Copying Firms Thriving Despite (or Because of) the Technology Tide

Paperless office? Yeah, right.

centers, said last week it had signed a deal with a Seattle company to co-develop technology to make it easier to send image-rich color documents across networks to be printed. The deal with LizardTech Inc., which has licensed imaging technology from the Los Alamos National Laboratory, is just another example of the printing industry keeping up with the times.

Sir Speedy and Ventura-based copying giant Kinko’s Inc. have transmitted documents over both proprietary and public electronic networks for several years, allowing a customer to give a document to one store and have it printed in another store miles away. It’s a handy service for functions like big presentations across the country.

Customers can also send documents electronically to the printer and pick them up later. Sir Speedy estimates that 60% of its orders are transmitted over electronic networks.

Like Kinko’s, which offers many of the features of a “branch office” that a company might have, such as Internet access and videoconferencing, Sir Speedy has gone beyond printing brochures to selling Web pages to its business clients.

“I doubt very seriously if it’s a good profit center for a lot of our centers, but you’re looking to capture and keep the customer at your place and give them the total business package,” said Sir Speedy spokesman Mike Ebbing.

The printing industry grows at a healthy clip, posting a 7.1% gain in revenues last year. But Sir Speedy’s revenues have flattened out to little more than $400 million a year for the past six years. And after peaking at nearly 900 franchisees, the privately held company now has just over 700, Ebbing said.

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Jonathan Gaw covers technology and electronic commerce for The Times. He can be reached at (714) 966-7818 and at jonathan.gaw@latimes.com.