Matt, Sheila and Rick Elliott
By Ed Avis
When Matt Elliott joined his family’s reprographics firm in Pittsford, NY, in 2002, he knew it was the right place for him to be. He had helped out at the company since he was 10, so the environment was familiar to him. But more important, he felt he was carrying on his grandfather’s legacy.
“I had a really good relationship with my grandfather, I really looked up to him,” Matt says, referring to Raymond Elliott, who opened the firm, Rotolite-Elliott, in 1970. “And I felt strongly that this is where I needed to be. I could never in a million years imagine this place being sold out of the family.”
Within the next couple of years, if all goes as planned, Matt will take over the company. His parents, Rick and Sheila Elliott, plan to retire and put Matt in charge.
“Our plan is for me to give Matt my shares of the company and he’ll buy us out in a couple of years when we’re ready to go,” Rick says. “We’re gearing towards 2020.”
48 Years and Counting
Raymond Elliott was the vice president of HH Sullivan, a blueprint firm in nearby Rochester, NY, when he decided to go out on his own. He became a dealer for Rotolite blue print machines and worked out of the basement of the family’s home in Brighton, NY. Soon he added other familiar brands to his stable, including K&E, Staedtler Mars, and Azon.
“He named the company Rotolite-Elliott because he figured back in the day that way more people knew the Rotolite name than Elliott,” Rick says. Even though Rotolite itself is long gone now, the Elliotts have kept the name.
Before the year was out, Raymond outgrew his basement and decided to move the business to bigger digs. A friend of his owned a large building in Pittsford, which is outside of Rochester, that previously housed a pickle factory. The friend rented 5,000 square feet of the space to Raymond for $50 a month – and today the company is still there!
“We’ve been in the same location for 48 years,” Rick says. “It’s a great town, and very close to home for everybody. We also have a large loading dock, which is hard to find in a suburban area. Even though we’re not on a main road where people can easily see us, we’ve been here so long that everyone knows where we are.”
Going Repro
For the first six years in business, Rotolite-Elliott was just a dealership. But in 1976, Rick decided to join his father’s company, and adding reprographics seemed like a good move.
“I was 22 in 1976 when I started,” Rick says. “I had just graduated from Alfred University, and had painted houses for the summer before I joined the company. I started the reprographics part of the business. We bought a Bruning ammonia machine, and then an 8.5 x 11 copier. My father said, ‘Give it six months and see what happens.’”
That six months passed quickly. Rick grew the business and added new equipment and many new clients, all in the AEC community. He had married his college sweetheart before joining his dad, and his wife, Sheila, joined him at Rotolite-Elliott in 1982.
“I came in with no knowledge of reprographics whatsoever,” Sheila says. “I was answering phones, processing orders, helping run the office. Our daughter was 5 and Matt was 2 at that time, so I worked until 2:45 each day and then picked up the kids.”
Eventually Sheila became a full-time employee and helped the business continue to grow. When Raymond passed away in 1994, Rick and Sheila bought the company and have owned it ever since.
Surviving the Recession
Like most reprographics firms, Rotolite-Elliott suffered when the recession hit in 2008. A new competitor had entered the market in 2006 and forced the price of prints down to 2 cents per square foot, which was 3 cents less than the lowest price Rotolite-Elliott offered 30 years earlier!
“It was really difficult,” Rick remembers. “Sheila and I are flexible with our pay, so we cut it or didn’t take it. But we continued to get work and kept the machines running.”
Fortunately, the State of New York requires that each bidder on a state project has a complete paper set of the drawings for that project, which means bid sets remained a good business throughout the recession, and beyond.
Rick says business was slow for six years in the Rochester area, but eventually the cranes returned and his AEC clients – who are still the company’s bread and butter – became busy again.
Another challenge presented itself during that time: A competitor that was a certified Women’s Business Enterprise began getting jobs that Rotolite-Elliott previously would have received.
“Our customers would call and say, ‘We got this job and 20 percent needs to be done by a minority business,’ and we couldn’t do it,” Rick says. “We finally said, ‘This is ridiculous,’ and we made the change. Now Sheila owns the majority of the company.”
Diving Into Color
The company began offering color printing during the recession, and today color work is an important part of their business mix. They use a mix of Canon/Océ, Konica, and HP color printers. Their client mix hasn’t changed much, though – even the color work is primarily done for AEC clients.
“We still do a lot of work for the state and school districts, the University of Rochester, and a lot of architects and engineers,” Rick says.
Recently the company added an HP PageWide 8000 to their line-up.
“We’ve done probably 3 million square feet on the PageWide since the beginning of the year,” Matt says. “The majority is color CAD, and we have some full-color renderings and other stuff like that. We’ve kept the Océ Colorwave for posters and because of its intense color and because it can print on heavy stock. But 90 percent of our color is on the HP.”
The next big addition to their color department will be an Océ Arizona 350 GT flatbed printer, which can print directly to foam core and other heavy substrates. The Elliotts opted to buy a refurbished Arizona instead of a new one, which saved them substantial money but means they need to wait until one becomes available. Matt says they expect the Arizona to arrive in the next month or so.
“We wanted to get the Arizona to expand what we can do,” Rick says.
With the new color equipment, Rotolite-Elliott will be ready to grow in the coming years as Matt takes over the business.
Next Generation
Matt, who is the company’s vice president, has experience running every part of the business, from handling accounting to operating equipment to answering the phones. At age 37 and with 16 years at the company, he feels prepared to run the business.
“I have my hands in everything,” he says. “There’s still plenty I need to learn, but I’m ready to take over. I’m a little nervous, but I’m ready to steer the ship and hopefully be as successful as my parents and grandparents.”