30-Year Rewind < <

JUNE 1995–2025 It started with one printer. One car. No dolly. And a whole lot of optimism.   But from those early delivery days, our business grew fast—and fearlessly.  1997: FROM MOCK REALTY TO MOMENTUM Just two years after launching from our 250-square-foot basement office in South Boulder, we had outgrown the space—and the name. […]

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, […]

LATE 1995 The Tektronix Phaser 340 was more than just a cool printer—it was the beginning of something we hadn’t seen coming.   We loved teaching people about it. Helping them understand the technology. Seeing their excitement.   And it didn’t stop there.   The Phaser 340 was the first of hundreds of hardware models […]

JUNE–AUGUST, 1995 Research in 1995 didn’t happen in a browser—it happened in a Volkswagen Golf with no A/C.   Back then, the internet wasn’t mainstream. So when we needed to evaluate desks, chairs, fax machines, or potential office spaces, it meant driving from place to place and physically checking things out. Greg and I only […]

Early–Mid May, 1995 After getting fired on a Monday and emotionally white-knuckling our way through a Beastie Boys concert that night, we woke up Tuesday morning with one shared thought:   It’s go time.   The very first order of business? Fire up Jian BizPlanBuilder, finish the biz plan, make it sing, and go pitch […]

By late April 1995, things were heating up.   We had our little startup dream, a floppy-disc business plan in progress, and we were still working full-time at Mike’s Camera. But after Greg’s innocent chat with the UPS driver (aka the most casual career detonator of all time), the whispers had started.   And then […]

After scribbling our business idea on a bar napkin, we knew we were onto something. And every big idea needs a plan, so for us that meant one thing: JIAN BizPlanBuilder — a set of 3.5” floppy discs we bought at Office Depot for about $79. It came in a clunky plastic box with a […]

In late 1994, Greg and I bought our first place together—a little 864 sq ft condo in Boulder, Colorado. It felt huge to us at the time. We were young, excited, and both working full-time at a local camera store, but in completely different worlds.   Greg was in “industrial sales,” flying around the country […]

This June marks 30 years since Global Imaging was officially launched by Greg Lamb, Tara Giffin Lamb, and their original partner, William Kendrick. It was an idea scribbled on a napkin, fueled by equal parts curiosity, caffeine, and sheer determination. We were in our 20s, working at a local photo lab, and dreaming about something […]