Karen Lowery Hall
Managing Editor
QUICK PRINTING MAGAZINE
September 2008

John Peterson offers living proof that taking your printing business to the next level doesn’t have to mean turning your back on your roots. Peterson is the owner of Kopytek in St. Louis, MO, which he founded as a Kwik Kopy Printing franchise in 1986. Today it is a progressive commercial printing firm that is about as far from the “mom & pop” concept as you can get. In fact, this year Kopytek debuted in QP’s Top 100 at #60 with sales of $4.1 million.
From the very beginning, Peterson had high aspirations. Contrary to what most quick printers were doing at the time, he chose to locate his company in a semi-industrial area rather than a traditional retail site. This allowed him to concentrate his sales efforts on the more lucrative business-to-business market. Nonetheless, it was still a small shop operating with a single press.
By the late 90s, the company had grown and competition issues had developed in the area surrounding the original location. This prompted Peterson to move to a much larger facility in a strictly industrial area that had no walk-in business. Along the way, the franchise affiliation ended and the company name was changed to Kopytek.
Dream Come True
In 2007, Peterson began the process of building his own 20,000 square foot facility, which the company moved into earlier this year. He has also acquired a Screen (USA) CTP system and a Ryobi 784 perfector press. When asked how it all came together, Peterson’s answer is succinct. “You can’t do a new facility and buy all this equipment without good financing, so it starts with the financing. In our case, we were able to do a tax exempt industrial revenue bond, so we got an extremely low interest rate over a long amortization period. So I think the first thing a printer has to do is look for some creative financing.”
When discussing the changes the new equipment has brought about in his company, Peterson says, “Initially, when we started in ‘86, what really changed it was the Macintosh. And then, what’s really changed it to this next level we’ve gone to is the CTP system. What it allows us to do is to burn a 29″ plate in a minute and a half and have it on the press and set up in 10 minutes instead of 45. So the pressman who used to run a 2-up format is now running a 6-up or a 4-up.”
Having the larger format perfector press also plays into Kopytek’s improved capabilities. “Your press operator is only here for a finite number of hours and if he can set that press up in the same amount of time as an ABDick, why run a 2-up when you can run a 6-up?” Peterson asks.
He illustrates that point with an example. “We have a job right now that is a fairly short job. It’s a 10,000 press run, 23×29″, so it takes us about an hour, start to finish. But it’s a two-sided, black ink pad and they need 60,000 sheets. So we just run that on the perfector in an hour. On a 2-up format, that takes you all day. So that’s the difference. The job that once was an all day job is now just an hour job.”
For many, the perception is that transitioning from 2-up to a 4- or 6-up format requires a different business model. Or at least, a different sales strategy. Peterson disagrees. “We sell it exactly the same way,” he insists. “Do we have some other markets? Yeah, we can do a presentation folder now. We can do a poster now. So we’ve got some other markets, but what we found out along the way was that in a lot of cases we were a stop gap measure. We were running five, or 10, or 15,000 sheets to get the client through while he waited on the rest of the order from his other printer. So now, we’re the other printer. Instead of five or 10,000, we’ll just keep running and deliver 100,000 for you tomorrow.”
In addition to the larger format equipment, Kopytek also runs a Heidelberg DI four-color press, Xerox color copiers, a Docutech, has a fully equipped bindery, and offers mailing and shipping services.
The larger facility and new equipment are integral to Kopytek’s future, but what really makes it all click is the workflow. The entire facility was engineered to streamline the workflow, so that every job that comes into the front door moves smoothly through the entire production process and straight to the backdoor for delivery. “What we wanted to do was to be able to bring a customer in and give them a tour of our entire facility in less than 10 minutes,” Peterson says. “That was the first thing because it all starts with selling something.”
“A job never backtracks,” he adds. “From the beginning to the end, it flows in this oval. And I think that the key is to be sure that the ergonomics of the situation are good. Labor is too costly in our business to backtrack.”
Elements of Success
In the midst of this transformation, has Peterson’s basic business philosophy changed? Not really. He offers a few sage observations in closing. “Really, the definition of a quick printer used to be that he ran a 2-up format. The definition of a quick printer now is just that he can turn the job around faster than the next guy,” he observes.
“It takes just as long to think of a small idea as to think of a big one,” he adds. “The fear is in not having business. I’d much rather have an order and try to figure out how to get it done than to try to figure out how to get an order. But if you don’t think you can do the bigger orders, it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. If you try to figure out how you can do it, next thing you know, that’s the kind of work you’re doing. But you never want to be in a position where you can’t do a small order because small customers turn into big customers.”
“At the end of the day, you have to make sure you hire the best people,” Peterson concludes. “Sometimes people get scared by a couple dollars difference an hour. Other printers say to me, ‘You’re big - you have all these resources.’ And I tell them, ‘But I wasn’t. I was exactly like you. Probably, I was in a lot worse position because I was a lot younger and had a lot less money.’ You can be penny wise and pound foolish, but without good people none of it happens.