Springfield Reprographics
By Ed Avis
A century is a long time for a company to stay in business. That’s especially true for a reprographics firm, since the industry has fundamentally changed several times over the decades.
But this year Springfield Reprographics in Illinois achieved the century mark.
“Even through the tough times, our customer service, just the friendliness of the people behind the counter, has been one reason we’ve survived,” says Steve Wakefield, the company’s owner. “The bigger reason for making it this long has been a willingness to change and adapt. Pivoting when necessary.”
Lincoln Connection
Springfield is home to the Abraham Lincoln Museum and is loaded with Lincoln-related historic sites. It’s fitting then that Springfield Reprographics got its start in 1920 (then it was called Springfield Blueprint) on the third floor of the Lincoln-Herndon Law Office in downtown Springfield.
The company was founded by George Hanes, whose father owned a construction business in town. His brothers were an architect and an engineer, respectively, so Hanes started the blueprint firm to fit into the family business.
“The story is that he drank the profits, so the family turned it over to another family member,” Wakefield says. That family member, Bill Shaver, hired Wakefield’s father-in-law, Gene Hanson, when he returned from World War II in 1946. “Bill Shaver ran the company until he retired in 1969 and my father-in-law took it over.”
A Successful Sales Call
Wakefield himself entered the picture in 1981. He was an insurance salesman and paid a call on Hanson’s daughter, Trudy. They soon married.
“She was an only child and her dad was getting close to retirement,” Wakefield says. “Selling insurance really wasn’t for me, so I thought I’d give this a shot and see how it goes. Five of my 6 uncles ran businesses of their own, it was in the blood of the family. So giving the blueprint/repro business a chance seemed natural. It fit, and it stuck.”
Wakefield learned at his father-in-law’s side until Hanson turned over the business to him in 1985. The company was 100 percent diazo at the time, plus sales of drafting supplies. One of Wakefield’s first moves as the boss was to invest in a photocopier in 1986, and a couple of years later he bought a large-format Dietzgen xerographic copier.
Things were moving along well for the business until they moved into a larger space in the early 1990s. Their expenses climbed, business failed to keep up, and eventually Wakefield decided the best move was to sell. In 2000 he found a buyer, who kept Wakefield on the team. That owner sold the business again in the 2004, but again Wakefield stayed.
“That second new owner and I worked to build a better reputation for the company,” Wakefield explains. “That started us on the upswing. We started selling more to the major players in town, and eventually we got all the major general and mep contractors.”
A New Start
In 2008 Wakefield bought the business back, and he’s made several moves to expand the business since then. About six years ago he learned from his accountant that a woman who owned a toner and ink supply company in Springfield wanted to sell; it was one of those odd natural fits. The company provides toner to schools, hospitals and other institutions with a lot of laser printers.
“The company had an employee who had been with them about 15 years, and she has personal relationships with all of the clients,” Wakefield says. “She’s with us still. Purchasing that business proved to be a good thing for us.”
Today the toner side of the business accounts for about a third of Springfield Reprographics’ sales, Wakefield says. They provide OEM and compatible toners/inks; the compatibles are just as good these days, he says.
His next move was into signage. He bought an HP 360 color printer to print wide-format color graphics and created an alliance with a local one-man sign shop about five years ago. Business grew, but the owner of that sign shop eventually decided that becoming a part of Springfield Reprographics was a good choice for him, so he sold to Wakefield.
A wrap job from Springfield Reprographics
“His business was getting larger and he didn’t want to add any employees,” Wakefield says. “But he was happy to run the business with me and get a regular paycheck. It’s turned out to be a good deal for both of us.”
Springfield Reprographics now does signage for construction job sites and other clients, as well as vehicle wraps. One important client is a company that sells advertising on the sides of local mass transit buses; Wakefield’s company applies the advertisements to the buses.
Nevertheless, traditional AEC printing still accounts for about 45 percent of the firm’s business. Wakefield estimates that his company has about 70 percent of the market share for traditional AEC printing in Springfield. The firm bought an HP PageWide 8000 last fall to handle the bulk of that work.
The COVID Challenge
When COVID crashed into the United States in March, Wakefield figured things would dramatically slow down, so only he and his son Kevin went to the shop the following Monday.
“We were a lot busier than I anticipated, so the next day I asked my other three full-time employees if they wanted to come in, and they did,” he says. They worked reduced hours but were still quite busy handling the printing for the designers and builders who continued their work throughout the crisis. He returned to regular hours about two weeks ago.
To help with finances, he applied for and received a PPP loan. He also received six months of relief on three other SBA loans he has.
“So I have the PPP loan and six months of payments on my other SBA loans that I don’t have to make,” he says. “That gives us time to build.”
The COVID crisis may still impact his firm, though. He estimates that some major county school construction projects that had already been planned are now being delayed by six to nine months.
The Future
Wakefield says he hopes to celebrate the company’s 100th birthday with a customer appreciation day – complete with a food truck – sometime in the fall. He may even extend the celebration into 2021, since COVID has taken some of the steam out of the fun this year.
Wakefield’s son Kevin joined the business about five years ago and is learning all of the jobs in the firm in preparation for eventually taking over. But, despite being 68 years old, the senior Wakefield is not slowing down yet.
“Eventually instead of working nine-hour days I’ll move to six, seven or eight-hour days,” he says. “But as far as just switching off and retiring, that’s not going to happen yet. I like what I do. And when you have your own business, it’s a large part of who you are.”