R.S. Knapp's diazo printers, 1965
Editor’s Note: Long-time IRgA member R.S. Knapp (aka Napco) turns 80 years old this year. In honor of that milestone, we are publishing a three-part first-person interview with Mike O’Keefe, president of the company. Part 1 lays out the basic business growth; Part 2 explores the technology that the company has succeeded with over the years; and Part 3 will look at the O’Keefe family and their involvement with IRgA.
My dad, Jim O’Keefe, started at R.S. Knapp in 1948. The company had been started by Ruth and Bob Knapp in 1946. Before he was hired, my dad had like nine jobs trying to support his family. He was driving a truck for the Herald News, he was going to school, he was basically looking for a place to find a career. He lived in Lyndhurst and R.S. Knapp at the time was just a tiny engineering supply shop, probably a thousand square feet.
My dad became a junior partner in 1950. When Bob and Ruth made him a partner, they promised him that when they decided to sell the company, he would be the first person they would talk to. But when they decided to sell in 1959, they knew my dad had nothing. So they started talking to other people about buying the company and they would send my dad out on the road so that he wasn’t there when potential buyers came in.
Pat and Jim O'Keefe
One of the potential buyers, who happened to be a vendor at the time, approached my dad and said, “Look, I’m thinking of buying this place. I just wanna make sure you’re gonna continue to work there.” And my dad’s response was, “If you buy this company, I’m gonna open up a shop next to door to you.”
So word got out that my dad would not stay, so nobody wanted to buy the company, because really at the time he was the only person doing anything. So Bob and Ruth were basically forced to sell it to my dad and he paid them off over time. My dad brought in his brother Joe O’Keefe early on and the two made a great team growing Napco for almost half a century.
My dad had a growing family at that time so he was really motivated to expand the business. Opportunity number one was getting into actual reprographics as opposed to just engineering supply. That was a big, profitable change that he made in the early ‘60s.
It was all diazo printing then, of course, but my dad always wanted to stay ahead of technology. He knew the industry was going to progress and he wanted to be at the forefront of it.
Robertson Camera, early 1970s
For example, in the early 1970s he invested in a Robertson camera, which was incredibly profitable. The Robertson was a huge piece of equipment that took up two rooms. One was the front of the camera where the picture was actually taken, and the back of the camera was in a darkroom. Having that camera made us able to produce Mylars that we could bring into the reproduction department.
A lot of the work on the Robertson was engineering reproduction, everything from civil engineering to manufacturing. Being an engineering supply shop, we always had very good relationships with engineers, and we still do. We really kept using the Robertson until things went fully digital.
In 1976 my dad opened our second office, in Edison, New Jersey, about 30 miles away. He chose the location because it is where the New Jersey Turnpike crosses over Route 287 and the Garden State Parkway, so it was a perfect location to get around the lower part of the state.
We’re the most densely populated state in the Union and most of that population is shoved up into one corner of the state that borders New York City. But as the area developed, there was a booming construction industry in the middle and southern part of New Jersey. So this location was enabled us to take advantage of that.
The next location was in Elmsford, New York. That was in 1982. My dad learned from opening the Edison office how important the location was. So he got a similar location that was next to all the major highways.
In Westchester County, where our Elmsford office is, there are a lot of mid-size architects. These were 20- or 30-man firms. So unlike our Lyndhurst office and our Edison office, where the primary revenue was coming from either engineers or general contractors, our Elmsford office was targeting architects.
About 30 years later we bought a company called Commercial Graphics. It’s a small repro shop in Ewing, New Jersey, right outside of Princeton. There are a lot of architects in that area.
Having the Ewing office also helps us when we’re trying to show a customer our coverage. We could tell people, “You're an architect in Westchester County and you need something at this New Jersey State Courthouse by 2:00 PM. We could take it from the Elmsford office, send it down to the Ewing office, have it printed and delivered to the state courthouse within an hour.”
Stay tuned for the rest of the story:
Part 2: The Technology that Fueled (and Fuels) R.S. Knapp’s success (April 3)
Part 3: The Family Behind R.S. Knapp and their Involvement with IRgA (April 17)