Bawi Peng, owner of PostNet’s Greenfield location, is a refugee from Myanmar who came to the United States in 2007.
Tom Russo | Daily Reporter
By Elissa Maudlin
GREENFIELD — When Bawi Peng was 12, he left Myanmar as a refugee with his family due to violence in his country, and in search of freedom and better opportunities. Fifteen years later, he is now the owner of Greenfield’s PostNet location at 1547 N. State St.
“Myanmar, during that time, was based on military,” Peng said. “There is not freedom there. They killed innocent people, they killed Christian people.”
After being accepted into a United Nations refugee program, his family was able to come to the United States, a place Peng was not familiar with.
“Back then, there was not technology. I didn’t know what America was,” Peng said. “I didn’t know it existed.”
Peng came to Indianapolis in 2007 and started school. As a seventh grader at Southport Middle School in Marion County. Different from schools in Myanmar, Bawi didn’t know he would ride the bus to school instead of walk — the method of transportation he was used to.
When he finished high school in 2013, he didn’t go to college because he said he didn’t have interest in school. The plan was to have a sushi store, but the sushi business proved to be difficult.
“You have to work seven days a week, and it’s very hard to find an employee,” Peng said.
A friend of Peng’s owned a store similar to PostNet, and Peng had worked at that store for a month to understand the business. Peng learned Greenfield’s PostNet location needed a new owner from this friend.
Louise and Joe Fiano were the owners of PostNet in Greenfield from October 16, 1995, to June 30, 2021, in one of the oldest locations for the franchise. PostNet specializes in design, printing and shipping, according to its website. When the Fianos started, there were no UPS stores in town, and they were one of the PostNet locations that started large format printing, Joe said.
With many people in her family as entrepreneurs, Louise said it was “in [their] blood,” to run a business. However, after 26 years owning the PostNet in Greenfield, she said it was “time to move on.”
“You know, we’re getting older … We wanted to retire and do stuff,” Joe said. “You go through different life cycles and stuff like that.”
When Louise first met Peng, her first impression was how young he was.
“You know, young people know all that tech stuff,” Louise said. “And I knew that that’s what that business needed. Somebody young who wanted to do something and just grow.”
With the Fiano’s ownership of PostNet in Greenfield at a close and Peng’s ownership just beginning, two stories converge into one. Peng works at a small desk in the back of PostNet while the Fianos can be found at their home with a garden in the front that Louise refers to as “[her] therapy.”
“If you want to get into business and you never do it in your life, you’ll always wonder at the end of your life … what if I would have done this?” Joe said. “People can do a heck of a lot more than what they give themselves credit for.”
