By Ed Avis
When Charlie and Dorothy Hackworth started their first reprographics-related business, Engineering Media, in 1974, diazo was king and digital imaging did not exist. Today their current company, Hackworth – Graphics-Printing-Technology in Chesapeake, Virginia, is a broad-based imaging business with capabilities ranging from engineering prints to full color graphics and screen printing.
The company showed off its latest technology and new building addition to about 300 customers and prospects at an open house on February 5.
"The contractors were still working on the cosmetics," Charlie said. “But Charles [Charlie’s son], who is the vice president and general manager, wanted to have an open house just as soon as we could – there is so much new technology that’s available in the market, and we’ve always been one of the innovators in our area for new technology. We are HP and KIP dealers so we had the latest and greatest equipment that they just introduced in our production area and we were able to demonstrate those products to our clients to show them where the technology is going.”
‘Mini Trade Show’ Format
The open house wasn’t just an opportunity to hand out brochures and drink punch.
Charles and his colleagues set it up like a mini-trade show, with separate spaces for each of their print departments to demonstrate their services, booths for manufacturer representatives from KIP and HP demonstrating the KIP 860 and HP PageWide XL 8000, respectively, as well as a space for South Bay Communications & Security, a business partner that offers security video networks and business phone systems.
“Having South Bay join the show made sense, since there is some overlap in our customer bases,” Charles says. “South Bay invited their clients so they could see our capabilities and potentially become a Hackworth customer.”
“Even though it was a cold, rainy and dreary day, it was great to see a lot of old friends come by, as well as a lot of new folks,” Charlie says, adding that they also served lunch.
Showing Off New Building
The impetus for the open house was the company’s new building addition. They added a 5,000-square-foot space to the existing 10,000-square foot facility to accommodate the 2012
asset purchase of a screen print and signage company going out of business. That purchase greatly added to Hackworth’s color graphics capabilities; the new shop was rebranded separately as The Graphics Shop.
“The building addition has allowed for greater efficiencies by combining locations of Hackworth and TGS,” reads a press release about the open house the company issued. “One side houses a vehicle wrap bay, router room and offices for the Installation Team as well as their tools and equipment. The other side hosts the Graphics Division, allowing seven graphic designers from both companies to be in one convenient location along with a flatbed printer, latex printers, eco-solvent printers, laminators, plotters and more.”
Screen Printing: An Important Niche
Few reprographics businesses do screen printing, but Hackworth also acquired the screen printing capabilities in the asset purchase. It’s now an important service line for them – they screen print the panels that divide meat products in grocery store freezer cases, specialty labels and decals for the fertilizer industry, instrument panels for electronics companies, and other items that few repro firms ever see.
“We just did a job for a large national electronics company that had been sending their
screen printing work to China,” Charlie says. “Now we are doing it.”
Hackworth also uses the screen printing equipment for more conventional customers, such as builders and engineers.
“When we go to contractors with drawings, we say ‘Can we talk to your safety officer?’ because we can screen print their job-site signs,” Charles says. “We also work with local shipyards. A company was refurbishing a ferry out of New York, so when it came time for them to scrape off all of the lettering and signage, they came to us and we screen printed new signage and did the installation.”
Hackworth also does digital color graphics on a wide range of equipment from Océ, Mimaki, HP, Canon, and Gerber. Managers decide which side – screen or digital – gets a given project, depending on which capability is better suited to handle it.
Big Wraps
Many reprographics firms do vehicle wraps, but Hackworth does it bigger than anyone else. “We just wrapped an airplane, and have another one coming,” Charlie says. “And we did motorcycles for the sheriff’s department, several fleets of trucks, and a couple of years ago we applied signage on the side of two storage domes that were 150 feet high. The request was to
design and install 12-foot-high lettering and logos on the side of each dome some 85 feet in the air. Another project involved a local client that recently requested over 10,000 square feet of wall graphics for their corporate building.”
Hackworth feels education and certification are important. Their lead wrap installer is certified by 3M, and the company is certified by 3M, the United Applications Standards Group, and the Professional Decal Application Alliance.
“If there’s a seminar or convention that can assist our graphics designers, we send them,” Charlie says.
College Market
Hackworth has found another growth area on the nearby campus of the College of William & Mary. The college wanted to outsource its printing and copying; a large nationwide
corporation specializing in copiers and printers won the bid with Hackworth as its partner. Hackworth has four employees on-site at the college, but they can count on Hackworth’s main office for full back-up when their on-site capacity is exceeded.
“That’s getting busier and busier,” Charles says. “Now department heads that were outsourcing their work for printing and signage, because the previous firm had limited services, send or bring the work to us on campus and we handle that for them and as well as walk up services for the students who have their own school projects.”
Conclusion
The open house – which incidentally also was attended by the mayor of Chesapeake, the sheriff, and the head football coach of Norfolk State University – was an opportunity for Hackworth to demonstrate its growing list of capabilities and greet friends and customers.
“The open house exceeded all my expectations,” said Charles. “For a couple of hours it was literally standing room only. Our vendors were so very, very supportive. Our customers were excited and overwhelmed by our wide array of capabilities and by the quality of the facility. I can’t wait to do it again next year!”
