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The Coupon Giant

Tribune photo by Jay Conner

April Van Zyl transferred to the new Valpak facility from the Largo location last year. "At Largo, everything was a jumble," she said. "Here, everything moves much faster."

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By RICHARD MULLINS

The Tampa Tribune

Published: March 22, 2008

From Interstate 275 in St. Petersburg, it just looks like a big, big building.

Inside, the massive Valpak coupon factory looks like a robot science fiction movie - if anyone ever made movies about the coupon business.

There are printing presses the size of football fields, miles of whirring conveyor belts carrying coupons and automatic forklifts hauling freight - operators politely pausing if you step in their way.

When fully operational this summer, the new $220 million site will produce about 45 million envelopes a month, stuffed with billions of coupons for everything from oil changes to dog grooming.

The new factory is so big that Valpak employees have come up with their own lingo to convey its size: Thirteen Boeing 747 jetliners would comfortably fit inside. There are 10 acres under one roof (about the size of WestShore Plaza).

It's one of Florida's largest factories.

By year's end, an older Valpak production site in Largo will shut down, and work will fully move to the new site. Valpak has operated in Pinellas County since 1968.

"It's completely different from the Largo plant," said April Van Zyl, who worked 14 years in envelope processing at Valpak and transferred to the new site last year. "At Largo, everything was a jumble. Here, everything moves much faster."

For Valpak's owner, Cox Enterprises Inc., the project represents a massive bet that direct-mail coupons will thrive in an advertising market that shifts more money each month to e-mail, Web sites and cell phones. Perhaps because those electronic ads are more intrusive, Valpak executives say their down-home coupons will remain appealing to customers.

And who is that typical customer? Bill Disbrow, Valpak's chief executive officer, says, "It's a woman that is somewhere between the age of 25 to 54. About 90 percent of the time, she opens it and basically goes through about a three-minute drill. She says 'No,' 'no,' 'yup.'... And she makes a stack of the yups."

Reporter Richard Mullins can be reached at (813) 259-7919 or rmullins@tampatrib.com. Keyword: Valpak, to watch a video of how employees deliver 45 million envelopes a month.

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