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Quick Printing magazine did not start the quick printing revolution. In fact, when it was first published in 1977 there were an estimated 10,000 quick print shops and copy shops up and running. And Quick Printing was not the first choice for a title. According to founder Rob Schweiger, the magazine was to be called Quick Printer, but a letter from the now defunct Big Red Q franchise headquarters saying that name infringed upon the title of their internal newsletter caused the dropping of the "er" and the addition of the "ing."
The National Association of Quick Printers (NAQP) had been founded in 1975 by George Pataky, a printer in Asheville, NC. It was already mailing a newsletter to its 300 members when Schweiger came aboard as executive director. Soon NAQP was registered as an official nonprofit organization. At the first official convention, which was held in Denver in 1977, he announced that the newsletter would become a magazine.
In a 1997 interview Schweiger recalled that: "The association didn't have any money, so the magazine's budget was pretty limited. The first issue, we basically did reprints of the seminars we had held in Denver. We would listen to the tapes and transcribe and edit them."
That first issue had 32 pages, few ads, and no four-color pages. In fact, the only reason there was any color at all in that first issue was due to a black-and-red ad from Gans Ink. Four years later, Schweiger and the association parted ways and the magazine became an independent publication based in Florida.
Early production mirrored the state of technology at the time—although some might say it was lagging behind a bit. Type was set on an old Compugraphic machine. Articles were written and mailed to a newly hired editor on the other side of the state. He sent back the edited stories and they would be typeset. The layout was done on Schweiger's kitchen table. "I was just doing the layout, though" he recalled. "We would take that and ship the boards, the type, and the artwork off to a freelancer to do the actual paste-up."
The magazine generated only $98,000 in display advertising revenue in 1978. The next year that grew to $172,000. In 1980, it reached $315,000, and passed half a million in 1983. By 1986, ad revenue had topped $1 million. Part of the reason for such rapid growth was that the magazine was the only advertising vehicle that could reach the independent quick printer directly.
When Quick Printing was first starting out, the industry was being largely driven by the franchises. Industry pioneers such as Frank Schochet (Insty-Prints), Bill Levine (PIP Printing), and Bud Hadfield (Kwik-Kopy) had developed a quick printing concept that was based largely around the Itek camera, the A.B. Dick press, and later, the Xerox 914 plain paper copier.
By the time QP arrived on the scene there were other vendors in the market—although many at first did not have any ads developed specifically for the quick printing industry. Paper and ink companies were among the earliest major advertisers, followed by small press manufacturers such as A.B. Dick and AM Multigraphics. Phototypesetting was state-of-the-art and companies such as VGC, Itek, 3M, LogE, AM Varityper, Compugraphic, nuArc, and Polychrome were well represented.
Technology
To give a feel for the state of the technology being used during the early years of Quick Printing, here are a few excerpts from early display ads:
"THE 1175 is the top of our line of economy platemakers. And, it makes Paper Tiger plates like the rest of 3M's breed. Unique because of our patented Magne-dry technology. That means you get clean, totally dry, short-run paper plates from start to finish."
"A QUADRATEK phototypesetter from Itek will protect your investment. Many phototypesetters are semi-hardwired; difficult and costly to update. Quadratek systems, however, are completely software programmable. As technology changes, they can easily be updated. So you won't ever have to kiss your original investment good-by."
"WE'VE got some really outstanding offset product lines: the industry standard ATF Chiefs. The absolutely unique Davidson Dualiths and Perfectors."
Of course, Paper Tiger, Itek, ATF Davidson, and many of the photo-type companies have long since disappeared.
Even in those early years, computerization was creeping into the print shop, although desktop publishing was still in the future. In a July 1979 story a printer talked about installing a computer with self-created pricing software for quoting jobs, printing invoices, keeping production reports, accounting, word processing, and payroll. He stated: "One of the ground rules for choosing the hardware was that it must have the capacity to do even more than we've described above. Therefore, we decided on a system that has 40K (capacity to process and store information) with expansion capability of up to 64K. It's composed of a Hazeltine terminal, North Star computer with two diskette drives, and an integral dot matrix printer. The hardware cost is under $7,000 and is readily available from most computer distributors."
For the most part, ink on paper and, later, toner on paper made up the vast majority of sales when Quick Printing was getting started. There were, however, some early attempts to use emerging technologies to build new profit centers. One of the more highly touted in the late 1970s was facsimile. There was even an International Electronic Facsimile Users Association that attempted to build a Fax-it network of quick printers, secretarial pools, answering services, and "other easily accessible locations." With the ability to transmit and receive from two to six pages a minute, "the facsimile is a fast, accurate, and economical alternative to the limitations of the postal systems and telephone communications." Of course, charging for facsimile transmission soon became an anachronism as businesses, and even individuals, acquired their own fax machines as costs declined.
In the ensuing years quick printers also were pioneers in other technological areas, especially high-speed and color copying. On page 18, QP columnist John Giles takes a closer look at some of the many technological advances in the industry since Quick Printing first began publishing.
Industry Growth
The quick printing industry grew rapidly from 10,000 shops in 1977 to an estimated 20,000 by 1982. In 1984, Quick Printing conducted its first survey of the top quick printing operations in the U.S. It could find only 78 companies with 1983 sales of more than $500,000, partly because many shops were reluctant to share their sales figures with the magazine. The following year, QP found 100 quick printing companies with sales in excess of $660,000. The top five companies listed were The Printing House, Ltd. (Canada), with sales of $11.44 million, Balmar Copy Center ($9.86 million), Spaulding Company ($8.25 million), Pandick Technologies ($8 million), and Gumpy Copy Centers ($7.5 million).
By 1992, the Top 100 cutoff was $1.6 million, and dozens of $1-million-plus shops received honorable mention. The most recent survey cutoff was $2.47 million, and again dozens of other shops topped the $1 million mark. Only Balmar retained a spot in the top five. All of the other leaders on that first survey have disappeared in one way or another, with the exception of Gumpy Copy Centers, which evolved into Frank Gumpert Printing and was ranked #42 on the latest list.
In the first complete Top 100, 21% of sales came from copying, 60% from offset printing/duplicating, 9% from typesetting and camera work, 5% from brokered printing, and 7% from "other." In the most recent survey, total offset sales accounted for only 36% of sales, and typesetting and camera work had morphed into prepress (7.2%). Brokered sales had grown to 9.1% and "copying" evolved into digital black-and-white and color printing (31.5%). In that initial Top 100, the 21% of sales from copying involved strictly black-and-white work. Interestingly, black-and-white digital was only slightly less (18.9%) in the most recent Top 100.
Through it all, however, basics have remained the same, regardless of technology or job mix. Successful shops still must control costs, price right, manage well, keep an eye on ratios, and sell something to somebody. As the old saw goes: The more things change the more they remain the same.
author: By Bob Hall