By Ed Avis
Bryan Jandorf, the owner of Dixie Blueprint in Boca Raton, Florida, says his firm’s reprographics printing has slowly crept up since the 2009-2010 recession, and today it’s even better than in 2008. HIs sales in that area were about flat in 2022, but he’s not unhappy about that.
“We’ve exceeded our sales from the boom years of 2008, and that’s largely because we’ve done our thing and done it well,” he says. “The word ‘flat’ has negative connotations, but we’re happy that we stayed as strong in 2022 as the previous year.”
Jandorf’s experience is the same as many in the reprographics industry. The word “flat” is the best description for the results reported In an APDSP survey taken two weeks ago and answered by 20 reprographics firms. In every category except for large-format color graphics, the leading reply about how sales in 2022 compared to 2021 was “Sales were about the same.” In the one category that showed consistent growth – large-format color – 63 percent of the respondents said “Sales were up, but by less than 50 percent.”
Traditional Repro = Flat
For some reprographics firms, traditional plan printing is still holding steady but the form of that work has changed. For example, facilities management (FM) installations have kept plan printing steady at Hub City Blueprint in Jackson, Tennessee.
“We’re doing more FMs, so it’s less localized printing and more distributed printing,” says Clint Murchison, general manager of Hub City Blueprint. “It’s been slowly moving in that direction for the past 12 to 15 years. It’s not quite as profitable as printing in our shop, but it’s pretty close.”
In some other cases, sales kept pace with the previous year somewhat because of price increases. Robert Leslie, owner of Andrew T. Johnson Inc. in Boston, says he consistently raised prices to keep up with media price increases. So even if square footage was about the same as last year, top-line sales were up a bit.
Leslie says his customers, many of whom have been with his firm for decades, did not complain about the price increases.
“I don’t send notices out when we increase prices,” he notes. “A lot of our customers, especially those in the architectural world, are dealing with reimbursables, so it’s not as big of a deal as someone just walking off the street. And we have long-standing relationships with these customers. It hasn’t been a problem.”
Overall, Leslie says he is happy with his business: “Over the last six years it’s been flat, except for a couple of bumps in the road, and flat is OK.”
Color Graphics Are Stronger
Color graphics work was the bright spot in the industry in 2022. Some reprographics firms have expanded their color graphics work well beyond their traditional AEC markets, but for some, color graphics is a profitable add-on to existing customers.
For example, Jandorf says competition from sign shops in south Florida is so strong that he has not ventured into general color graphics work, but has succeeded with job-site signage. He uses HP latex printers for that work.
“We do a lot of signage for our contractors, stuff that goes on the fence and has to last one or two years outside. We also do a lot of cut vinyl for construction vehicles,” he says. “It’s not marketing stuff, it’s for actual work vehicles.”
Leslie says his color graphics work has expanded recently because his architecture clients have more work on the table and need more renderings. As construction has resumed after Covid, so has the demand for color AEC work.
Keven Gennerman, owner of Scantech Graphics in San Diego, says his color graphics work grew more than 50 percent in 2022. Like the others interviewed for this article, that growth is coming from the AEC community. In Gennerman’s case, he has developed strong relationships with interior designers who regularly refer clients to him.
“Last year was probably our best in the last five years,” he says. “I think that was because a good portion of our work is in the life sciences. A lot of VC money came and funded those companies. They may only last 3 or 5 or 7 years, and if their drugs don’t make it they fold, so when they have money they want to make their spaces very nice.”
Scantech Graphics creates wall coverings, interior signage, window film and other projects to beautify these spaces. He has HP latex printers, a Vutek UV printer, and an Epson printer that he uses to print onto transfer paper that is used for dye sublimating onto metal.
“We started dabbling in the life sciences space about 10 years ago, and in the last five years it has really grown,” Gennerman says. “I attribute that to referrals from interior designers. We did a lot of lunch-and-learns with them and they brought us along as they got clients in the life science space.”
Another color area that has shown some healthy growth in recent years is color CAD. Jandorf, for example, reports that when he acquired an HP PageWide several years ago, he printed some CAD jobs in color, just to show people how it would look. Customers liked it and now color sets are often part of the order.
“We now charge appropriately for the color,” he says, explaining that he doesn’t want to encourage customers to think of color as only equivalent in value to monochrome. “We don’t have a single customer who we don’t charge more for for color.”
Leslie is in the same boat. He has found more customers interested in color CAD printing since he installed a PageWide, and that piece of equipment makes it much easier to integrate color pages within an otherwise monochrome set, but he’s holding fast to his prices.
“I’m not in the game of selling PageWide color the same as black and white. There’s something wrong with that,” he says. “It just goes back to the days of when diazo was going to plain paper. We charge completely different for color and I’m not afraid to do that.”
How are you feeling about 2023?
How About This Year?
Respondents to our survey are fairly optimistic about 2023. Forty-seven percent said “I’m pretty optimistic – business will be somewhat better,” and another 11 percent said “I’m very optimistic – business will be much better.”
Murchison says he’s confident about 2023, largely because of improving local conditions: A new Ford plant is coming to town.
“We’re in a unique bubble as far as our area goes,” he explains. “The new large auto plant coming in will bring a lot more jobs and that will help housing and a lot of other things. With industry going good, it helps all the other facets – construction, support, transportation, housing, those kinds of things.”
Jandorf also is feeling pretty good about 2023.
“As of now 2023 should be at least as good as 2022, because most of our customers have been around for a while and they have a backlog of work,” he says. “They’re not looking at what they’ll be doing in the next three to six months – they know what they’ll be doing.”