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Charlie, Dorothy and Charles Hackworth
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Mark Rowan
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Editor’s Note: APDSP member firm Hackworth is celebrating its 30th anniversary in 2021. In this interview, Charles Hackworth II (Vice President) and his mother, Dorothy Hackworth (CEO), discuss the company’s success and future opportunities.
APDSP: Congratulations on your anniversary! It’s too bad you reached this milestone during the COVID crisis.
Charles: Actually, last year was our best sales year ever! We adjusted our marketing efforts last spring and ended up producing COVID signage, face shields, acrylic barriers, floor decals and other items like these the entire year. We were fortunate to get some large projects, especially from local colleges and universities, and that helped us out tremendously. For example, one university hired us to print COVID-related decals and install them on entry and exit doors, bathrooms, elevators, floors, etc., for literally every building on campus. It took our production and installation teams the entire month of July (2020) to print and put them up.
Dorothy: The one downside was that we operate the print shop on the campus of The College of William & Mary, and that suffered a big blow during COVID. That was one area that was down last year.
Charles: We were grateful for how things turned out. We were blessed to be able to keep our people busy and we came out of 2020 without losing any of our staff. In the end, everything worked out well and this year we are working hard to keep things rolling.
APDSP: We wrote about Hackworth about five years ago, but didn’t include much information about your beginning. How did the company start?
Charles: In 1991 my parents merged their original firm, which was founded in 1974, with a competitor. But the merger didn’t go well and fell apart later that year. We ended up with an empty building and all three of us unemployed. So we prayed about the situation and even looked at some other opportunities other than printing. Eventually all the other doors closed and we decided to return to blueprinting. As we put the word out to people we knew in the industry, one friend gave us a Xerox large-format printer, another friend gave us an old blueprint machine, and Dietzgen gave us credit. That got us started.
APDSP: You have grown a lot since then. Tell me about that.
Charles: Yes, today we have seven locations in Virginia, about 65 employees between all the business units and multiple capabilities including graphic design, large-format printing, wraps, digital small-format printing, screenprinting and wide format equipment dealerships (sales, supplies, service).
Our home office is located in Chesapeake, VA and about 20 years ago we opened our second location in Richmond, VA as an office for equipment sales and service. We still don’t offer any printing services at that location.
In 2012 we bought out a local sign shop that did commercial screenprinting for signage and decals. We rebranded that business as The Graphics Shop (TGS), and it’s located with Hackworth in our Chesapeake facility. This acquisition got us into the vehicle wrapping business, design and installation. Also, we have upgraded some of the equipment in the past couple of years with a newer flatbed printer and CNC router, but we still run the screenprinting press every day.
In 2016 we opened a location north of us on the campus of William & Mary in Williamsburg, VA. That’s a contractual relationship with another vendor that, prior to COVID, employed four people full time. We are still operating the print shop in a reduced capacity and hope as the students and faculty come back to campus we can rebuild our business there.
In 2019 we bought a small copy shop about 30 minutes west of us in Suffolk, VA. That’s a more rural area of our market but it’s growing rapidly. A lot of people are moving out there and we see a lot of potential. It’s one of those areas where everybody knows everybody, so we have worked hard to become part of the community by supporting local civic groups, sponsoring local events and attending local functions. Our manager and staff there have done a really good job of plugging in. We are currently moving that office to a larger space which has way more visibility than the previous location. We’ve also just invested in a new Xerox Iridesse Production Press at that location. The Iridesse’s claim to fame is that it can do true metallic printing, and nobody else locally has that capability. Just yesterday we got the first hit from someone who wants a job printed with the Iridesse, and we have some other accounts we think will jump on board.
In the spring of 2019 we bought a controlling interest in Creative Document Imaging, which has locations in Chantilly, Fairfax, and Manassas, in northern Virginia. Creative Document Imaging is just a smaller version of Hackworth – they print at all three locations, but don’t currently do as much in graphics or wraps as Hackworth. We have a business partner that runs the day-to-day operations and he does a great job. There is a lot of work in northern Virginia, so we definitely hope to expand up there.
APDSP: What’s in Hackworth’s future?
Charles: We would like to continue growing our graphics department, especially our wraps team. We just hired three new designers and our installation team is looking for additional staff. The projects just keep getting bigger and bigger, so much potential. There are also some areas we outsource that we continue to evaluate bringing in-house such as apparel, ADA signage, grand format and dye sublimation to name a few.
There seems to be another round of activity in the M&A arena, and we’ve been approached by some local shops about possible talks but for now it’s just conversation. We’re always open to discussion.
We would like to grow the graphics business in northern Virginia, whether we grow organically or find a company to work with or acquire remains to be seen. But there’s nothing pressing up there at the moment.
We will be celebrating our 30th anniversary in October. We want to plan an event for October 15th to celebrate, but now we’re not sure what to do because of the COVID delta variant. We don’t want people to feel uncomfortable and who knows by then if some restrictions will be reinstated so we are in a wait and see mode. If we don’t have the event in October, we’ll do a big open house at a later date when we can host a lot of people without any worries or restrictions.
APDSP: Finally, how is Charlie doing? (Charlie Hackworth, Dorothy’s husband, winner of the IRgA Bukovsky Award in 2007).
Charles: He’s doing well! Both of my parents had COVID last year, but they’ve recovered. Charlie (dad) is currently the project manager for the new Suffolk location build out. He’s still doing his thing – supervising contractors and employees during the construction and moving process. He has people running data cables and electrical lines, tearing down walls, putting up new shelves, painting and moving the furniture and equipment. We have to be out of the old office space by the end of July and open for business in the new space August 2nd. He is already asking me what project I need him to work on next……….
Dorothy: He’s been very busy – he’s coordinating all the work there. He’s making sure it’s getting done!
Historical Photos from Hackworth
