Dom Iorfino and his wife, Kristy Selleck
Dom Iorfino, owner of HB Digital in Huntington Beach, California, is running for a seat on the IRgA Board. He became a partner in the company in 1991 and took over about five years later. We asked him some questions.
How did you get involved with HB?
I was working as the art director for a silkscreen company. And back then, in the late eighties and early nineties, HB Blueprint started doing film output for type setters. They were one of my vendors, so we became friends. When they told me they were going to close the shop, I convinced them to take me on as a partner instead of closing the shop for a year. If we can turn the company around in a year, great. We'll continue moving forward. And if we can't, then you just close it. A year later we were profitable.
Why did you think you could turn it around?
Because it was a diamond in the rough. The owner was getting to the retire, but her son was a real genius, he was really diving into what back then was cutting edge technology. Pretty impressive stuff. Fast forward to 1995. The owner retired and I brought my wife, Kristy Selleck, to be our CFO, because she had been in the hospital arena and was very organized. In 1996, the previous owner’s son and I split the business. He went into web design and I took the bricks-and-mortar reprographics and graphics business.
Were you still running diazo machines then?
We stopped using diazo in about 1997 and went completely digital. We also started to increase our graphic and graphic design footprint. Our first digital machines were Canons.
What were some other turning points in your business?
In 2009 or 2010 we acquired a print shop. You know, how do you build your client base? You can either go out and sell -- and we're lousy at that, to be honest with you, but we're pretty good about keeping clients happy. So we bought a print shop from an owner who was getting ready to retire. We picked up those clients and one of their designers. And then, a few years after that, we bought a sign shop that was also doing surprisingly, CD duplicating.
What equipment did the sign shop have?
So they were doing silk screening. They also were using CNC machines, table saws, you know, the typical sign business stuff. So again, I bought them primarily for their client list some of their equipment. Eventually we migrated everything away from silk screening.
With our CNC machines, we're cutting out shapes, backdrops, signs for trade shows, making weird furniture for trade shows, things like that. We recently bought a DCS (Direct Color Systems) for braille. I like the DCS because not only can I do braille, but I can also do swag, print on cups, print on other things.
I see on your website that you do a lot of work for trade shows. How did you get into that field?
Our tagline is, “We are building graphics.” When I say that, I literally mean we build graphics for anybody and everybody, and our primary focus is on graphics that are needed for a building. So it's a double entendre. With the trade shows, we have customers who have been coming to us for years, and we'll do their brochures, we'll print their business cards, we'll put the graphics on their vehicles. We'll do their lobby sign, and if they're doing a trade show, we like to be the first person they call to see if we can handle it for 'em or not. So there is no job that we like to turn away.
How many employees do you have?
There's 11 of us, not very many. And we have 10,000 square feet of space.
Is your space where you were 30 years ago, or have you moved?
No. We had the same location for 50-plus years. And then when I bought the sign shop, I obviously needed more space. So we moved into another facility up the road, and we were running both facilities. So I had 10,000 square feet up here, and 3,600 square feet at the other location. COVID hit and my walk-in business went to close to zero. We had already eliminated silk screening, so I consolidated everybody. So we are now at a new location, not the original one we started at.
What else changed for you during COVID?
Pre COVID we were printing lots and lots of paper, making everybody happy. Everything was going great. When COVID happened, all of our local municipalities changed. They changed overnight to digital. So what we thought might be a three to five year slope in sales turned into a three month slope.
Also during COVID we started to dive into the invitation business because we noticed that people were doing a lot of things online. But if they were getting married or had a special event, they were looking to generate a little bit more interaction with people. And one way for people to interact is to actually get a letter or an invitation, even if the gathering wasn't to happen
And then the other thing we noticed is because, and this happens all the time, every downturn in economy, our graphics and printing goes up. Because when business is slow, what do people do? They start marketing and selling. So that's when we see people coming in, ‘Hey, I'd like more signs at my construction site. I need a brochure. My crew's gonna be in a specific area. I wanna market to this neighborhood,’ you know, whatever it might be. So whenever things slow down, our design and print goes up. Strange, right?
How is your traditional reprographics work these days?
Our reprographics work has tanked, so to speak. But we still have contractors and techs come in, and we use that to push other things. So for example I have a client that we do their business cards, we do their brochures. We put graphics on their trucks when they're developing a new property. We do the brochures for the new property. We put the signs out on the property. You know, those big 8 by 16 foot signs that say, ‘Coming soon.’ We do all of that stuff when the property's being built, we'll do the numbering for the house, whatever signage they might require.
You know, the business is weird. There's no rhyme or reason as to why things happen, but we've been around for quite a while. Maybe a little bit more chicken on the plate than steaks on occasion! But more importantly, I think we're forever evolving.
For example, last Christmas, we had a Realtor come to us and say, ‘We want a special giveaway.’ So I had a nice conversation with the Realtor. She loves food and charcuterie boards, so we made cutting boards for them. We just bought raw live edge stock. We have the table saws from the sign shop. So we cut it down, and then lasered her logo into these beautiful live edge boards. And she had this phenomenal, one-of-a-kind gift to give away to the people who own these 2 and 3 and $4 million homes in the area.
Why do you want to join the IRgA Board?
I've always been involved. My passion is small businesses. And I think people forget that small businesses are vitally important to the fabric of our society in general. And after I met with other IRgA members at the workshop in DC, I realized most of the reprographers are small businesses like myself. And I think sometimes when we're looking at a computer screen, our world becomes focused on just that little rectangular piece of digital information in front of us. But there's so much more potential to what we do as an industry. And if I can share some of my thoughts to help spur our industry forward, I think that's great.
The election for the IRgA Board will be during the board's regularly scheduled Zoom meeting on December 3 at noon Eastern. If you would like to attend, email Ed Avis at ed.avis@irga.com and he'll send you the Zoom link.