Survey: Reprographics Slowly Coming Back to Life

By Ed Avis

            Like the rest of the business world, the reprographics industry is slowing emerging from the COVID darkness of the past two and a half months. A survey this week showed that 73 percent of reprographics shops are open at their normal hours, and the remainder are open limited hours. No one is closed entirely, according to survey.

            When that same question was asked on May 6, only 44 percent of reprographics shops were open their normal hours.

            “Business started picking up starting last Monday,” says Bob Eisenberg, owner of East End Blueprint in Water Mill, a town in the Hamptons portion of Long Island. “It’s because they allowed building to go on. Prior to that there was no building in New York State.”

            APDSP has surveyed members on these issues three times since the crisis began, once each in the first week of April, May and June. The surveys reveal the arc of the crisis, with the bleakest numbers in the second survey, when everyone was hunkered down and the light at the end of the tunnel was still dim.

            For example, one question on the survey asked how business has changed during the crisis. In the April survey, 14 percent said business was down more than 75 percent. In the May survey, 20 percent of respondents said business had dropped that much. But in the June survey, no one said that.

            “June kicked off a lot faster than April or May did,” says Christian Cummins, owner of Idaho Blueprint in Boise. “In Idaho we’re between phase 3 and 4. Things seem to be opening back up, getting back on track. It’s still not where it was in the middle of March, but at least this first week of June things are definitely getting better.”

            Cummins says the part of his business that suffered the most was promotional graphics, such as signage for music festivals and fun runs. Construction continued in his region, so traditional reprographics work did not fall off. But Cummins worries that things might change in coming months.

            “We might not see the effects of Covid until August, September or October,” he says. “I’ve heard from two general developers that had projects ready to do that their banks have backed off the lending for those projects. You start seeing stuff like that and you think, ‘Hmm, maybe there’s still a ripple effect of this coming.’”

            Idaho Blueprint did some Covid-related signage, Cummins says, and he expects that will eventually fall off, too. But he hopes that companies that ordered those graphics from him learned that his company can do that work and will order more graphics in the future.

            Eisenberg of East End Blueprint says he was able to keep his shop open because it’s also a FedEx drop-off. And because it’s a family business – he and his two daughters run it – his expenses are manageable even when business is slow.

            “We’re a mom-and-pop shop so we can weather some of these storms,” he says. “I can stop taking a salary for a while, I’ll survive. I’m 78 years old, so I can do it.”

            Eisenberg says he’s pretty confident his business will recover within the next six months. Ironically, one reason he feels that way is that Covid has chased some people out of New York City.

            “There’s a lot of residential construction going on here because people from the city are relocating here,” Eisenberg says. “The Hamptons is basically a summer area, but with all that’s going on in the city they’ve decided to come out here permanently.”