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By Ed Avis
When the Great Recession hammered the construction business a few years ago, many reprographics firms felt the pain. Builders had little work, so they had little need for reprographics services. The result: Many repro firms couldn’t pay their bills and had to cut back or shut their doors.
Allen Campbell, who owns Hub City Blueprint in Jackson, Tennessee, and two other repro firms, avoided that fate, but not because he was lucky. He was prepared.
“We saw the recession coming,” Campbell says. “There was a big bubble out there, and we knew it had to burst sooner or later. So we made sure all our bills were paid, and we paid cash for any equipment we bought.”
Campbell also worked closely with his customers when they were unable to pay the money they owed him. “A lot of firms we dealt with got hurt, and that hurt us. We had to re-write a lot of contracts. But we felt re-writing the contracts was the right thing to do – it’s always good to treat people the way you want to be treated.”
Treating his customers right paid off. Now Campbell’s business at Hub City, TechPlus in Memphis, and Paducah Blueprint in Paducah, Kentucky has stabilized.
“Allen is a great money manager,” asserts Clint Murchison, general manager of Campbell’s firms. “The biggest thing we did was not over-extend ourselves.”
Years of Growth
Campbell got his start in blueprinting working for the company his father, grandfather, and uncle started in the early 1950s, Campbell Blueprint. In 1973, unable to get work with his new electrical engineering degree, Campbell decided to become a blueprint shop owner himself. With help from his family, he bought Hub City Blueprint from William Only, who subsequently made a fortune in the skating rink business in Florida.
Hub City succeeded under Campbell’s guidance, and 15 years later he decided to expand the business.
“I was bored, and I wanted a challenge,” he remembers. He started Paducah Blueprint to provide that challenge. “Paducah was a neat little town, and it had a high per capita income. There was a small blueprinter already there, but we were much more into supplies at that time. We had the K&E and Azon distributorship. Printing was almost a sideline for us, so we didn’t really go after his printing.”
Campbell’s itch to expand started again in the early 1990s, and led him to open TechPlus in Memphis in 1995.
“We were doing a good bit of business in Memphis from Hub City, which is about an hour away,” recalls Murchison, who had joined the company two years earlier. “So we saw a need in Memphis for what we did, and decided to open a full-fledged shop there.”
There is plenty of competition in Memphis; how did TechPlus gain a foothold? “The service we offered was above and beyond what they were used to, and the quality of work we did was higher,” Murchison says. “And we sold and serviced KIP equipment, and still do, and there was a big need in this area at that time.”
Family Business
Murchison, who is slated to join the IRgA board of directors in September, rose in the ranks at Campbell’s firms after starting in the service department, eventually becoming general manager. In 1994 he became a part of the family when he married Campbell’s daughter, Sara Beth, who is a school teacher.
“Clint is one of the most intelligent people I know,” Campbell says of his son-in-law.
Colorful Future
Like most reprographics firms, Hub City and its two siblings have seen the monochrome AEC business shrink in recent years. To compensate they have dived into color.
“We definitely like color – it’s fun, it’s something different,” Campbell says. “We really got into it heavily back in October 2013.”
The company’s color equipment is spread among the three locations. They have a mix of Océ Arizona 660 flatbed printers, Mimaki solvent inkjet printers, and Zund 2500 sign routers. They laminate with a Royal Sovereign laminator.
“So we have some redundancy,” Murchison says.
So far, the company primarily has focused its color work on its existing AEC clients, producing job site signage, wayfinding signage, and other color projects that those clients either were not producing before or were sourcing from sign businesses.
However, Campbell and Murchison realize the market is broad beyond AEC, when they’re ready for it.
“With the quality of the equipment we bought, it’s hard to beat the quality of our production,” Murchison says. “And we don’t run the least expensive stuff – we’re not the cheap banner guys. We make sure the timelines are met, and we make sure it’s done right.”
Being Selective
The idea of not being “the cheap banner guys” is an important concept that keeps the three companies profitable. They don’t take work just to fill the printers – they are aware of margins.
“There are some customers who just want it cheap, but that’s not the kind of customers we’re looking for,” Murchison says.
Campbell concurs: “You have to cherry pick the jobs. You can stay as busy as you want and not make any money.”
The three firms employ 21 people today, and those employees are another important ingredient in the firms’ success, Murchison says. “We want our employees to take pride in their work and do the best they can. And we compensate them for that – when profits are good, we share that with employees.”