Not many labs survived the digital revolution. The people who owned and worked in labs like me, were in their 50’s or so. Some of them put a mortgage on their home to afford new equipment, or they sold their buildings and left the space entirely, but we kept on plodding away. We had some great people and they were ready for the challenge.



We were fortunate enough to have a 2,000 square foot space in a building that was completely empty and near the original lab. So we started our first fully digital lab in that location.



There were many financial struggles at that time, but we were lucky. Some of the equipment we had to purchase was $200k-$300k each; we were fortunate to have made some good equipment decisions.



From there we started to have the technology to be able to print digitally in volume. The real turning point was Kodak. They had a product called DP2, a database that lets you manage images, graphics and corresponding data. But they had no great way to feed work into DP2. You had to do it manually or with Digital ProShots.



I thought somebody had to make an interface for it. At that point we were broke — AGAIN — and it took a lot to manage this whole thing, so I said “I’m going to find a DP2 expert to write an interface.” That’s how we found John Wengert and Don Tipton, who together wrote ROES (remote order entry system).