From Pipe Fitter to Packaging: The Story of Marty Plese

One of the things we pride ourselves on most at TK Supplies is our people, and Marty Plese is one of our superstars.

There aren’t many people you’ll meet who are as kind, compassionate, and genuinely willing to take the time to help someone as Marty. Ask him a question and he’ll stop what he’s doing to answer it. Bring him a packaging problem and he’ll help you work through it. And with decades of experience under his belt, there’s a pretty good chance he already knows the answer.

I’ve even made a bit of a game out of trying to stump Marty with packaging questions.

So far, he is undefeated.

With that kind of knowledge, you’d think that when someone asked young Marty what he wanted to be when he grew up, he confidently answered:

“I want to sell rigid packaging.”

A glorious childhood dream, to be sure.

Believe it or not, that wasn’t the plan.

Marty wanted to be a pipe fitter.

From Welding to Marketing

Marty grew up in Wilmington, Illinois, outside of Chicago. During high school, he spent two years attending a technical career center about thirty minutes away, learning how to weld.

He liked it. He was good at it. And by the time graduation rolled around, Marty thought he had his future figured out.

He was going to become a pipe fitter.

But like a lot of young people trying to decide what they’re going to do with the rest of their lives, Marty wasn’t completely sure.

Part of him wanted to pursue the trades. Another part wondered if college might lead him somewhere else.

Then his mom gave him a little push.

If he was going to college, she reminded him, he actually needed to register for classes.

It wasn’t some grand, life-changing speech accompanied by inspirational music. It was a mom telling her son that eventually he was going to have to make up his mind.

And Marty did.

He chose college.

Marty enrolled at Joliet Junior College and initially continued taking technical courses. Later, after moving to New York, he began exploring other options. He eventually sat down with an advisor, switched into business administration, and discovered something that clicked.

Marketing.

Marty eventually transferred back to the Midwest, attended Illinois State University, and earned his bachelor’s in marketing.

The future pipe fitter had officially changed directions.

He just didn’t know yet that the new direction would eventually lead him into packaging.

Sometimes It’s Who Your Wife Knows

After college, Marty landed his first sales job with a chemical company based out of Cleveland, managing a territory in Illinois. From there, he moved into sales for a printing company.

Then the printing company closed.

Just like that, Marty needed another plan.

Fortunately, his wife Maureen knew somebody.

She cut hair for a family whose son worked for a blow molding company. He mentioned that the company might be looking for someone in sales. An introduction was made, Marty interviewed with the district manager and VP of Sales, and he got the job.

Sometimes it’s not who you know.

It’s who your wife knows.

That introduction brought Marty into the packaging industry, and this time he found something that stuck.

Eventually, Marty learned that Rieke was looking for someone to take over its Midwest sales territory. He applied, went through several interviews, and got the job.

He would spend the next 20 years there.

Over those two decades, Marty sold everything from industrial closures to dispensing pumps and developed the kind of product knowledge that, years later, would make trying to stump him one of my favorite losing games.

But more importantly, Marty learned that knowing products was only part of being successful in sales.

You also had to understand people.

Walk a Mile in Their Shoes

Ask Marty about the philosophy that has guided him throughout his career, and his answer is simple:

“Always try to walk a mile in the other person’s shoes so you can better understand what they’re going through.”

For Marty, that means looking at a problem from the customer’s perspective before trying to sell them something.

Earlier in his career, Marty stopped by a longtime customer’s facility without an appointment. During the conversation, he asked a simple question:

“What could we provide that would solve a problem for you and make your business easier?”

The customer told him they were struggling with long lead times on a particular child-resistant closure. If Marty’s company could develop a reliable alternative, they would move the business.

So Marty took the problem back to his team. After plenty of development work, they created the closure, earned the business, and that product is still being manufactured today.

For Marty, experiences like that helped shape the way he approaches sales today. He learned that walking in someone else’s shoes starts by listening long enough to understand the problem from their side of the table.

Once you understand what someone is going through, it becomes a whole lot easier to figure out how you can help.

From Selling to TK to Selling for TK

Marty’s relationship with TK Supplies actually started long before he worked here.

As his territory expanded at Rieke, Marty was assigned the TK Supplies account. He became our account manager and got to know the TK team through regular business dealings and industry events.

And from the outside looking in, Marty noticed something.

TK operated differently.

There weren’t unnecessary barriers or endless layers of corporate structure. People worked together, enjoyed what they were doing, and, most importantly, were trusted to do their jobs.

Marty was especially drawn to that freedom.

Like any successful company, TK expected results and held people accountable. But Marty saw a company that hired good people, trusted them, and gave them room to do what they did best.

As Marty describes it, TK gives people “the freedom to succeed.”

After spending years selling products to TK, Marty decided to switch sides of the table and joined the team himself in June 2018.

Fast and Reliable

Today, Marty believes one of TK Supplies’ biggest advantages is pretty simple.

We have product.

That may not sound like the most revolutionary business strategy ever conceived, but if you’ve spent any time in packaging, you know just how important it is.

Customers don’t need a closure eventually.

They need it when they need it.

In an industry where customers can sometimes find themselves waiting weeks or months for something they desperately need, TK’s stocking model allows us to solve problems quickly.

“We have product available most of the time right away,” Marty says. “We can ship within days.”

Price will always matter.

But when a customer’s production line is waiting for a closure, having the lowest price three months from now isn’t nearly as attractive as having the product they need today.

For Marty, it comes back to two things:

Fast and reliable.

Customers need to know that when they call, someone is going to answer.

When they have a problem, someone is going to help.

And when we say we’re going to do something, we’re going to do it.

Music, Miles, and Family

Packaging may occupy a frightening amount of Marty’s brain, but thankfully there’s still some room left for other things.

Especially music.

Marty is a huge music fan. He loves reading about the artists, history, and stories behind the music. He spent years reading music magazines and can still easily lose an evening watching classic concert films.

The Beatles sit at the top of his list, with U2 not far behind.

Marty is also a lifelong runner. He started distance running when he was just 14 years old and still gets out nearly every morning around 6:30 for a two-mile run.

“The 61-year-old legs can’t turn out a 10-mile run like they did when I was 18,” he says.

But the routine remains.

It’s part exercise, part discipline, and part keeping his body in rhythm. And considering most of us would prefer that 6:30 in the morning remain strictly theoretical, two miles sounds pretty impressive.

More important than music, running, or packaging, though, is Marty’s family.

Marty and his wife Maureen have three children, and when we talked about what matters most outside of work, his family is what means more than anything else.

Some of his favorite memories are the simple ones they’ve created together over the years—family vacations along Lake Michigan and trips to the family cabin in northern Minnesota.

Careers change. Kids grow up. The miles get a little harder on the legs.

Those memories stick around.

Someone You Can Depend On

At the end of our conversation, I asked Marty one final question.

Years from now, when people look back on their relationship with him, what does he hope they remember?

He didn’t talk about sales numbers.

He didn’t mention the products he’s helped develop, the customers he’s landed, or the decades of packaging knowledge he’s accumulated.

His answer was much simpler.

“I treated them with respect, and I was dependable.”

Then he added:

“I just always wanted to show people that they can rely on me.”

And that’s Marty Plese.

The guy who once thought he’d spend his career welding pipe somehow found his way into packaging—and we’re certainly glad he did.

He’s knowledgeable, experienced, patient, compassionate, and always willing to help.

But more than anything, he’s dependable.

Whether you’re a customer looking for a solution, a coworker with a question, or apparently me firing increasingly obscure packaging questions at him in a desperate attempt to finally stump him, Marty will take the time to help.

Maybe that’s what happens when you spend your career trying to walk a mile in someone else’s shoes.

Eventually, you become the kind of person everyone wants walking beside them.