David Dawson, owner of Instant Print and Promo, is pretty proud of the family business and decided he wanted to let the community see the work they do.
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With Wednesday being international print day, he decided to join numerous print shops across North America that held open houses.
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“It’s just a good chance to let people know what we do and all the things we do, and get show-off a little,” Dawson said.
More than 30 groups dropped by shop on Richmond Street in Chatham to take the tour.
Dawson said it’s not until he starts showing others the operation and “I realize how fascinated they are and I think, ‘Yeah, it’s pretty cool the things we do.’”
Today, the shop features all kinds of digital equipment that allows for everything from signs to labels to be printed with precise quality, along with machines that will fold, cut and even perforate orders.
The shop also doubled in size to 372 square meters (4,000 square feet) when an addition was built in 1994.
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Although the shop employs six full-time staff, Dawson said automation has increased efficiency greatly.
“It’s amazing; we can have one guy working doing what used to take three or four people,” he said.
But the shop still uses some old pieces of equipment, such as a 70-year-old letter press, that matches the quality of the new machines.
Dawson has been working at Instant Print and Promo for 30 years. His father Keith Dawson, a former high school teacher, opened the business in 1978 in what many long-time residents will remember being the Dixie-Lee Chicken restaurant at the corner of Richmond and West streets.
Dawson recalled being on a family vacation in Florida when his father saw a print shop that was offering printing while you waited.
“Back in the late 70s, that was unheard of,” he said.
Even getting 100 hundred copies from a print shop could take days or a week or two to complete, he said.
Dawson said his father visited the shop and talked to owner, then came home and bought some equipment and started his own print business.
He said his father bought an off-set press that could pump out 100 or so copies while the customer waited.
From there, Dawson said the business started adding paper cutters and folders “and now we’ve added a whole sign department and label department.”
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