By Ed Avis
Joe Williamson doesn’t chase print jobs for his firm, Franklin Imaging in Columbus, Ohio. That’s not to say he doesn’t pursue work for the company — he is a salesman through and through. But single-order jobs just don’t interest him. What he seeks are long-term streams of income.
“I’m not going to chase an order. What I want is a revenue stream,” Williamson says. “If a stream of revenue is not available, I don’t care if I don’t get the job.”
That focus on sustainable clients rather than one-off projects is part of the reason Franklin has thrived in the 17 years Williamson has owned the company. Other reasons include a willingness to invest in new technology, and perhaps most important, a belief in the value of a family-owned reprographics firm.
“I’m a big supporter of family-owned businesses,” says Williamson, whose son and daughter both work at the firm. “It’s great working with my children. They’re pretty bright kids - they’ve proven themselves.”
Starting in a Different Era
Williamson, who joined the IRgA Board of Directors in September to fill a vacancy, didn’t know a thing about blueprinting when he met a Bruning recruiter during his senior year at the University of Akron in 1974. He was looking for a sales job, and Bruning’s offer seemed the best.
Joe Williamson
“It was all new to me,” he remembers. But after eight years as a sales rep for Bruning he knew enough about the business that he wanted to get more directly involved. One of his best customers, AA Blueprint in Akron, hired him as sales director.
The 25 years he spent with AA were among the most tumultuous in the history of the business.
“Back then we were doing mountains of wash-off mylars, diazo printing, offset printing, high speed copying, all the traditional things that reprographers used to do,” Williamson says.
But the analog era was fading fast. “We went from using traditional Bruning diazo equipment, to Meteor-Siegen automated blueprint machines, and finally into the Oce 9800s. And on the small-format side, we migrated from Multigraphic presses for spec books into Xerox Docutechs.”
While many in the business lamented the move from analog to digital and its accompanying new equipment costs, the transition was not difficult for AA Blueprint.
“AA was always the first one in town to move into new technology,” Williamson says. “We had tons of business and the 9800s were more efficient and faster. Our equipment costs were way higher, but our labor costs were way lower. There was no problem with the transition.”
Plain paper was new enough at the time that AA could still get a premium for that work, even at production levels, Williamson remembers. “We raised our prices and in those days we could get away with it,” he says.
Becoming an Owner
In 1998 Williamson was ready for a new challenge. And his boss, the owner of AA Blueprint, John Scalia, wanted to expand. So together they bought two blueprint firms in Columbus, Ohio, Franklin Blueprint and Supply and Professional Reprographics.
“We were pretty much king of the hill in Akron, and we needed more places to do business. Plus I wanted to be involved in ownership,” Williamson says.
The two men soon combined Franklin and Professional and created Franklin Imaging. They invested in new technology to bring the firm up to modern levels.
“We brought the company into the digital age. We replaced the diazo equipment with 9800s and brought our Oce dealership with us,” he says. “And we got quite involved in document management and scanning and things like that.”
Several years into the new operation Williamson bought Scalia out and became the sole owner. Doing so fulfilled a long-term goal of his to become owner of his own firm.
Family ownership is important to Williamson.
His daughter, Emily Castle, joined the executive team of the company after earning her master’s degree in business from The Ohio State University in 2003. She had worked for Franklin since it began in 1998, and she rose up the executive ranks once she graduated. She is now president and majority owner of the company.
Williamson’s son, Joe Jr., worked for the company for several years, but left for a while to open a branch of HONBLUE in Maui, Hawaii. “He ran that for five or six years and then moved back here,” Williamson says. “I think he missed his family. That’s a hike from Columbus to Hawaii.”
Joe Jr. is now in charge of business development for the AEC side of the business.
“The three of us get together once a week and discuss what we’re doing and how we’re doing it,” Williamson says. “We don’t always agree, but we all have a voice.”
Emily has five children, and Williamson says he can envision a day when the next generation takes over.
“The oldest will be 13, and she pops in from time to time,” Williamson says. “It wouldn’t surprise me if she didn’t show up on the payroll one day.”
Surviving the Recession
Like most reprographics firms, Franklin Imaging took a serious hit when the housing market collapsed in 2008. But Williamson had an edge over many other firm owners — he had visited scores of successful repro firms around the country as a consultant for ReproMAX, so he had a good idea of what made them strong.
“In those years leading up to 2008 I was consulting for ReproMAX on the DFS Planroom,”
Williamson remembers. “So I had the advantage of visiting just about every ReproMAX shop in the country, and I was seeing what was working and what was not working. I noticed that the successful companies were transitioning into color graphics before the buzz started about that.”
So when Williamson decided to focus on his own firm again just before the 2008 crash, he knew the path to take.
“We jumped into color with both feet while everything else was crashing around us,” he says. “I told Emily to get us a flatbed printer, a roll-to-roll printer, a Zund cutter, and a Seal laminator – we bought all that in one fell swoop. And we have been in the color business ever since.”
Since then the firm has added wider inkjet printers, a liquid laminator, a second direct-to-substrate printer, and a second Zund cutter.
The company prints color graphics for a variety of clients, including local universities and various construction firms, but its mainstay is the corporate and retail market. One way it has tapped that market is by operating an online system that makes it easy for franchisees to buy the printed collateral they need for signage and other marketing.
“We got into that franchise business right from the get-go,” Williamson says. “We host the storefronts for the franchises, and franchisees can go online and order the collaterals they need. We bill either the corporate headquarters or the franchisee.”
And that leads back to Williamson’s focus on streams of revenue. In addition to regular clients for color graphics, Franklin has retained a core business in the AEC field by developing a strong on-site services component.
“Our philosophy is we look for recurring revenue,” he says. “With the franchise business and on-site services, that’s what we get.”
What does the future hold for Franklin Imaging? More of the same, Williamson predicts.
“We’re going to continue doing what has brought us success to this point,” he says. “We’re going to grow color and on-site services, and we’re going to do what we think we need to do make that happen.”