John Lipari
John Lipari
By Ed Avis
In 2001, a handful of John Lipari’s college buddies decided they didn’t like the cold weather of the Northeast and moved south to cities like Charlotte and Orlando. Lipari, who was already working for his father’s reprographics firm, Plan & Print Systems in Syracuse, NY, thought he might want to live in a warmer climate, too. So he visited his friends and checked out the reprographics scene in those cities.
“But I realized, ‘Why go work for somebody else when I can work for myself?’” Lipari says today. “So after visiting those places I came home and expressed an interest in buying Plan & Print. My dad was going on 65.”
Lipari’s father said yes, and John and his brother Frank Jr. shortly took over the business. Lipari, who was elected to the APDSP Board of Directors in early August, has been at the helm ever since.
Started as a Division
Frank Lipari, Sr. with employee Sean McGinn
John’s father Frank learned the reprographics business during a career with Syracuse Blueprint, Océ and GAF during the 1960s and ‘70s. But by the end of the ‘70s he was ready for a change.
“My father became disenchanted with corporate America, so he started the reprographics division for a local commercial printing company,” Lipari says. “But the owner knew nothing about reprographics, so eventually he said, ‘Why don’t you buy it from me?’”
Frank did just that in 1982, and Plan & Print Systems was born. “At the time there was just him and one other employee,” John says. “They had a camera department, two diazo machines and 1,500 square feet of office and production space.”
The company grew quickly, and within a decade the commercial printing company had moved out of the building and Plan & Print Systems occupied the entire 5,000 square feet.
John Joins the Firm
John got his start at the firm while he was in his late teens. He ran prints, made deliveries and handled other such tasks. “My first memories are when I was 17, in 1983, making mylars,” he says. “I wanted to work. I needed money. Beer wasn’t free back then.”
Lipari studied at the State University of New York-Cortland, but continued working for his father’s firm in the summers. After graduating, he taught history to special education students for one school year, and in June 1991 returned to Plan & Print Systems. But instead of running prints, his father made him an outside salesperson. He liked it.
“Within two weeks I had some immediate success,” Lipari says. “I remember walking into a GC’s office and the woman there needed multiple sets of sepias to give to her subcontractors. That’s when I started to see the information flow in the construction industry.”
Learning how information flowed in the construction industry, and the role a reprographics firm could play in that flow, has been a key aspect of Lipari’s career ever since. After that summer in outside sales, he decided to stay at Plan & Print Systems rather than return to teaching. Over the next few years he oversaw the firm’s transition from traditional reprographics to digital. They invested in a Xerox 8855 system with PlotWorks software, which led them to the realization that document management system would be valuable.
“We got a program called Falcon TSA, which was basically a full-blown document management system,” he remembers. “And we had a planroom called e-Prints Online. We had a lot of success with that.”
That was in 2001, which brings us back to the beginning of this story. Lipari and his younger brother Frank Jr., who had joined the company in 1998, decided to buy the firm from their father. They closed the deal in January 2002.
Expansion
Folding Machine
Tony Militano, Susan Heffernan, and John Lipari listen to Michael Irmschler describe his company's folding machine. Irmschler is owner of Irmschler GmbH in Frankfort, Germany. This photo was taken during an APDSP visit to Germany in 2018.
The brothers quickly made some changes to expand the business.
“In 2003 we became a KIP dealer and started servicing and selling toner-based and inkjet devices,” Lipari says. “It allowed us to expand into FMs, and allowed us to become self-servicing internally, big money savings there.”
The company’s document management business also grew, and in 2006 they switched to PlanWell for their online planroom. “We still use PlanWell,” Lipari notes. “We’re one of the few non-ARC companies still using it.”
Color printing had been part of Plan & Print’s business since the mid-1990s, when they owned a CalComp electrostatic printer, but they made a big jump in 2015 by getting into eco-solvent printing with a Roland. They do technical color, such as CAD and renderings, trade show exhibits, as well as fine art reproduction. Contex and Image Access scanners facilitate that work.
Another important move occurred in 2017, when the company bought a Konica Minolta dealership in central New York. That helped establish Plan & Print in business equipment sales. The dealership operates under Plan & Print with a service office in Oneida, NY. They sell and service copiers for clients from Syracuse to Albany.
Surviving COVID
Steve Andrikut and John Lipari at the 2018 APDSP Annual Convention.
COVID has affected Plan & Print like most repro firms, especially because New York State is currently not spending money on building projects, Lipari says. “I was told by our two largest architecture customers that none of the state departments are accepting new projects right now,” he says. “We were not affected in March, April, May and June, but now it’s different.”
The company has enjoyed some success with COVID signage, such as floor graphics and safety signs. And Lipari says they hope to get into technology designed to help companies safely bring employees back, such as contactless temperature taking equipment.
Investing in COVID-related opportunities shows that even 19 years after making the decision not to move south, Lipari is still innovating. By staying on top of technology, he keeps Plan & Print moving forward.