The interior of Cyber Copy's location in Ventura, California.
By Ed Avis
Eleven years ago Paul Fridrich opened a new location for his reprographics company, CyberCopy, in Culver City, California, which abuts Los Angeles. It was an ideal location for a repro firm – near the Santa Monica Freeway, downtown Los Angeles, and the LA Airport. At that time, Culver City was mostly a factory town, though manufacturers were moving out. The space they moved into previously housed an HVAC business.
Then in 2012 Los Angeles Metro Rail extended the light rail line from downtown Los Angeles to Culver City, with two stations very near Cyber Copy’s office. Four years later that same light rail line was extended all the way to Santa Monica.
“In the meantime, Amazon bought the old movie studios in Culver City and moved the Amazon studios there,” Fridrich says. “And then google moved some creative people there, and Apple and HBO did the same thing. Culver City is hot today.”
And you know what happens when a factory neighborhood near an urban center starts attracting the likes of Amazon, google and Apple: Rents go up.
“Our landlord sold the building in January 2019,” Fridrich explains. “The reason was very simple: It had been appraised at $1.6 million, but he got an offer for $5 million. Nobody could blame him for taking the $5 million.”
Fridrich’s lease on the building was “triple net,” which means he was responsible for property taxes (as well as maintenance and repairs), and after the $5 million sale, the property taxes tripled. Naturally, that got Fridrich thinking about moving. In addition, the new owner wanted to renovate the building and repurpose it as a “creative space,” so he offered Fridrich $100,000 to move out within 90 days.
The search for a new home commenced. Fridrich needed a ground floor space, quality electrical service, parking for at least six cars, and other requirements. He soon discovered that finding that in Los Angeles at a reasonable price was not going to happen. The 90-day window to get the $100,000 passed, but Fridrich would not rush his search.
He finally determined that the solution to his problem was dividing the equipment in the 4,400-square-foot Culver City office between two new locations, instead of just one. The AEC part of the business, whose customers demand rapid turn-around times, needed to stay in Los Angeles, but the graphics side could be located in a more affordable area farther from the city.
Cyber Copy had an existing location in Ventura, which is 50 miles away, and the landlord there had a vacant 6,000-square-foot space. The rent there is less than one-fifth of what they were paying in Culver City.
“So we moved out of our previous smaller suite in the same complex into the 6,000-square-foot suite,” Fridrich says.
The graphics equipment was moved into the larger Ventura site. Much of the work done there – such as flatbed printing, CNC routing, custom signage, and such – is still destined for Los Angeles, but clients seeking those products are content with next-day instead of same-day delivery.
“So what we produce there that is designated for the market in Los Angeles we place them into the van at 5:30 in the morning and it’s in LA by 7 a.m.,” Fridrich explains. "The other benefit of this structure is that we have some of the best graphics equipment and services in Ventura county. It's a smaller market than Los Angeles but we are now a big player in the graphics market there."
Cyber Copy's new location on La Cienega Boulevard in Los Angeles.
Then they found a smaller space on La Cienega Boulevard in Los Angeles for the AEC equipment. At 2,100 square feet, it’s big enough for the company’s PageWide printers, other monochrome equipment, two color inkjets, and a studio for the firm’s fine art reproduction department. That location required some modifications to accommodate the equipment, but otherwise was ideal. Instead of being in an industrial area in Culver City, they are on a highly visible, high traffic area in Los Angeles about a mile away from their previous location.
“Our new office in Los Angeles has everything we need to service the AEC community,” Fridrich says. Both moves were completed early this year. “It was the right solution for us.”