The team members at Premium Digital Office Solutions (PDOS) in Fairfield, New Jersey, may want to add a holiday to their calendar and call it PB Thanksgiving. Had “PB,” an unnamed purveyor of postal equipment, not decided to make major changes to its compensation structure, then Van Seretis may have never needed the motivation and courage to open his own office technology dealership.
But while his fate hasn’t floated like a feather in the same vein as the protagonist in one of his favorite movies, Forrest Gump, there was certainly some serendipity that has guided Seretis along the way. He competes in a head strong New York Metro area that includes many of the manufacturers and more than a few heavy hitters on the dealer side. But it doesn’t faze him.
Seretis is at a turning point. His partner retired, and Seretis moved the company from Parsippany to Fairfield. Not long ago, he launched a water division, and it’s performed beyond expectations. Now 55 years old, he’s kicked around the idea of retirement, but concedes his daughter is still in high school and he probably wouldn’t know what to do with himself if he did step back.
“I’ve got energy and I still love doing this,” said Seretis, a 2025 ENX Magazine Difference Maker. “We’re successful, not the best but there are worse off companies. I run a solid company. In my eyes, our employees are happy and everyone makes a good living. And that makes me happy.”
Seretis works hard and plays hard. When Halloween rolls around next week, his staff will be getting into the spirit with costumes. They do Super Bowl parties, even though his beloved Jets haven’t been in a championship conversation for a long time. PDOS holds a St. Patrick’s Day lunch, and Seretis takes the opportunity to dress up as a leprechaun.
He also knows how to put in the time. The son of Greek immigrants, Seretis latched onto the unyielding work ethic he learned at home. His father, John, owned his own restaurant, working countless hours but never complaining.
“Dad was a self-made successful entrepreneur, and he made it look easy,” Seretis noted. “But his work ethic was crazy.”
It was actually another relative—Dino, his cousin—who played a role in the direction Seretis’ career would take. In the early 1990s, Seretis attended Seton Hall University, majoring in finance with a minor in criminal justice. He’d taken the LSATs with the plan to attend law school, but after graduating, he decided to take a gap year.
This didn’t sit well with his folks. “My parents were absolutely ballistic, because my brother was in medical school,” Seretis noted.
Dino felt his cousin would do well where he worked, which was PB. Seretis gave it a shot and flourished immediately, becoming the organization’s Rookie of the Year. It was during that time that he met Alan Schwartz, who mentored him and would soon become his business partner.
Seretis loved his job and was enjoying life. He was in his mid-20s, attending sales leadership conferences in Hawaii and Puerto Rico, and he had a flair for cold-calling. But he might have stayed longer had the organization not decided to yank away commissions and put their reps on quotas. Once that happened, the clock was ticking on his PB career.
PDOS started as a Samsung dealer in 1999, but Seretis and Schwartz gradually added Lexmark, Brother, Sharp and Konica Minolta. They opened a print division in 2017, churning out jobs like banners, brochures and business cards. Business took off as Seretis kept his eyes peeled for product diversifications that could mesh with clients and prospects.
Still, he remains enamored with good, old-fashioned selling. “To be a successful office equipment salesman, you need to learn how to cold call, whether it’s in front of a C-level or non-C level. You have to find it, cultivate it, close it, then stick with it and nurture it,” he said. “That’s how we train out people. We have a 94% retention rate because our customers love doing business with us. We take care of them.”
Moving forward, Seretis has high hopes for the water division, Premium Pure Water, which stands separate from PDOS. He’s settled into the new office, which the company moved into this past July. That required “a lot of shredding” to downsize from 20 years of accumulation. But by Sept. 1, the company was humming along as it was before the move. Seretis didn’t mind the temporary upheaval.
“I embrace change. A lot of people don’t,” he said. “I love new challenges. And it’s great working with the younger generation, because they bring in new ideas. We’ll never say, ‘this is the way we’ve always done things and this way has worked.’ If you have a bigger, better, brighter idea, I’d be happy to look at implementing it, because I want to grow.”
The Seretis clan includes his wife of 28 years, Christine, a teacher, and they have four children—Caroline, a PT doctor; Stephanie, who has a master’s degree in education; Nick, a TSNJ student on a pre-law track; and Julia, a high school senior who’s also eyeing law in the future. They still have sit-down meals as a family and do a lot of activities together, whether it’s the beach, visiting Disney or going to the movies.
