All Printing Resources Helps Color Smiths Rebuild

When employees at Color Smiths—a suburban Chicago prepress shop—smelled smoke, they ran for the fire extinguisher. Minutes later, the entire building was engulfed and, in a matter of hours, everything was lost. But in just one week, Color Smiths was up and running again, thanks to extraordinary service from All Printing Resources (APR), Glendale Heights, Ill.

“We had an informal plan in case a major catastrophic event caused a shut down of our business, but I never imagined we would need a plan for rebuilding the entire business,” said Calvin Hill, owner of Color Smiths. “Despite the loss, there was never a question that Color Smiths would reopen its doors.”

Hill said he contacted customers later that day, informed them of the situation and let them know that he was working on locating a temporary facility and getting back into production. “The only question was, how we were going to get the equipment we needed,” said Hill. Color Smiths is a trade service company in business since 1961. Color Smiths’ customers require unique, customized platemaking services, which range from regular offset plates to flexographic plates and dry offset or letterpress. As a result, the company’s customers rely on Color Smiths to be able to deliver what they need to keep up their printing operations on schedule, and Hill knew he had to have his own operations running again as soon as possible.

Already a customer of APR, Hill leaned on the company heavily in order to get back to business. Within a week, APR installed new and expanded proofing capabilities and assisted in establishing new bench marks as well as ICC profiles. “The biggest change was with our proofing,” he noted. “Previously, we had a digital contract proofer for our high-end proofing and used inkjet proofing for our internal and lower-end proofing. But, because of advances in inkjet proofing technology, APR recommended and installed an Epson 7880 and Epson 9880 to handle a majority of Color Smiths’ proofing needs.