As The General Manager of Walsworth’s Eau Claire facility, Dan Kelm plays a key role in driving print-on-demand and short-run digital printing initiatives while ensuring high-quality production standards. Responsible for monitoring performance metrics, collaborating with leadership teams across multiple departments and fostering a strong company culture, he helps the team optimize business processes and succeed.
I’ve been with Documation and now Walsworth three years as of Feb. 8.
I’ve had a long-standing friendship with Brad Stuckert, the former owner of Documation. He actually worked for me at Silver Spring Foods for a short period of time before he went to and then later purchased Documation.
Over the years, we talked about me coming to work for him at Documation, but it was never really good timing. And then three years ago, everything came together. I was ready for a change, and I think he was ready to bring somebody in at my level.
Under Documation, I came in as President and oversaw all functions of the organization, and with Walsworth, I’m general manager of the Eau Claire location.
Sure. I started my career at a place called Midwest Manufacturing, which was a division of Menards, the lumber building materials company. It was a treating plant where they pressure treated lumber. I was there as plant controller for four years or so.
Then I went to a company called Silver Spring Foods. They are a food processor – the number one grower of horseradish products in the U.S. They also do a lot of specialty mustards, things like that. I started there in 1991 and worked there for 16 years. I started as an accountant, got promoted to controller, then to CFO.
For 14 years after that, I worked for a company called EDI, Extrusion Dies Industries. They were a maker of extrusion dies for the plastic industries. We built dies for other manufacturers that would make different products. I was there as corporate controller, then VP of finance.
From there, I moved to Documation. I’ve been in manufacturing all my life.
Yeah, it’s fascinating to me that in manufacturing you start with the process and then the result is your end product.
When I was at Silver Spring Foods, you would have all these ingredients and labels and different containers, and then eventually you get your finished product on a food shelf at the grocery store.
It’s the same in books. You start with ink and paper and lamination and skilled people, and then eventually you get your end product – a really nice-looking book at the end.
Sometimes it’s hard to have a typical day because things happen. But you know, you try to get a cadence down.
On a typical day I’ll come in, check in with the team and go through all the different metrics we track. We go through the previous day’s data and then chat about it all – what’s going well? What are the challenges? What do we expect to happen for this current day?
Then I’m in various meetings throughout the day with different leadership teams going over everything from employment, marketing, sales, accounting and finance. It just depends on the week.
Dan, Dena and Daylin
I knew a little because just over a year ago Walsworth had some talks with Brad, and he was close to an agreement to sell Documation. I was involved at that point, but then the talks stalled, and nothing happened at the time.
But I knew Walsworth as a big player in books and yearbooks with multi-generation family leadership. That has always been very intriguing to me.
I’ve seen how committed they are to their work and to their employees. I know it’s been comforting to know that Walsworth is buying our building here in Eau Claire. That means they’re committed to the Eau Claire area for the long-term and should make our employees here feel secure knowing they’re going to be sticking around.
When a deal like this acquisition happens, I think the initial reaction is, “Are they going to move all the equipment? Are they going to leave and produce all this somewhere else?” But it’s comforting to know that all the acquisitions Walsworth has made are still with Walsworth and part of the Walsworth family.
I’ve been in situations in my past life where it wasn’t like that. At EDI, we had three ownership changes there. It was employee ran, then it went to private equity and then it became a public company. So I’ve worked in a few different arrays, and they were always looking to sell us off.
In this case, employees here can feel comfort knowing they can have a long-term future with Walsworth.
Our biggest strength is our print on demand work. When you can print as little as one book at a time for customers, or hundreds and thousands… And our digital platform, where we can do short runs well. We added capabilities that Walsworth didn’t have, and now across the entire Walsworth platform, we can print everything from one book to hundreds of thousands. It’s a game changer for the entire company.
Dan Kelm and his wife Dena
My wife Dena and I have been together for over 30 years, but we’ve been married for 15. She has a daughter, my stepdaughter Jolene. And we have a granddaughter, Dailyn. Jolene works for a window manufacturer called Andersen Windows as a master scheduler. Dailyn is going to school at University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire. And we have our 11-year golden lab named Bella.
We have a cabin up north on Lake Holcombe that my wife and I really like to go to. In the summertime, we like to tool around on the pontoon, meet up with friends on the lake. We also do a lot of side-by-side riding. There’s lots of trails up north. We have groups we go on rides with.
I do enjoy golfing. I played in a golf league for years, and I have a buddy trip that I go on each year. There are about 12 of us who go down to Arizona every February.
Jolene and Daylin
I’m from Chippewa Falls, which is just north of Eau Claire about 15 miles. That’s where I grew up and then I went to school at UW-Eau Claire, so it was a short drive from home. Then after graduation, I always had jobs either in Eau Claire or the Chippewa area.
Oh yeah, big Packers fan and a big Wisconsin Badgers fan.
It was great when the Packers won the Super Bowl in ‘96 and then again in 2011. But yeah, we’ve had some heartache since then. I always try to get to at least one game a year.
Dan and his wife in Mexico
We’ve been to a lot of different places in Mexico. One that was really cool some years ago now was we went down to the Ixtapa, Zihuatanejo area with some friends and it was a pretty neat area. Any place warm is what we like.
Wow, that’s a tough one. I’m not sure how interesting this is, but I guess maybe that I was a pretty good basketball player growing up. I was all-conference in high school, and we were a state ranked team.
I never pursued it in college because I was too short and too slow. But I continued to play in leagues up until I was 50. But people who knew me later in my professional life probably wouldn’t have guessed that.
Dan’s dog Bella
I don’t know that I have a favorite book, but I have a favorite author. I like anything by Stephen King. Just the weird stuff he writes about, those types of thrillers.
My favorite movie would probably be The Shawshank Redemption. I don’t know how many times I’ve seen it, or parts of it.
As far as TV show, I’ve always watched Survivor. It’s fascinating, all the different dynamics on the island and stuff.
I really like Mexican food. Specifically, Mexican seafood.
I think it would say, “The most important thing is to enjoy life.” Or “Be happy.” It’s really all that matters.
I think at the end of the day, people get so caught up in their daily lives and stress out about things. I see some of the things people stress out about and I think, was it really worth it in the big scheme of life?
I think for me the biggest accomplishment has been my ability to adapt to new styles of leadership throughout my career. I’ve gone through lots of different leadership changes at the companies I’ve been.
People have different styles. What’s important to one might not be as important to a different set of folks. Learning to know your audience and being adaptable has helped me over my career and allowed me to succeed.
The ability for Walsworth to bring in more work (work that will help us run more efficiently) to the Eau Claire facility. We were working with a very limited sales force in the past and now being part of the Walsworth family, our sales force has grown exponentially!
It’s also exciting having all the additional resources Walsworth brings to the table. When you are a smaller company like Documation was, you don’t have all that expertise to tap on. This will help us as we grow the digital brand.
