Her Story
About Brandie
I've been in the printing industry for 11 years, with the last 6 years focused exclusively on book printing. I work as the Southeast Sales Manager for Friesens Corporation, a 119-year-old, entirely employee-owned company based in Altona, Manitoba, Canada. My main area of expertise is in book printing, particularly in the world of Christian Publishing, where I'm very collaborative with my clients, helping them choose materials for their projects and achieve the pricing and scheduling they need to get all their titles out in time for publication dates. I work from my home office in Brunswick, Georgia, from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m., and about a week every month I travel throughout the Southeast to visit my publishers and meet new ones. My most notable professional achievement has been the expansion of this Southeast territory - before I joined, this region had never done more than $1.5 million in revenue, but last year we cleared $4.1 million, largely due to relationships I created myself, including our partnership with HarperCollins Christian Publishing. I've also brought something new to Friesens through my professional involvement in social media - I created pages on TikTok, Instagram, and Facebook at Brandy Friesens, and last year alone I gained 1.2 million views on TikTok, helping generate notoriety for the company in the U.S. market where they're less known than in Canada.
Her Interview
Ten minutes with Brandie
01What are the biggest challenges or opportunities in your field right now?
In the beginning of my career in printing sales, the number one hurdle was that this is a very male-dominated industry, and when you're in a sales position competing directly against men for rankings and awards, they don't always love that and don't always take it well when you're doing well in your career. At Friesens, that's less of an issue now since our U.S. sales manager has hired primarily women to run our U.S. side of the sales force, which has been very refreshing. The biggest thing we're looking at and constantly talking about in conferences and seminars throughout the book printing and publishing world is AI and how it's affecting everything right now. In the world of publishing, it's very controversial because authors feel that these AI models were built upon their work, so publishers are really navigating how they're integrating AI into their workflows and how it can help and hinder the publishing industry. We also see AI in the world of printing replacing a lot of clerical workers and doing functions we previously had physical staff for. I don't think it's ever going to replace one-to-one salespeople, because Friesens, being an employee-owned company, really prides themselves on still having those human interactions, and that's in our company culture. But it's definitely something that's at the forefront of our industry in general.
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