effects Association, that I was worried digital was going to crush those of us in the traditional packaging world. And he said it wasn’t going to crush us – it was going to make us more popular. He told me it was going to draw more attention to what we already were doing in foil stamping and embossing and these other types of processes, because the digital technology was going to make finishing more accessible to different types of products. And that’s what these videos can do. The more attention we draw to our industry, the better off we all will be. And listen, we can find something to do to make money always, but let’s try to have some fun while we’re doing it. That’s a big part of the Box Boyz, too.