Expand Vol. 3 No. 12

Outside the Frame

Business Images & Graphics is primarily a trade-show display company, but the addition of a UV-curable printer has diversified its offerings and kept sales humming at a record pace.

Rick Hall, owner of Business Images & Graphics in Searcy, Ark., is a veteran of the trade-show business who was there to see the first inkjet printers begin to change the way display graphics would be produced. “If you wanted to print an eight-foot long panel, you could leave, go to lunch, come back, go home, come back, and it was about finished,” recalls Hall.

Hall went out on his own six years ago and started Business Images & Graphics on a shoestring. Since then the company has grown substantially, and even in these challenging economic times Hall reports record growth.

Hall credits at least a portion of this recent success to the addition of an HP 35500 UV-curable printer from LexJet. Though he hasn’t had much time to market the direct-to-substrate output, word has gotten around and the printer is running practically around the clock.

“The existing workload and the added facet of business we picked up with the UV-curable printer have had us hopping. It’s a huge investment, but I just regret that we didn’t do it sooner,” says Hall. “At some point we’re going to do a lot more to promote the UV-curable printer. We’re working on a new on-line store where people can order all kinds of direct-printed output. We’ve been printing on just about everything so far, including Coroplast, Sintra, banner materials, fabrics, and canvas. We’re figuring out which items sell best and which ones are easiest to work with, and then we’ll start to narrow that down a bit.”

While Business Images & Graphics has been almost exclusively devoted to indoor display systems, the UV-curable printer has effectively diversified the company’s product offering to a wider audience who demand a varied selection of applications. Plus, Hall has maximized the printer’s value for the company’s fundamentals in the trade-show business.

“Since we bought this printer from LexJet we’ve run the gamut of materials on it. Our account specialist, Alex Lochead, turned us on to LexJet’s 9 Mil Solvent Display Film SR and 18 Mil Solvent Display Film SR. We use the 18-mil film for our typical 10-foot pop-up displays and the 9-mil for retractable banner stands. The combination is working great and we don’t have to laminate,” says Hall. “And, instead of just trade show, we’ve been printing wall coverings with dreamScape materials, a lot of Sintra, and direct printing to any type of material we use for fill-in panels in structural aluminum displays. We were buying everything from another vendor, but it’s all about the service and I know I can call Alex and a handful of other guys at LexJet, and if they don’t know something they’ll tell me they don’t know, find the answer, and call back right away. We were dealing with that problem so much with other vendors who would try to bluff their way through it… Please just tell me you don’t know; don’t just make something up and tell me the wrong thing.”

Growth Curve

Since Business Images & Graphics got its start six years ago, Hall says the company has doubled each year, despite the fact that it’s located in a rather rural area about 60 miles from Little Rock. But Hall says the company’s relative isolation from the city has actually turned out to be a help rather than a hindrance.

“We’re just far enough away from Little Rock that you can afford to open a profitable business. In this day and age, with the Internet and FedEx, we have very few people who actually come to our showroom or even need to,” says Hall.

Hall adds that about 75 percent of the company’s business is either regional or national.

A decent portion of that business has been gathered through the company’s website, then built upon through favorable word of mouth.

Hall has created a sample pack that shows all the materials the company can print to, and the fact that it can match colors from material to material for a multi-application display that maintains an absolutely consistent and quality look.

“Customer service is a lost art, and thankfully most of our competitors don’t concentrate on that, so it makes it easy for us to keep clients. For us, it’s real simple. Just make their job easy, and they’ll keep coming back,” says Hall. “We treat every situation differently. We have a number of customers who don’t know a lot about how the process works, so it would be easy to talk down to them. But we don’t do that; we help them clean up their artwork and make it print-ready. We tend to do a lot of color proofs which saves a lot of time and effort in the long run.”

Hall estimates that about 70-75 of the company’s business remains in the trade-show market. Before installing the printer in late summer, the trade-show market represented close to 100 percent of the company’s business.

“Now we’re doing art reproductions, museum displays, outdoor banners for Main Street businesses, drive-through banner displays for banks, and all kinds of things we weren’t doing before. So, in a short amount of time we’ve really been able to beef up those additional sales,” says Hall. “We’ve even printed a desktop or a table, which they varnish and reassemble so they have a custom piece of furniture.”

Business Images & Graphics operates in a 5,500 square foot facility that’s divided up between office space, display fabrication, printing and laminating, and storage. Hall also shares some storage space with a friendly competitor in Little Rock so that he can house his clients’ displays, should they require storage.

“We turn the work around very quickly and then just follow up with them until the end. It’s really a very simple process. All it takes is one person to follow up. Good customer service is a lot simpler than most people make it out to be. You simply have to care and not have a fast-food mentality,” explains Hall. “For the most part, we’re a small business in a small town, and we run the business with that attitude. However, we can run with the big boys on quality and the types of displays and graphics we’re able to provide.