IT WAS ON THE EVENING OF Sunday, Sept. 25 that we lost one of our favorite friends and business colleagues — Norm Swent. Norm was the founder and owner of Marketry, a list management and brokerage company in Bellevue, WA.
There are some people you do business with where you do just that, but Norm was different. He was an instant friend right from the beginning. Personally charming, generous and knowledgeable with an understated wit that won you over immediately. He treated everyone with respect, honesty and only criticized you to make you better. A dinner with Norm was usually filled with great stories and lots of talk about the list business. I loved getting his perspective. My life was enriched just because he lived in it and to say that I’ll miss him goes beyond words.
Marketry was founded as the in-house list brokerage firm for the Northwest Center for Professional Education (NWCPE). By the mid-’80s it employed 60 people and mailed more than 17 million pieces a year to promote 350-plus events annually. It was sold to the Institute for International Research (IIR) in 1990 and Marketry continued in the list brokerage business. Norm was the driving force to its success, and in the process a great contributor to the list business.
In his office you couldn’t help but notice a bronze statue of an eagle custom created for him while at NWCPE. When the business was sold to IIR, ownership of it was purposely written out of the deal and snuck out the back door. Eagles were an important symbol of freedom and power to Norm as he loved seeing them on his many salmon fishing trips to Alaska and Canada.
His son Greg, who now takes over at Marketry and is a great list broker in his own right, told me that at the cemetery he looked up and saw a 15-foot bronze eagle on a pillar as part of the surroundings. A clear sign of Norm’s spirit on the wing of our memory and the power of his legacy.
DEB GOLDSTEIN is president of IDG List Services and the Direct Marketing Association List Council’s 2005 List Leader of the Year.
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