FL Haus Building
By Ed Avis
APDSP is all about the future of reprographics and digital technology, but the organization is deeply rooted in its history. The same can be said of its newest member, F.L. Haus Company in Pittsburgh.
“We’re a long-established reprographics company that is trying to turn it around now,” says Clem Sutton, the company’s general manager. “We’re figuring out what’s next.”
Fran Haus
Fran Haus, founder of F.L. Haus Company
The company has a long history – it was founded in 1964 by Francis Leo Haus Sr. – and it’s also located in a building that is significant to the history of reprographics in the United States. The building, which has housed F.L. Haus since the early 1970s, was previously the Pittsburgh office of Bruning Co., the famous maker of diazo equipment, blueprint paper and other reprographics materials.
“The history is that Fran Haus, our company founder, had previously worked for Bruning in this building,” Sutton says. “Then in the mid 1970s Bruning put the building up for sale, so he bought and it and moved the company here.”
F.L. Haus was a traditional reprographics firm for most of its history, and downsized during the 2008-2012 recession. The company survived those tough years by trimming costs and increasing the technical capabilities.
“We had to retool, become smarter, leaner and more efficient,” says Sutton, who has worked for the company for two decades. “Our digital planroom was one of our saving graces. We have some customers who pay us to use the planroom, and that part of the business subsidizes other parts.”
The company got into color slowly in the post-recession years. They have a Canon inkjet printer for making presentation boards and some signage, and they also have some clients who call on them to create corporate apparel. Color CAD drawings, which they create on their KIP C7800 and the HP PageWide printer, is a growing market for them.
“The color AEC drawings are growing steadily for us,” Sutton says. “I think color CAD is growing because architects and engineers are looking to cut down on the number of drawings they have to produce, and color CAD lets them do that.”
F.L. Haus is no longer a family-owned business. The last Haus family member, Fran Haus, sold the company to a group of investors about six weeks ago. With the new ownership, Sutton says the company is picking up momentum and hoping to grow.
“We’re trying to formulate our growth plan now,” Sutton says. “The construction industry in Pittsburgh is booming, and business has been on the uptick, so we’re looking to expand and growing again. But we want to make sure we’re taking the right steps.”