Reprographics 101

I’m not at all familiar with this particular reprographics company. I don’t recall them being in business in the Orange County, CA market area when I lived there, back when I was retired from my first reprographics company. So, perhaps they are an older company that I never heard of, or maybe they are a relatively new player.

Whatever the case may be, how they’ve chosen to “market” their business is a bit clever. When you go to their home-page, you see, in big, bold blue letters, “welcome to Orange County Reprographics.” What’s clever about that? Well, the largest A/E/C reprographer in Orange County, CA is ARC, and the core of ARC’s business in that market stemmed from the “OCB” operation acquired by ARC back around 1992/3 (and which has since merged with its largest competitor, Consolidated Reprographics.) The OCB initials stood for “Orange County Blueprint”. The OCB name was a very, very strong brand name. When I visited OCB (in 1992) and met with the then owner, David Hayes (Chuck’s step-father), it was easy to see how strong of a company OCB was. Anyway, A1 Blueprinting’s manner of branding A1 as Orange County Reprographics is, obviously, a play on the former OCB brand name.

Orange County, CA is a very large market for reprographics, but ARC is the dominant force in that market; C2 Repro is in the number 2 position (and growing.)

Here’s what I found on A1’s web-site:

Welcome to Orange County Reprographics by A1 Blueprinting

2522 Chambers, Suite 100, Tustin, CA 92780

SEEKING A LOW-COST ALTERNATIVE TO BLUEPRINTING IN ORANGE COUNTY?

· LARGE-FORMAT BLACK & WHITE DOCUMENT MANAGEMENT

· BLUEPRINTING AND COPYING

· SHIPPING & EMERGENCY DELIVERY & IN-STORE DROP OFF & PICK UP

· SCANNING TO FILE AND DIGITAL ARCHIVING

A1 Blueprinting specializes to your every need with unbeatable prices when it comes to printing blueprints. From large, oversize, wide-format printing to copying and scanning to file or disk, we do it!

Joel’s further comments:

Apparently, A1 Blueprinting’s “list price” for b/w prints, 24 x 36, is $1.44 per print, which works out to $.24 per sq ft. In my mind, that’s not an inexpensive price. Simply my opinion, but not a good idea to say you’re the low cost alternative, when your price does not reflect that. There are customers who will see that price (the “list price”) and not bother to call you to find out what you’re willing to reduce your price to! Often, you get only one shot at convincing a customer that you are, in fact, the low-cost alternative.

One other comment: in this day and age, I find it hard to believe that there are reprographers who don’t promote and offer large-format color copying and printing. At the ERA convention this past weekend, I asked all of the reprographers in the audience to raise their hands if their customers were ordering color-printed sheets in sets of plans, and everyone in the audience raised their hand. The use of color in “large-format plan sets” is growing.