Harry Tehan, III
Harry Tehan is the third-generation owner of Tehan & Co.
By Ed Avis
Do you want to own a piece of reprographics history, and possibly make some money, too? Tehan & Co., the venerable reprographics distributor in the Southeast, is celebrating its 100th birthday in 2016. Part of the celebration may be a sale of stock in the company, according to Harry Tehan, the firm’s president.
“I haven’t put a dollar number on the stock yet,” Tehan says. “I need our accountant to give us some assistance there. But I want it to be affordable for the average reprographer and sign company to get in, so they can get a piece of history and a growing viable company. There are a lot of advantages in doing that.”
Owning a piece of Tehan & Co. would give an investor a true connection to reprographics history, stretching back to pre-diazo blueprints, through the Rapidograph pen era, all the way to big color. But Tehan’s pitch is not just nostalgia – he serves 2,000 customers across Canada and the United States and is a major supplier of refurbished laminator rollers.
“Buyers of the stock would get a name that’s well known in this industry, plus a unique business that can grow as it has more capital,” Tehan says.
Starting With Pencils
Tehan’s grandfather, Harry Tehan Sr., founded Tehan & Co in 1916. His father, Harry Jr., took over in 1937. Harry III joined the company right out of college in 1957. In those days architects made drawings with pencil on linen or vellum, and Tehan sold Koh-I-Noor pencils in 17 degrees of hardness. “A big sale for me was 100 gross, which netted out to about $500. I made $50,” Tehan wrote in a company history.
But the pencil era – which Tehan says was his favorite decade in the industry – began to fade when the Rapidograph pen took hold in the mid 1960s. The use of ink coincided with the rise of the K&E microfilm camera, which reduced an E-size drawing to the size of a postage stamp. When someone needed a full-size print, the microfilm image could be “blown” back up to full size and printed. The catch for the pencil industry was that original drawings in ink resulted in much better microfilm images.
Selling the pens was good business for Tehan & Co. They sold for $2.95 a piece, way more than pencils. Koh-I-Noor, which owned Rapidograph, developed a sales program called the “Rapidograph Seminar,” which taught architects and engineers the value of pen and ink drawings.
“It was not too long before they switched from pencil to pen,” Tehan says. “Then all the repro dealers had to carry rolls of mylar and Rapidograph pens. In other words, I created the market for them, and the consumers had to buy from the blueprinter. They made a lot of money!”
Of course, Tehan & Co made a lot of money, too. Sales topped $1 million a year by the late 1960s, and before long climbed to $5 million.
Other profitable products followed. The Hewlett-Packard handheld calculator, which cost $500 when it was introduced in 1972, soon replaced slide rules. The Rapidoplot pen took off when plotting replaced hand drawing. Flat files were another big seller, since plotting just increased the numbers of drawings requiring storage.
Not All Good Times
There were setbacks over the years, too. In the early 1980s Koh-I-Noor was acquired and the new owners replaced reps with company salesman. Tehan responded by signing with Mars, Koh-I-Noor’s biggest competitor, and snagged 40 percent of Koh-I-Noor’s market the first year.
A bigger blow came when Office Depot, Staples, and Office Max began building megastores in the mid-1980s. Tehan’s sales of drafting and office chairs was wiped out within five years.
Around that time Harry’s wife passed away. In 1985, after more than a quarter century in the business, Harry needed a break.
“I bought a home in the Bahamas and moved there,” he recalls. “But I got pretty bored, and after about six months I came back to work. Then I probably worked harder and longer than I did before.”
Laminators Roll Onto the Scene
Not long after Tehan returned to the helm of his company, a major change occurred: Digital large-format color hit the market. Tehan saw an Orca laminator at an IRgA convention; when Orca sold 10 of them right off the show floor, he knew there was a market for them.
An important advantage to selling laminators was the supplies sales that accompanied them. Three years after placing their first laminator, Tehan was selling $1 million per year in film.
When less expensive imported laminators began affecting the U.S. market in the ‘90s, Tehan adapted again: He started refurbishing laminator rollers and selling them as replacement rollers, especially for older machines that were no longer serviced by the manufacturers.
“We have a sister vendor that refurbishes silicone rollers,” he says. “It’s a very specialized field. The old roller has to be stripped, baked, lathed, and polished, all done to the manufacturer’s specs. It’s a very sophisticated process.”
Tehan takes worn rollers from customers and sells them refurbished rollers in return. This provides a steady stream of raw material for the refurbishing business, and has made Tehan an important player in that segment of the business.
“All of our rollers are guaranteed to be up to manufacturers’ specs, and we’ve never had a return,” he says.
Retiring Again
Tehan defeated cancer last year, but his 80th birthday is approaching and he feels it’s time to move on to a different stage in life.
“I’ve been in this industry 58 years,” he notes. “These days I deal with the children and grandchildren of my original customers.”
He sees the stock sale as a prelude to his eventual retirement. He believes the new owners will form a new board of directors, who will chart the future of the company. His daughter Colleen is an executive vice president at Tehan & Co., and Harry feels she could take over if the new board of directors asked her to do so. Or if they want someone else, he is prepared to stay on and train that person.
“I will talk to anyone interested in owning stock in the company,” he asserts. “I think people like the idea of a company owned by its customers. That way they own a piece of their supplier, and they might profit from preferred pricing. And the potential for growth in this recovering economy is good.”
When Tehan finally hands over control of his company, it will be a bittersweet moment. His name is virtually synonymous with reprographics equipment and supplies in the Southeast.
“My hope is that some of my major customers will own my company and will preserve it into the next generation,” he says.
To reach Harry, email him by clicking here: Harry.tehan@comcast.net.