Wide Format Imaging

When Gene Klein began working summers in his dad’s blue print shop, little did he know that one day he would be running one of the leading output fulfillment providers in the country. For 48 years, the San Mateo, CA-based BarkerBlue Digital Imaging has been on the cutting edge of technology, has paved new roads in planroom technology and has led the sustainable movement in the industry. For their years of service and dedication, they have been selected by Wide-Format Imaging as the “Reprographic Shop of the Year” for 2009.

“When I started working for my dad back in the mid-70s, I really thought it was going to be a summer gig while I went to college. I never thought it was going to be my career. As I continued to learn the business from him, we found out that we really enjoyed working together,” said Gene Klein, CEO and owner at BarkerBlue Digital Imaging.

While BarkerBlue’s roots are steeped deep in traditional reprographic service offerings, the shop has proven to be a major catalyst for change in the industry. Klein, a past chairman of the board of the ReproMAX network and current board member, has consistently pushed the envelope of the reprographic business, from pin-graphics to laser-plotting to color on-demand print to adopting online planroom technology.

Early Beginnings

The San Francisco Bay Area business was founded in 1961 by Jerry Barker. “The original name of the company was Barker Blueprint. It was a 3,000 square foot blue print business located in Burlingame, CA. At the time, Barker Blueprint was a small mom and pop blue print shop but their big customer for many years was the San Francisco International Airport. It was a small profitable company that had vast potential,” said Klein. “My dad (Gene Sr.) was looking for a business to invest in and he purchased the shop from Jerry in 1976. Around that time, I was an undergraduate at Stanford and would work at the shop during the summer. After graduation, I was planning on going to law school but my dad asked me to try working full-time in the business for the year and see if I liked it. In 1979, he kicked out his tenant in our building to double our space to 6,000 square feet. He then ordered an Acti camera and vacuum frames to move into the photo business. During that year the business really took off and needless to say I didn’t go to law school. I really enjoyed working side-by-side with him and learning the business. It’s now 30 years later and the rest is history,” said Klein.

Cutting Edge Technology

Klein has continued to maintain many of the business acumens first set by his dad when he was running the company. “My dad always wanted to purchase the latest equipment and be on the cutting edge of technology and I have carried on that tradition. “We have always tried to stay ahead of the curve with regard to digital imaging and document management technology. I believe in having the latest solutions to run our business and that has helped us stay on top,” he commented.

Staying Ahead in the Market

In 1983, they purchased the Shacoh 360 Screen wide-format electrostatic engineering copier. “This knocked out some of our existing photo business, but I was beginning to realize that you have to cannibalize your own business before somebody else does. The fact that the Shacoh could do 36 inches wide when the width limit at the time (with the Xerox 2080) was 24 inches gave us an edge in that marketplace. In 1987, we purchased a Versatech 8836 plotter, which was our first official foray into the electronic world. It could produce 20 E-size plots an hour, which by today’s standards is slow but at the time was much faster than the pen plotters in the offices of our customers. We also started purchasing computers. At that point we were in the reprographic business, blueprint business, and the plotting business. Then in 1988, we got into color copier market when we purchased a number of Canon copiers that set the stage for us to move into the graphic arts and then display graphic markets,” he explained.

To accommodate all the new markets they were now serving, they changed the name of the company to BarkerBlue Reprographics. In 1989, Klein was made president of the company and his dad continued to work at BarkerBlue until he passed away in 1991. “My dad instilled in me that change was good and over the years we have changed with the times and that has helped forge our success.”

BarkerBlue was on the ground floor and first reprographer in its market to deploy Web-based electronic planroom services. Klein noted that the emergence of online plan rooms has now moved into a core offering for members of ReproMAX, the largest international network of independent reprographic companies. “We pushed for the online planroom as a way to remain competitive and offer progressive solutions to our customers,” he pointed out.

“In the late 90s we were a full service reprographer and that was about the time that the dotcoms were coming out talking about hosting projects online. I saw that as a threat. I believe that you should never let anyone get between you and your customers, so we wanted to be the ones hosting the projects. One day I was playing golf with some ReproCAD members and we were talking about trying to find a way where we could post drawings and projects online for our customers. One of the guys said they were working on developing a software program that could accomplish this. At that point I dropped my driver and said ‘wow we need to work with you on this.’ We purchased a system, called CDM, helped develop it, then recruited others in ReproMAX to also buy the product and help refine it. CDM wound up being adopted by 15 companies in the ReproCAD network. We then focused on digital services and put all of our clients’ projects on our planrooms, back when some of them didn’t know what a planroom was. In time, Adenium’s DFS system became the ReproMAX standard, because it was a very powerful platform that could take us in new directions, but CDM was a valuable stepping-stone, ” Klein recalled.

Going Wide-Format

It was around that same time that Klein began to revolutionize the shop with the purchase of an Océ 9800 wide-format digital printer in 1998, purchased solely as a plotting machine for the shop’s diazo department. Blown away by the Océ 9800’s robust workload capacity and operation, Klein completely eliminated BarkerBlue’s diazo department, replacing it with four Océ 9800 series machines and marking a major shift to digital printing. “Back then most reprographers had one or two 9800s, and they regarded it as a luxury service, sort of like ‘First Class’. I didn’t understand that. I wanted to be all-electronic, all the time,” reported Klein.

BarkerBlue’s current equipment arsenal includes: Four Océ TDS 800s, two Océ 9800s, an Océ TCS 500, two Heidelberg 9110s, an Océ 6060 solvent printer, an HP Indigo 3050 press, a Roland SolJet 645 12-ink color plotter with DaVinci RIP software, ReproMAX DFS online planroom (7500+ projects hosted), two HP 1055s , an HP 5500, and a SEAL 5500 laminator.

The HP Indigo 3050 press was a major investment, made in 2005, that totaled, with supporting equipment, about $600,000. “I had friends in the industry who thought this was too much of a stretch. ‘Start with some high-speed color copiers, like the Xerox 6060,’ they said. But the 6060 prints looked the same as the prints made on the slower speed Doc 12s, so, from the customer’s perspective, what was the change?” Klein asks. “With the HP Indigo the customer gets offset quality at color copy run lengths and pricing levels, and each piece can be personalized, to boot. I saw that as a major paradigm shift for our marketplace,” said Klein.

The next phase in the company’s development was its move toward sustainablily which began when John T. Roach joined the company in 1998 as the general manager. That same year, they changed the named to BarkerBlue Digital Imaging Inc. “John is very much an environmentalist as well as a vegetarian, and I’ve learned from him,” Klein said. “He’s really inspired me and our business.”