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Rapid Printing finds low-key niche Medford business succeeds with focus on wholesale jobs By DAVID PRESZLER Photo by Bob Pennell Steve Tibbetts gathers up papers coming off a small press at Rapid Printing. Despite its low profile, the 8-year-old company has grown to more than $1 million in annual sales and eight employees Rapid Printing owner Bob Abroe certainly isn't a testament to the power of marketing. "I don't even have a printed Yellow Pages ad," he says. "I specifically asked them to remove it." He doesn't really advertise or have a sales staff, either. But keeping a low profile hasn't kept Rapid Printing from growing into a print shop with more than $1 million in annual sales and eight employees. Never heard of Rapid Printing? No offense, but that's just fine with Abroe, who owns the Medford business with his wife, Denise. After opening shop on Front Street in downtown Medford in 1992, they spent two years as a retail print shop, taking jobs large and small to get the business going. But they wanted to take more of a wholesale approach and essentially dropped the retail side in 1994, referring customers to other shops. A year later, they moved the business to its current home, a metal warehouse tucked in the Suburban Business Park off Crater Lake Highway. Rapid Printing makes its money doing wholesale printing jobs that come in directly from businesses, from brokers working for businesses and from other print shops who either don't have the right equipment for a specific job or are too backed up to do it. "We do a full range of stuff, from business cards and forms to full process, multi-color jobs," says Abroe, showing off several glossy color brochures and catalogs. Sound like a nice niche? Abroe says it is, but the decision to go wholesale came with a string attached. While profit margins tend to be high throughout the printing business, he says they tighten on the wholesale side. Take the overflow work from other print shops, for instance. The other shops won't bring overflow work unless they can make a little money on the job too, so Abroe says the company accepts lower profit margins and counts on overall volume to make it worthwhile. The choice has paid off. Sales have risen 15 to 20 percent a year. "It's better to make 10 percent on $1 million (in sales) than 30 percent on $100,000," he says. Abroe, who's 32, got his start in the printing business in 1989, after he was laid off from a local mill. He was going to college part time but ran out of money and needed a job. He went to work in the print shop that was owned by a friend of his girlfriend and future wife. Two years later, he left the print shop and eventually decided to start his own. "I couldn't find another job," he says. "So I pretty much sold everything I had, and my wife -- my girlfriend at the time -- did the same. We borrowed some money and away we went." The business was launched with less than $5,000 in capital. "In retrospect, it was insane," he says. Like a lot of entrepreneurs with small companies, Abroe has kept costs down by working lots of hours and handling all the management duties even as the company has grown. Abroe says about 70 percent of Rapid Printing's work comes from outside the Rogue Valley, though it works with nearly all the other print shops in the area. How does he find customers without a marketing program? "Most of them find us," he says. Since word of mouth is so important to the business, Abroe says the company has a lot of quality controls and processes in place for a firm of its size. But he says the business succeeds because of a combination of loyal customers who spread the word and good employees who keep those customers happy. "I've met a lot of good people in this industry," he says. Today's Edition : News | Sports | Business | Weather | Tempo | Classifieds Mail Tribune Copyright � The Mail Tribune 2000, Medford, Oregon USA