February 2017 | Business View Magazine

114 115 of everything. Beyond that, when owners run their business on a day-to-day basis, we have a well-developed supply chain.We have large partners that are closely tied into our franchise units. They come to our convention; they’re call- ing our franchisees on a regular basis.We rely on our supply partners to help us out with new printing technologies we should be using and new pieces of material we should be printing on. It’s a symbiotic relationship.” Support of franchisees in the SpeedPro uni- verse is ongoing, as is the consistent intro- duction of new technologies as they become available. “Last year, we launched a digital signage solution so that we can further extend our product offering and because certain clients were asking for it,” says Katsnelson. “The things that we print are static and that business is not going away, but digital is also a good solution for people who need constantly changing imag- es, say, something like a recreation center that changes its calendar of events every day. “In addition, we’ve issued a brand new oper- ations manual; we’ve overhauled our company websites over the last year; and we’re building out an online, e-learning system of continuing education for our folks.We have a new work- flow and point of sale system that we’ve cus- SpeedPro Imaging tomized for our business.We think that is a real valuable tool for our franchisees and they tell us that.And we’re always looking for new technologies that can better us in the marketplace. So,we take the support and training side seriously.Our success is driven by the franchisees’ success.” Over the next several years, Katsnelson says that the company intends to improve on that success by continuing to focus on “supporting our franchisees with the best practices and tools to run their busi- nesses, and asking ourselves, ‘How do we continue to be a better partner to our cus- tomers? What are they asking us to do? What do we need to provide so that our franchisees can sell more effectively?’” Meanwhile Reeves will continue to reach out to prospective franchisees by pointing out the economic benefits of becoming a SpeedPro Imaging unit owner: “This franchise concept is a bit of an elevat- ed, non-retail type of opportunity in which you get to grow in a vibrant industry,”he states.“It’s a $24 billion industry growing at eight to nine percent a year.On top of that, our studios’ revenues are growing at 13 percent, annually. So, not only are we in a vibrant industry that’s growing,we are actu- ally outpacing it. I think that’s largely due to the narrow niche–‘an inch wide and a mile deep’- that we are in - exclusively, large format graphics and printing.” Preferred vendor n Esko www.esko.com Esko is a global supplier of integrated solutions for the packaging and labels, sign and display, commercial printing, and publishing industries. Esko is headquartered in Ghent, Belgium, and has R&D and manufacturing facilities in five European countries, the United States, China, and India. Esko employs around 1500 people worldwide. Its direct sales and service organization covers Europe, the Middle East, Africa, the Americas, and the Asia Pa- cific, Japan and China regions, and is complement- ed by a network of distribution partners in more than 50 countries. n CoreBridge Software www.corebridgesoftware.com CoreBridge Software is the leading cloud-based management system for the print and sign indus- try. Using one system that can be accessed any- where, businesses quickly and profitably estimate jobs, manage production queues, automatically communicate with customers, collect payments and manage their accounting.