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Today, running a family-owned business presents unique challenges over and above the usual problems a large or small business faces. That's why national stats show that only one in three family businesses survive to the next generation. These numbers could be true for the reprographic industry. Some family-owned shops haven't successfully weathered the storm of the digital revolution over the past few years and have gone out of business. Thomas Reprographics Inc. is one of the most successful family-owned operations that has withstood the test of time and continues to grow through key acquisitions and by adding the right mix of people and digital technology and services. For their years of success and innovative contributions to the marketplace, Wide-Format Imaging has selected this outstanding output provider as its "Reprographic Shop of the Year."
Thomas Reprographics Inc., a 52 year old family-owned company, is the one of the largest reprographics companies in the US. The company has locations in Dallas/Ft. Worth, Houston, Austin, San Antonio, Phoenix, Tucson, Minneapolis/St. Paul, and Florida; and employs more than 900 employees nationally.
The Thomas family decided many years ago that passing the company business down is a driving force behind the overall vision of Thomas Reprographics. As a third generation company, they recognized the challenges of passing the company on and have implemented several initiatives this past year to insure continued positive growth, strong leadership, and healthy profits.
Today the company is run day to day by president Bryan Thomas, grandson of the founder. Wide-Format Imaging spoke with Bryan just as he was completing their latest acquisition of Winter Park Blue, a second-generation print solutions company in Orlando, FL. "The Winter Park Blue acquisition significantly strengthens our presence in the Florida market," says Bryan Thomas. "We are pleased that Bob Niemi will continue to run the Orlando division. The 60+ employees with the Winter Park Blue team will be a great addition to the Thomas Reprographics family of companies," he notes.
"We have been in the Southeast Florida market for over two years and we wanted to expand our footprint to better serve our customer base in that region. Orlando was an obvious choice and Bob's company fit exactly what we were looking for," explains Bryan.
Smart Acquisitions
In 2007, Thomas Reprographics faced new opportunities when they acquired Houston's A & E - The Graphics Complex—its largest purchase to date. The acquisition brought in 250 new employees and a projected increase of 40 percent in sales volume.
The company's model has often followed a pattern of acquiring family companies that share similar values and principles of hard work and customer service. "In the last decade, we have purchased over ten family-owned companies with most family members staying on to work with us, many in key leadership roles," says Bryan.
"Our philosophy has been to honor the traditions of the companies we acquire, while unifying their experiences, skills, and ideas into a 'melting pot,' forming the strongest possible organization. This is best illustrated in keeping the names of successful companies we purchased like Reprografia, Albinson Reprographics and A & E - The Graphics Complex," he explains.
With their most recent acquisitions, today more than 50 percent of Thomas' employees started with an acquired company. Understanding the challenges of mixing so many cultures, Thomas Reprographics embarked on a national tour this year to unify the vision of the entire company. Called the "World Class Customer Service" Tour, they reached out to every employee by calibrating their heart to service and celebrating Bryans' vision for the company, "to be recognized by our customers and peers as the US leader in reprographics." He continues, "We want to be an organization that our customer's request, our current employee's treasure, future employees seek, and peers admire. As an organization, we measure all investment decisions, strategic planning, equipment purchases, learning programs, and service initiatives by these values."
In 1956 Bryan's grandfather, B.J. Thomas, founded Thomas Blueprint in Dallas. The company opened for business with one small location on Greenville Avenue and functioned as a traditional blueprint company. In 1958, his dad Bill began working for the company during his summer breaks. "The year 1973 was a big one for us. That was the year when we acquired Rapid Blueprint in Houston. At that time, my dad moved our family to Houston to take over as district manager. He remained there for one year until my grandfather decided to retire in 1974 and then he moved us back to Dallas and my father took over as president," Bryan recalls.
In 1974, the company name was changed to Thomas Reprographics to better represent the changing industry. Throughout the next decade, Thomas Reprographics moved to advance with technology. They focused on large document copying, color copying, as well as traditional blueprinting as a means to expand business. Bill Thomas continued to expand the company with more acquisitions in Dallas, Phoenix, and even a color lab in San Francisco.
In 1994, Bryan, who had been working various jobs within the company during summers since he was 13 years old, joined the management team. He was a graduate of SMU with a Masters degree in business. He spent two years running the color lab in San Francisco and two years as VP in Dallas. In 1998, he was named president and Bill became CEO of the company. "I am very proud of the fact that we are a company that has been successfully managed by three generations of the same family. When I became president, my goal was to focus on continued expansion into new markets through acquisitions and investment of new equipment," Bryan adds.
In 1997, Bill's daughter, Brianna, joined the staff as marketing director. She had recently graduated from the University of Arizona with a degree in marketing. She has spent her time with the company coordinating direct mail campaigns, customer promotions, and store remodels. When Bryan left the color lab in San Francisco, Kent Long, an assistant manager in Dallas was sent to run the lab. Kent remained in San Francisco until 1998 when he moved back to Dallas to take the position of district manager. He now oversees all the Dallas operations and sales staff. In October of 1999, Kent and Brianna were married.
Breaking the Mold
Thomas Reprographics was one of the first firms to revamp the image of the traditional blueprint shop and move it into new directions. "In the '70s, my dad began upgrading all our locations through remodeling and new equipment. By the mid '80s, CAD had become the way of life for the architectural community, and we eagerly adopted the new technology. This was a major turning point that offered a nice segue into the Internet Age. 1992 marked the birth of the worldwide web. The way we communicated, spent money and did business changed forever," says Bryan.
The new concept of online planrooms made it possible for architects and engineers to search, view, order, and distribute plans from any internet-connected computer in the world. Thomas Reprographics was at the forefront of this developing technology, providing customers their own online planroom utilizing products such as ReproMAX DFS.
"In 1996, we opened our first Superstore in Phoenix and in 1998, our Dallas Uptown store. The Superstore concept was revolutionary because it pooled all of our digital and technical knowledge into one place," recalls Bryan.
By the mid '90s, Thomas Reprographics began heavily investing in facility management services as another means to expand its business. Facilities management ranged from a single piece of equipment in a client's office to a full service in-house shop run by Thomas Reprographics employees.
By emphasizing customer service, the firm has been successful in catering to the digital customer as well as the traditional reprographics client. "On the graphics side, we have strived to become a one-stop shop. It doesn't matter if a customer wants large or small graphics, in color or in black and white; Thomas Reprographics can output it for the customer and usually offer several options in terms of price, quality and speed," says Bryan.
Today, Thomas Reprographics offers a full range of color and black and white wide-format printing including, digital bond printers, scanners, inkjets, and flatbeds. Their equipment list reads like a who's who in the graphic arts marketplace: Canon, Gandinnovations, GBC, Heidelberg, HP/Scitex, KIP, Océ, Ricoh, Roland, EFI VUTEk, and Xerox to name a few. "As an early adopter of wide-format services, we have consistently invested in equipment and services to meet customer demands, as well as maintain a competitive edge. Over the last year, we updated our service offerings with the purchase of sixty-two new Océ TDS 800's with Repro Desk 2.0 and expanded them through purchases of the Jeti 3150 and 1224 flatbed printers from Gandinnovations," said Bryan.
Through creative labor methods and strategic partnerships with vendors, Thomas Reprographics maximizes its capabilities to meet a wide range of large-format customer requests. "Our color strategy for new equipment and technology is finding something that works and testing it in a single location. Once we are comfortable with it, we roll it out to our other locations. About 45 percent of our business is color and 80 percent of that is wide-format work."
Over the years the company has updated their logo to maintain a technologically advanced image as well as a new image for their delivery fleet. The company began with trucks and bicycle deliveries in the '60s, and then changed to Volkswagen Beetles in the '70s, and the newest fleet vehicles features colorful, sleek and fuel efficient Chevy Aveos, Ford Focuses, and Ford Escape Hybrids.
Employee Training
"Our company's biggest challenge is and always will be obtaining a high return on our largest investment, our employees," says Bryan. For this reason, Thomas Reprographics has invested heavily into training programs in the last year. This included establishing a structured "learning team" tasked with the responsibility of developing every employee in the company with a personal learning path.
"We want our employees to know we care for them as people and want to give them the opportunity to maximize their potential while working at Thomas Reprographics. That means we must give them a clearly defined vision, with a set of expectations and then follow through with an accountability structure that insures team success," comments Curtis Thornton, director of learning, development & culture.
"We have some great leaders on our staff. One of our key individuals, Chuck Gremillion, president of A&E — The Graphics Complex, is receiving the Bukovsky award at this year's IRgA show. Pat Gremillion has done a great job as our vice president of sales. Bob Knappage, also a past IRgA president, continues to shine in the area of operational efficiency. Curtis Thornton has played a major role in our world class customer service training as well as our management leadership training," Bryan points out.
Investing in their employees, Thomas Reprographics, in 2007, gave back over three-million dollars in profit sharing, matching 401K contributions, health insurance, life insurance benefits and training programs. They have reached out to every employee by recasting their corporate vision and pledged innovative programs for the future. "We have unified a family-owned company composed of men and women from many other family-owned companies. We proudly honor past traditions—uniting people from twenty nationalities and over ten different family-owned companies—while looking to a bright future together offering world class service to our customers. We have raised the bar for our company and employees, setting high expectations, and putting accountability structures in place," says Bryan.
In the past year and a half, Thomas Reprographics has welcomed more than 300 new employees into its company, established a new vision, streamlined its strategy, and laid the foundation for becoming a true learning organization. "We believe our past experiences and future growth will lead us to become an organization that our customer's request, our current employees treasure, future employees seek, and peers admire," he adds.
Thomas Testimonials
And what do their customers have to say about them?
"Thomas Reprographics' advancement in technology coupled with their expertise in document capture and reproduction has enabled us to leverage their knowledge base across our entire organization," reports Fred Cardenas, project administrator at Austin Commercial, LP. "In addition Thomas' locations, which are scattered throughout the US, have given us the option to consolidate various product offerings from various vendors into a one stop shop. So, whether it be document scanning, indexing, printing or equipment leasing it's the same price and same service in any market we serve," he adds.
Heidi N. Higgason, VP & marketing principal for HDR Architecture, Inc. says this about Thomas Reprographics' facilities management services, "Our reprographics needs have changed from time to time due to industry advances and more sophisticated graphic tools. Through each change, Thomas has listened and responded promptly to provide us with the right equipment or service to fulfill the need. This responsiveness has enabled us to provide the highest quality products to our clients."
An Industry Leader
The company is committed to industry leadership as illustrated by Bryan's current role as president of the IRgA, and past chairman of the Board of ReproMax— as well as, many of its employee's contributions to industry committees and boards. Thomas Reprographics is proud to have four other past presidents of the IRgA on its executive management team. They consistently demonstrate a spirit of sharing their experiences with peers, and often competitors.
Following their traditional values, Thomas Repro-graphics has consistently volunteered its resources to events like Houston's Sandcastle Competition, AIA, Topping Out, SDA's CANstruction and Phoenix's Valley Partnership. Being environmentally conscious, they have begun implementing programs to become a more green-friendly company. "In 2007, we formulated a detailed plan of action to convert some of our stores to conserve energy, invest in hybrid vehicles, increase recycling efforts, and reduce paper waste."
A lot has changed at Thomas Reprographics since they opened their first store on Greenville Avenue in Dallas back in 1956. "But more importantly are the things that haven't changed. For one thing, our original location is still successfully serving customers 52 years after opening its doors. And our desire to be our customers' first choice for professional document services continues to be the driving force that pushes us toward the mark of perfection," Bryan concludes.
author: BY BILL SCHIFFNER