30-YEAR REWIND < < One Car, No Dolly, and 250 Sheets of Destiny

August 28, 2025

FALL 1995

If you’ve ever carried a 36″ x 48″ box of architectural sheets up a freight elevator in heels and a pencil skirt…

You might have what it takes to start a business.

LEARNING THE A&E LANDSCAPE

One of the first new product lines we added was architectural and engineering papers—vellum, bond, coated stock, and transparency media. These weren’t just products. They were our ticket into a whole new world.

Lucky for us, Denver had a thriving A&E market, and even luckier, one of the largest suppliers in the country—Océ Imaging Supplies—was right in our backyard.

At the time, blueprint shops, photo labs, and sign shops were still separate ecosystems. But over the next few decades, they’d blend into a single, fast-moving world of digital imaging and print-on-demand. (Spoiler: FedEx prints posters now.)

But in 1995, it was still specialized.

Blueprint shops were producing massive volumes of design documents for architecture and engineering firms:

Originals
Overlays on vellum
Final client presentations
Color linework on heavy paper

And the tech was changing fast. CAD systems were evolving from monochrome to color, 2D to 3D. We knew there was an opportunity here—and we seized it.

NO A/C, NO DOLLY, NO PROBLEM.

Let’s talk logistics.

We were running deliveries ourselves—one of us each day—while the others stayed back to run sales calls, prep shipments, and build our database in FileMaker Pro (yes, really). Our inventory was delivered by UPS in big, boxy loads—rolls of paper, cartons of pucks, stacks of oversized sheets. We used the space behind our desks as our warehouse.

Sometimes we had a single roll to deliver. Sometimes it was five. And remember: we still only had one car, a VW Golf with no air conditioning, in what would turn out to be a record-breaking hot summer.

Delivery days were brutal.

We rotated who would go. Whoever wasn’t delivering would field orders, make cold calls, do vendor follow-up, billing, and marketing.

I (Tara) remember my delivery days vividly.

I’d load the car with the giant, heavy boxes of Océ paper, roll the windows down, and make the 35-minute drive to Denver.

Most A&E firms were in high-rise buildings with mercifully shaded parking garages, which meant I had a few precious minutes to:

Untangle my wind-whipped hair
Smooth the sweat-wrinkled blouse
Attempt to look like I hadn’t just driven through the desert with a backseat full of 40 lb boxes

Did we have a dolly? Nope, not yet.

So if a customer ordered five boxes, that meant five trips: through the garage, into the elevator, and across a polished-floor office suite, where receptionists would quietly pity me as I went back and forth until my final trip when I’d ask, “Would you mind letting them know their delivery has arrived?”

They were always kind. I think people noticed the hustle. And that helped.

WHY IT PAID OFF

That hands-on approach worked. We started making consistent A&E sales and that foothold launched three defining events in our company’s story:

1. We Hired Sharlene

We met Sharlene Jung through Océ, where she worked at the time. She told us she was unhappy and thinking about leaving, and we immediately invited her to join our team.

It might not have been smart to hire from one of our suppliers, but hiring Sharlene turned out to be one of the best decisions we ever made. She gave us 17 years of dedication, adaptability, hard work, and steadiness through wild changes in the industry.

We were lucky to have her.

2. We Sold a DesignJet 750

To one of those early architecture firms, we sold an HP DesignJet 750. A $10,000 sale at the time—it was a lifeline. A Hail Mary. And our first taste of what equipment sales could become.

We didn’t realize it then, but that transaction would be the start of something big.

3. We Entered the World of Large Format

The DesignJet wasn’t just a big-ticket item—it was a gateway. We were now in the world of large-format printing, and it was evolving fast.

From that one plotter sale grew an entire division of our company that would define the next 30 years of growth, innovation, and leadership in the imaging space.

WHY IT MATTERED

We didn’t set out to become large-format specialists.

But the A&E world opened the door—and we walked through it.

One sweaty delivery, one oversized box, one great hire at a time.

HISTORICAL NOTE

In 1995, AutoCAD R13 was changing how design firms worked—moving them into 2D and 3D digital environments that demanded high-quality output. Océ was a leader in media, and HP’s DesignJet 750 was one of the earliest high-resolution plotters for CAD. Blueprint shops were evolving, and so were we.