Freeform CEO Aaron Fekete, left, Julie and Gary Crisp of Crisp Imaging, and Brian Ingersol, Freeform’s chief sales officer.
We published a lot of articles in the past year, and the APDSP site was visited over 41,000 times in 2018. Here are the eight most popular articles published last year, based on Google Analytics:
1. Crisp Imaging Rising
Many people feel reprographics is a slowing industry. Gary Crisp is not one of those people.
Crisp, president of APDSP member firm Crisp Imaging in Costa Mesa, California, is bullish on his business’ future. He sees growth not only in new market areas, but also new geographic areas.
“This is a terrific industry, we see enormous opportunity,” says Crisp, whose company was called C2 Imaging until a name change last July. “It’s a rapidly changing industry. In many cases, you see less printing in reprographics, but you see more use of technology, and the equipment is more advanced and more precise. And the large format color market is definitely growing. We’re very optimistic about the industry and our place within it.”
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2. Cough, Cough, Cough….Three Easy Tips for Better Sales Calls
You probably encounter this situation every day: You reach a new prospect on the phone, he dodges your questions, then hangs up as quickly as he can. Or a call comes into your shop, the caller nervously asks your prices, and then says “Maybe I’ll call back later.”
The solution? A simple “cough, cough, cough…pardon me….I think I caught a little bug while I was walking the dog this weekend.”
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3. Obituary: Todd Sparks, Brother of Riley's Owner Wade Sparks
APDSP is sad to learn of the passing of Todd Sparks, brother of Wade Sparks, owner of Rileys, a reprographics firm based in Calgary, AB that has 20 locations in Canada and the United States.
4. New APDSP Member is Leading the Way in Signage
Many reprographics shops have found large-format digital color printing profitable. New APDSP member Tri-State Signs and Reprographics has taken that technology a big step further: The company is a growing player in the sign business in Pittsburgh.
“We started with things like wall graphics, window films, and presentation boards,” says George Marshall, the company’s CEO. “And in the last two or three years we’ve gotten involved in more traditional signage as well – channel letters, dimensional letters, illuminated cabinets, and digital LED signs. That is a whole different animal.”
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5. Blain Topel Moves West for Crisp Imaging
Blain Topel, former co-owner of Topel Blueprinting and vice president of ABC Imaging, has joined Crisp Imaging in Southern California as senior vice president. Topel joined the company in January.
“I’m a Midwest boy who has lived on the East Coast most of my life, and Southern California was not someplace I had ever wanted to move to,” says Topel, who was born in Iowa and moved to Washington DC when he was in junior high. “But I knew Gary Crisp (the owner of Crisp Imaging), and we met in December and talked about what his company was doing and it seemed like a good fit. To my wife Dawn’s credit, she said ‘Let’s do it.’”
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6. Five Tips for Increasing Your Scanning Productivity
The webinar this week about scanning markets (click here to view the recording) got a lot of APDSP members thinking about making more money from scanning. But another side of that situation is that making your scanning department more efficient also can improve profits.
And here’s the thing: While scanner speed is important, just having a faster scanner doesn’t necessarily mean you’ll have a more efficient scanning department.
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7. The Bottom Line On Salespeople’s Excuses
This is the third and final installment in my little series on the kind of excuses I hear from underperforming salespeople (Click here to read the first and second articles in this series). Today’s example is the salesperson who would be doing much better if the printing company had greater capabilities. “There’s so much work out there that we just can’t produce,” is the excuse I hear.
“So you can’t sell wide-format work which you’re perfectly equipped for,” I respond, “but you could sell four-color offset or some other kind of work if you had the equipment. Is that what you’re telling me?” The salespeople don’t always see the contradiction, but I hope you will.
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8. Pivot Point: Springfield Repro Grows by Acquisition
Growth in the reprographics business can be tough to find these days. Steve Wakefield, owner of APDSP member Springfield Reprographics in Springfield, Illinois, is expanding his business the way big Wall Street firms sometimes do: by acquiring related businesses.
“We’d rather have some organic growth as well, but traditional reprographics is not growing well,” Wakefield says. “I read a magazine article a number of years ago that said when your core business is not what it should be, you should pivot to something that works. I feel like that’s what we’ve done.”
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