Success Stories
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story by Chris Cunningham
“Lane gave me the basics to help me be a success.” —Peter Gribskov
As a high school journalism student in 1968, Peter Gribskov was wondering about life after graduation when he was assigned to photograph Lane’s new 30th Avenue campus construction.
Gribskov, now president of QSL Print Communications, was impressed with the modern campus that Lane County voters said they wanted for their community. He sensed that Lane would be a good interim solution for an 18-year-old who planned to pay his own way through college.
“One of the reasons I went to Lane is that I could put myself through school,” explains Gribskov, who worked 30 hours a week in a grocery store to defray his college costs. “Lane was the right direction for me to extend my education from high school to college.”
After completing his business and college prep requirements at Lane, Gribskov transferred to the University of Oregon to study accounting. But by the time he was a senior, he realized he didn’t want to be an accountant after all.
Leaving his academic studies behind, he took a sales and production position in his father’s offset printing business. Although Gribskov was once adamant that he didn’t want to be a printer like his father, he found himself learning all he could about the industry.
By 1981, Gribskov was managing personnel and maintaining the ledger books, along with keeping a hand in sales and production. The accounting, finance and management classes he had completed at Lane and in the years following increased his confidence and enthusiasm. Now he embraced the serendipity of landing feet first in his father’s business. After all, he had always wanted to run his own company.
As QSL’s president, Gribskov’s customer-oriented attitude and can-do approach have helped the company survive in a highly competitive business environment. Customers always come first, Gribskov says. “It’s whatever we can do to get things done. Sometimes we are asked to do the impossible, and we still do it.”
While many small to mid-size printing companies have merged with larger ones or closed their doors altogether, Gribskov says QSL remains solvent by staying vigilant for new technologies that will improve efficiencies, reduce costs and keep customers happy. He tells his employees, “It doesn‘t matter how we did it before. We have to do it different now. We have to improve all the time.”
For instance, QSL bought the first fourcolor offset presses in Eugene in 1985 and in 1990 broke new ground implementing desktop publishing technologies. More recently, the company was among the first in the U.S. to purchase a digital offset press. After a rocky start, the company now relies on this remarkable digital tool.
Improvements in productivity mean, “We’re doing work now that costs 25 percent less than it did five years ago,” Gribskov explains. And “customers are expecting this too. I always have my eyes and ears open. I don’t wait for competition to put me out of business … I embrace competition and use it to my advantage.”
Even so, it takes more than technology for a company to succeed. “The success of your business is based on the success of your community,” explains Gribskov, who maintains his association with the college by accepting graphics and business interns, teaching small business classes on printing, and contributing press time for college projects. What’s more, Gribskov has served as president of the Oregon Track Club, the Convention & Visitors Association of Lane County Oregon and the Eugene Downtown Rotary Club, a service group of more than 300 prominent business leaders. Other civic activities include five years with the Eugene Education Fund and the YMCA’s board of directors.
Jack Kreitz, retired chair of Lane’s business department and one of Gribskov’s earliest instructors, says effective business people “share what they have with the community” and use their positions to improve the lives of others. Kreitz describes Gribskov as “quite an outstanding man in the community. He was fine student and now is a fine gentleman who has done a lot in the community.”
Gribskov hasn’t forgotten that Lane made a big difference in his life right after high school. “Lane gave me the basics to help me be a success,” he says.
