With more than 350,000 (estimated) wide-format print-for-pay providers worldwide that have the potential to have or to buy a wide-format inkjet printer (as reported by a recent I.T. Strategies study), picking the 25 top shops in North America seems like a daunting task. But during the months from December 2006 to February 2007, readers of Wide-Format Imaging submitted nomination forms (found in the magazine, on www.wide-formatimaging.com, and in our Weekly Update eNewsletter) for an opportunity to be included in this prestigious number.
The nomination forms were collated and compared and the list of the Top 25 Shops of North America is included below—ranked from highest to lowest by final 2006 total year revenue as reported by the shops.
No two businesses are alike. They come from all walks of life—digital color shops, reprographic shops, photo labs, service bureau, production facility—and from all over the US and Canada. Some have a single location, while others do business out of multiple locations over a wide geography. While the age of our companies averaged out at a little more than 22 years, our oldest topped out at 68 (A-C Reproduction and Copy Center, 1939) while two companies vied for the newest—Run Digital and The Image House, both established in 2005. This year's list includes 69 total locations, with 11 more planned for 2007. While most shops had only a handful of locations—ranging from one to three—Thomas Reprographics boasted 30, gaining some additional ground with the recent acquisition of A&E — The Graphics Complex, a previous Top Shop and Reprographic Shop of the Year Award winner.
These shops are offering a greater range of capabilities to customers including analog and digital printing technologies, installation services, warehousing and distribution services, and creative/design services, among others—depending on exactly what their customers need. As an average, 42.4 percent of the top shops' output is wide-format (36-87 inches in width), followed by grand-format (88-inches plus) at 28.52 percent, medium-format (24-35 inches) with 20.32 percent, and the remaining 8.76 percent in small-format, 14-inches and smaller, documents.
While banners and signs (23.32 percent) make up the largest application on average for the shops, retail and POP displays (10.84 percent), exhibit and trade-show graphics (11.78 percent), and billboards (11.78 percent) are also bringing in a lion's share of revenue for these companies. But what's next?
Presidents and owners mentioned various applications and technologies that are on the horizon for 2007 and 2008. Dye-sublimation and fabric printing was high on their minds, as were more environmentally-friendly products. Flatbed printers, including those with white ink, are also on the radar of several—some as new installs, others for additional capacity.
"Pictura will continue to explore new media and substrates to leverage on existing digital printing applications, primarily in the fabric and direct to substrate segments. The company has a very broad base of capabilities which can be expanded to markets that Pictura has not been a player as of yet (building wraps, fleet graphics, tension fabric, etc.)," said Paul Lilienthal, Pictura.
But what technology do these shops have their eye on that they feel with impact their business the most in the upcoming months? According to Bryan Thomas with Thomas Repro, it's print-on-demand via the Internet and variable printing. For Graphic Systems Group's Ken Madsen, workflow systems, graphic process management, and environmentally-friendly products will make the largest impact. Jittu Sarna with Inkjet International sees the most change in the slow but steady switch of solvent inks to UV inks. Other technologies include, web-based online ordering systems, business systems management software, CRM systems, digital planrooms, faster print speeds, finer dpi print heads, dye-sublimation, low-cost, high-speed color; Autodesk changes, and digital document management.
"The breakneck pace of change in our industry guarantees that 2007 and 2008 will be as exciting as ever. But, the technology that will most impact Ferrari Color for the balance of 2007 and into 2008 is not made up of electronics and metal, or diodes and light pulses. It is the brain power of the individual team members of our company. We are convinced that to meet the demands of our clients, we must tap into the very best thinking available. While there are certainly equipment improvements creating better and cleaner printers, faster systems, and more dynamic signage, we recognize that these wonderful technologies are only as good as the people who make them work. We expect to harness the technical prowess of the best of the best minds in the business as we move forward," said Kirk Green, Ferrari Color.
Thomas Reprographics
Bryan Thomas, president
Richardson, TX
www.thomasrepro.com
Our company's biggest chal-lenge is and always will be obtaining a high return on our largest investment, our employees. Providing forums for good peer-to-peer and bottom up communication have been our best tools in achieving this to date.
Crush Creative
Guy Claudy, president
Burbank, CA
www.crushcreative.com
The biggest business chal-lenges that we face in the next 12 months are multi-faceted. First, we need to accurately anticipate what our core markets need in terms of products and services. This will be the basis from which we formulate our capital equipment budget. Once we have effectively incorporated efficient new technology into our manufacturing facilities, our challenge is to make certain that our company has processes in place that will ensure a profitable delivery of high quality products to our customers.
Graphic Systems Group
Ken Madsen, partner
New York, NY
www.graphicsys.com
A growing challenge for any production operation is how to meet the growing demand for ecological processes that not only meet "green" standards, but ensure future increased profitability and decreased costs. Being green for the sake of the ecology is noble, but doesn't support a business' financial goals. At GSG, this challenge is emphasized repeatedly on both an international and domestic stage. Many corporations will simply not work with an agency that doesn't support and implement its own sustainability campaign.
Our ethical concerns for our environment do not have to compete with our missions as business managers. Just the opposite. By striving towards more eco-friendly solutions, we can reduce long-term overhead costs, create marketing differentiation, and still maintain our personal ethics.
Ferrari Color
Kirk Green, president
Salt Lake City, UT
www.ferraricolor.com
The biggest challenge Ferrari Color will face in the next twelve months is to become an even better company. Being selected as one of the elite firms in our industry is a great distinction, but the only honor that really matters is the trust that our clients grant us with each new project. There is a temptation to think that awards signify that one has arrived. We like to think that on our journey to help our clients succeed, that we are successfully on the right path.
Image King Visual Solutions
Ira Hefter, president
New York, NY
www.imagekingvs.com
As a company, our biggest challenge in '07 is to continue to invest and develop new growth opportunities to expand our core competencies. Our industry continuously undergoes change and we need to remain ahead of the curve as technology brings new opportunities. To complicate the analysis, the market for "wide-format" is bifurcated into "commodities" and "specialties". We are equipped to serve both segments and our challenge is to price the commodity segment to be competitive and profitable, and to maximize margins when our unique strengths are utilized.
Our decisions rest primarily upon which market segments we can continue to seek solutions to maximize customer satisfaction and insure the welfare of the company and its employees.
Source One Digital
Randy Crow, president
Norton Shores, MI
www.sourceonedigital.com
I think our biggest challenge in the upcoming year will be to continue to grow our multiple shift operation and to continue to add experienced staff to our printing and production team. With "just in time" deadline challenges we need to have all three shifts performing at peak performance levels. To overcome this challenge we will continue to educate and train our production team and secure additional National Sales reps with solid knowledge of the industry and products to handle our growing client base. The addition of our new production facility has helped us with our space challenges and has allowed us to expand our printers and finishing equipment and provides us with three install bays for on-site installations.
Pictura Graphics
Paul Lilienthal, owner
Minneapolis, MN
www.picturagraphics.com
Pictura's biggest challenge will be to support our commitment of providing superior quality, "value-added" solutions and high level customer service in a marketplace that maintains intense deadlines and competitive pricing. We need to continue to improve upon our processes and systems in order to streamline our growth. The expansion of our production facility will help support our growth initiatives and overall workflow.
Inkjet International Ltd.
Jittu Sarna, owner
Dallas, TX
www.inkjetintl.com
Our biggest challenge this year is going to be able to match or bypass previous year's growth rate. For a thirteen year old company, which has grown every year of its existence, to keep up last year's growth rate is going to be very challenging. However, as difficult as the math seems, we are going to give it a go. Help from our existing clients and an ever increasing new client base, it may be possible.
Point Imaging
Kevin Huseman, president
Hobart, IN
www.pointimaging.com
Optimizing our operational effectiveness will be our most challenging and valuable initiatives. Considering our rate of growth (20+ percent average a year over year the last three years), we are experiencing less than optimal operational effectiveness across all functional areas of our business. Our strategy related to this challenge is to continue our key staff & technology acquisitions supported by internal systems development and MIS innovations.
Graphics House Imaging
Brent McKinnon and Dan McKinnon, owners
Muskegon, MI
www.ghimaging.com
The biggest challenge GH Imaging will face in 2007 is an expansion. GH Imaging has plans to install a HP Scitex TJ8000 in the spring. This press will bump up GH Imaging daily capacity by about 30,000 sqft a day. GH Imaging relationship with Scitex/HP is a long one. GH imaging installed the 3rd GrandJet in North America, this new purchase is a continuation of that long relationship. We're excited about this equipment. When it comes to speed and quality there's nothing close to it on the market. We as well as our customers can't wait for it to be installed. It's going to bring low cost high quality prints to our resellers and provide them with even more options from GH Imaging.
Mathison's Company
Paul Anstett, owner
Fargo, ND
www.mathisons.com
Our biggest challenge in 2007 is to cross-market and grow sales between our wide-format and small-format customer bases. Our sales and marketing strategy for 2007 includes educating our customers on the entire suite of our wide- and small-format capabilities. We plan to do this through both direct sales and by promoting all of our services in our marketing activity.
XL Digital Imaging
Jason Sweet, owner
Dallas, TX
www.xldigital.com
Our biggest challenge right now is finding and hiring the best personnel we can in order to maintain our growth. The success of our business is largely driven by customer service, which is primarily a function of having the right people with the right attitude and knowledge interacting with customers. It is also critical to have experienced printer operators that take real pride in their work. In an employment market as small and specialized as grand-format printing, it takes hard work and a significant time investment to find these people.
ABI Digital Solutions
Dan Henrichs, owner
Conroe, TX
www.abidigitalsolutions.com
The biggest challenge for ABI in the coming year is to not get trapped in the commoditization of the print industry.
Printing equipment is getting bet-ter, more affordable, and easier to operate. This means that competition for the print Buyer will be more and more intense. As the quality for all printers improves, many Buyers will look at our industry as a commodity. In other words, they will assume that everyone has the same quality and the only difference is price. If we allow ourselves to be viewed as a commodity, we will be fighting for the low end of the market where the margins are lowest.
Our challenge is to constantly differentiate ourselves from the competition and make sure that our customers see the value in our differentiation. In the last year, we changed our name from Airbrush Images to ABI Digital Solutions. This change was made to show more clearly what we do as a Company. More and more clients are looking for full service solutions such as design, and installation. Often clients are looking to us for suggestions on how the latest technologies can help them get their message across to their customers. These people don't want to buy a sign, they want to get a message out. Commodity oriented printers will offer a lower price to get that business. ABI will offer value in the form of solutions to their marketing questions.
The closer that we can be with our customers, will be how we can differentiate ourselves and prevent us from being looked at as just another print provider.
The Composing Room
Mark Shocker, owner
St. Louis, MO
www.composingroom.com
Our biggest challenge will be to continue to differentiate ourselves from our competitors by providing a superior level of customer service. We will continue to make equipment and technology improvements, with the belief that these enhancements will enable us to provide our graphics quickly and efficiently without sacrificing our production quality.
Essentially we are trying to provide the best level of service we can to help our clients achieve their business goals on time and hopefully under budget. Striving to understand their business needs and aligning those needs with our production capabilities allows us to continue to help our customers achieve their goals, which we hope will separate us from the field.
Graphic Visions
Bill Bentley and Roger Berwanger, owners
Gaithersburg, MD
www.graphicvisions.com
Most of Graphic Visions' wide-format output is now tradeshow related visuals, exhibits, and displays. Prior to this, we emphasized "in-house" production. Our strategy was to add equipment that expanded our capabilities to produce a wide variety of wide format products, viz., posters, banners, framed art, smaller exhibits, some museum work, and more.
However, a recent business acquisition added an exclusive distributorship for NIMLOK custom tradeshow display and exhibits. For larger (10x20-feet to 20x50-feet) custom exhibit booths, we see are seeing a strong trend away from "traditional" booth construction and laminated graphics toward the use of lighter, aluminum extrusion with graphics printed on fabric.
Our biggest challenge in the next 12 months will be to determine the most cost-effective way to produce tradeshow-related outputs. With the cost of purchasing finished goods falling rapidly, largely due to globalization, the quality from overseas vendors increasing, and the shipping time for deliveries vastly reduced, it may make sense to not replace or buy new equipment but to build strong relationships with trusted, high quality production shops. To continue doing "in-house" production, while facing eroding margins, may be unwise in the long run. We may alter our strategy to outsource more work to conserve capital and halt the erosion of margins.
A-C Reproduction and Copy Center
Robert W. King, COO
Mount Laurel, NJ
www.acrepro.com
The biggest challenge I see for this year is maintaining and educating a sales force. With the digital age we are becoming more of a technology provider than a traditional reprographic house. We have focused a lot of resources on staffed and unstaffed facility management programs.
With this service, we become responsible for its solutions, personnel, equipment, supplies...and the list goes on. We become and extension of our client's office. Staying on top of the digital arena, offering to all employees inside and outside extensive training/seminars and other educational ways to keep abreast of this ever changing business. Stay true to your customers and they will stay true to you. Customer service is the key to growing the business. Success is also about having the right products plus the knowledge, quality, service, and dedication as well as the will to survive.
Precision Color Digital Imaging
Keith Lehman, president
Las Vegas, NV
www.pcolordi.com
Precision Color's business challenges in the next 12 months is that we must continue to demonstrate to our clients that digital color is the most cost effective alternative for successfully reaching their target markets; that we cannot afford to ignore our client's market in supporting their never-ending business expansion; and the evolution of digital technology.
The company is cognizant of the fact that price is not always the key determinant in vendor selection. While we obviously must be competitive, it is far more important to the company to first, demonstrate our dependability and secondly, our quality.
Based on the pressure that the company is under to meet deadlines and deliver a quality product to its clients, we feel that here at Precision Color we have the right technical infrastructure to do just that.
RPM Flags & Graphics
Glenn Spunaugls
Oklahoma City, OK
www.rainbowpennant.com
Right now, our biggest chal-lenge will be finding fabrics that will work on our new Teleios printer. We'll be attending several trade shows hoping to find different suppliers.
Big Ink Display Graphics
Tom Trutna, president
Eagan, MN
www.inkbig.com
The biggest challenge for BIG INK in the next year will be: Reinforcing with customers and conveying to prospects the added value BIG INK brings to each and every order. As competition grows and price per square foot continues to drop, we have found the best BIG INK customers are those who place high importance on exceptional quality, innovation, a hassle-free experience.
Innovation is another component that is important to BIG INK customers. Regular mailers are sent to customers that feature a new product, media or procedure. Oftentimes, when a mailer lands on someone's desk at just the right moment it sparks a new idea. It helps us keep our customers at the edge of current trends, it helps them build a wow-factor in their display or exhibit. It is this combination of the Big Deal procedure and our constant push for innovation that will keep BIG INK at the forefront of the industry and our customer's minds.
Dimensional Silk Screen
Michael Tardy, president
San Diego, CA
www.dimensionalsilkscreen.com
The biggest challenge for us is in general, to increase business while maintaining profitability and one way we plan to achieve this is, we are having our sales force looking for unique and unusual substrates and applications. Then with this information, utilize our flatbed printers to market these applications and our services to industries that have not looked at digital printing as a solution for advertising or decorating.
Agio Imaging Inc.
Tom Brussee
Portage, MI
www.agioimaging.com
Academy Reprographics
Kevin O'Hea, owner
Albuquerque, NM
www.acadrepro.com
Being a reprographer is similar to being a fortune teller. You try to tell people what to expect and hope they pay you quickly. We all know that our guesses at what the future holds are simply that… guesses. Certainly we use our expertise, gather all of the information that we can from wherever we can, but we are not fools. We have no way of knowing when our biggest client is going to make sweeping changes that have positive or negative impact on us until they tells us, or worse, they don't tell us. Dominating the market, operating the best equipment, and having the best employees doesn't always mean that you are safe and protected. Corporate America no longer rewards their employees for loyalty and longevity, even less so for vendors and suppliers. I would have to say that our biggest challenge in the next 12 months would be to remain cognizant of our vulnerability and staying as proactive as possible while keeping an eye on our crystal ball. We can certainly try to predict our futures, but we must remain vigilant and flexible. The famous business economist Edgar R. Fiedler said, "He who lives by the crystal ball soon learns to eat ground glass."
Run Digital
Sal Di Franco, Stan Taylor and Tony Morrish, owners
Calgary, Alberta, Canada
www.rundigital.ca
Our biggest challenge in the next year will be to find staff members for our growing business. The job market in the city of Calgary is the tightest in all of Canada. With a provincial unemployment rate of just 3.3 percent, it seems everyone is looking to attract new employees. In addition to competitive compensation, Run Digital strives to create a positive work environment with productivity-based rewards, flexible hours and health benefits. Our best job recruitment method is word of mouth. We rely on our staff, clients and suppliers to say good things about us, and as a result, we have been able to expand our team with extremely talented individuals.
Bay Area Blueprint & Reprographics Inc.
Mike Wallace, president
Pensacola, FL
www.bayareablue.com
Our biggest business challenge in 2007 will be to sell the ReproMAX Adenium DFS online planroom services to the construction industry in our market place. We have four competitors in our market area and we will have to work very hard to sell the product. Additionally we became Fully Authorized KIP Dealers in January 2007. We now have a quota dollar amount we must sell each year. I am currently trying to hire an entry level sales person to train in sales for our product line. ReproMAX recently added the Canon Wide Format product line for our Partners and Associates to sell. I am currently working on our Service Department to get certified to service the product. Additionally, we Sell and Service the HP DesignJet product line.
As president and owner I will spend a great deal of time and money to staff my locations and Train my employees to be capable of providing our customers with the right solution to any needs they have.
Customer Service will still be numberone on our list of priorities in 2007. Without customers, we don't exist in the marketplace.
The Image House
Brent Burnett and Steve Slater, owners, Merrillville, IN
www.theimagehouse.net
Our biggest challenge over the next 12 months is managing the growth of the company without overextending our employees. Many times we find ourselves working an incredible amount of hours. We now are running two shifts to buffer the onslaught of work.
Go to www.wide-formatimaging.com to see a sample of some of these top shops' most challenging applications in 2006.
author: BY DENISE M. GUSTAVSON