Lisa Cashwell, outside salesperson for Blueprinting Services of Virginia, holds a finished print.
By Ed Avis
David Hinckle was working for the State of Virginia right out of college in 1988 when an acquaintance told him he was having trouble finding a blueprinter to reproduce some drawings. They decided to fill that void by starting their own blueprint shop in Richmond. The would-be partner backed out, so Hinckle did it himself. Blueprinting Services of Virginia was born.
Now the company, which was built on standard AEC plan printing, has evolved into a multi-line shop with a colorful future.
Eschewing Traditions
Unlike a lot of reprographics shops owners, Hinckle didn’t grow up in the industry. But he doesn’t feel that’s been a disadvantage – without experienced family members to ask for guidance, he’s been forced to figure things out on his own. That means that some “traditions” of the industry simply don’t happen in his shop.
“I just learned as I went,” Hinckle says. “So I started doing things fairly early on that my competitors didn’t do. For example, everything for them is square feet. I don’t really count square feet. I count dollars. It doesn’t make sense to me to say, ‘We printed a million square feet this month.’ I say, ‘How much money did you make?’”
Because he’s not counting square feet, Hinckle is not hurt as badly when a client orders half-size sheets or non-standard sizes – he charges a reasonable per-sheet price that is based more on the amount of work going into the print than the amount of paper.
“It takes me just as much effort to run a half-size print as a full-size,” he notes. “The only difference is the click charge and the paper. The thing is, this simply is not the volume business it once was. The volume is not there anymore, and it’s not coming back. So you have to be paid for everything you do.”
Deep Relationships
Hinckle says he knows his prices are not the lowest in town. But he’s not interested in price wars, so he strives to provide a level of service that keeps customers returning.
“We’re not the cheapest and we don’t want to be. We really pride ourselves in our service. Our clients in most cases are also our friends,” he says, adding that he has very low staff turnover so they have developed deep client relationships. “They’ll call me on my cell phone at 10 p.m. and say, ‘I hate to bother you this late, but I have this project, can you help me out?’ I say, ‘Yeah,’ because we care about what we do.”
And Hinckle says that when mistakes happen, the shop is quick to own up and make it right. Clients are not given a run-around – problems are fixed immediately.
“I think my employees are genuinely happy to come to work, and that shows in how they deal with our clients,” he says. “Someone once told me that if you make your employees number one, they will make your clients number one. And that has held up true.”
Colorful New Markets
Those strong client relationships may help preserve the existing level of business, but since regular plan printing is not growing, Hinckle has expanded into color over the past year to bring in new revenue.
“It was really a perfect storm. We had been doing more and more color posters, using an older printer, and my leases came up so I had the opportunity to re-do everything,” he says. “So we put in a new Oce Plotwave 900 [for monochrome work] and an EFI H1625 LED wide-format printer.”
The EFI printer joined a KIP c7800 color printer that the firm already had, giving the firm a combo that can easily meet client needs in color work from color CAD drawings to full-color banners and signs.
Color CAD
On the color CAD end of the business, Hinckle says he has been receiving more work from subcontractors who are marking up drawings in color and want copies made, architects wanting to print color-filled as-builts, and other such clients.
“Color CAD is really cool. Some people appreciate it and are willing to pay for it. Others are not,” he says. “Rarely is a job 100 percent color – there are a lot of mixed sets.”
Hinckle says the ability to print color CAD relatively inexpensively with the KIP c7800 is driving the uptick in that work. His price for color CAD is half of what it was five years ago, because the improved technology allows him to produce it faster and less expensively.
Graphics
On the color graphics side, the EFI printer has provided Hinckle with capabilities he didn’t have before. For example, the printer can print on virtually any flat object up to 2 inches thick; in the first six months of operation he already has printed directly onto carpet, leather, mousepads, coasters, foamcore, and other such material.
One advantage Hinckle has found with the EFI printer is that the output does not need to be finished. Since he’s printing straight onto rigid substrates, mounting is not an issue. And the prints are guaranteed for two years without a top coat.
“Previously I hated finishing color prints,” he says. “You spend hours printing something just to completely destroy it when you laminate it. With this machine you don’t have those problems.”
Hinckle says he felt good about his investment when a client called the very day installation was completed and asked if he could do construction signage. “So right out of the chute, we had a $1,000 job we would not have had before,” he says. “The client needed the signs the next day, and we were able to help him out.”
The Power of Prints
Hinckle recently saw first-hand how well a color banner can work. He had printed a banner announcing the shop’s new color capabilities shortly after the new equipment was installed, but he didn’t find the time to install it for several months.
“We finally put it up there on the outside of our shop, and as we were hanging it up a car pulled up and the driver said, ‘Oh, you do signs. We need a banner for our church.’”
Since then two more jobs directly attributable to the banner have come in the door, Hinckle says.
While the color capabilities have brought in new revenue, Hinckle’s primary client base has remained the same – most of his color work is for the AEC clients he already knows so well. But it’s more fun doing color work, he says, even for the clients who previously just needed monochrome prints.
“I like it when a client comes in and says, ‘This looks cool.’ Nobody ever gets that excited about a blueprint!”