Albany, NY-based IRgA member Camelot Print & Copy acquired two locations of Copy a Minute in September 2013. Owner Bob Cook answered a few questions about the acquisitions in an email interview:
1) Who was the previous owner? – Gary Mayer. He started off as Dutchess Blueprint in 1971, primarily a reprographics AEC shop. It was the first shop of its kind in the Hudson Valley region of NY. When his market widened he changed to A Copy A Second and had as many as 5 stores at one point. When we bought him out he had 2 stores remaining and we changed it to Copy A Second. Within a week of taking over the stores we moved the Hopewell Junction store to a larger location and in October we will be doing similarly for the Poughkeepsie store.
2) Why did you acquire the shops? – We’ve been based in Albany and have wanted a presence closer to NYC for quite some time. We’ve had several large downstate clients and wanted to provide them a higher level of service. Copy A Second had a great reputation in the Poughkeepsie area and it was a perfect fit for us.
3) Did you have to do a lot to integrate them into your existing business? – The Copy A Second stores are small storefront operations with no large production capabilities. We knew that if we applied economies of scale to their operation the stores would become more profitable and efficient. Additionally we could offer services the former owner could not. For example, an online planroom, faster turnaround for larger bid sets, offset printing, and much more.
As for integrating them into our existing business, even after a year its an ongoing effort. We immediately upgraded their technology and completely replaced their computer infrastructure. This enabled us to put them onto our wide area network and facilitated communication and file transfer between all locations. We also replaced a lot of their printers with current technology. We allocated an account rep and a vehicle to travel daily to the Copy A Second stores. He handles sales but also moves jobs between our production facility in Albany and downstate. In addition, a lot of the integration centered around training staff to be aware of the increased resources available to them