In February, 1997 John Stephens bought Bermuda Blueprinting from the retiring Wayne and Mary Waddell.

"I used to help them out doing blueprints at night and when they were looking to get out of the business it seemed like a good opportunity," recalls Mr. Stephens, who has degrees in both architecture and business administration.

"I miss the design work but this business utilises both of my degrees and I enjoy the challenges and demand of being self-employed."

Over the past decade Mr. Stephens has grown the company into Bermuda's leading large format digital printing solution.

"The name is a little misleading today," he explains. "We don't even do blueprinting anymore, very few people do. Architectural and engineering prints were and still are at the core of our business but it is now a smaller slice of an expanding pie."

The company's story is one of investment, technology, service and expansion. The first of many steps was simply adding a black and white office copier/printer to handle architectural and engineering spec sheets. That led to printing and copying for law firms and exempt companies which lead to colour copying and binding reports.

"By improving our services to our current clients we expanded into new markets," recalls Mr. Stephens. "But the major step was going from traditional blueprinting machines to a digital printer."

While looking for a new engineering printer John came across a dealer for Océ digital printers.

"My first Océ was the biggest thing I'd ever bought and I thought 'what am I doing?'" he confides. "But when the tech came down to install it he looked at my three blueprinting machines and said within a year I'd be throwing those out and buying another Océ."

Mr. Stephens laughed: "I couldn't see it. For the price of one digital machine I could own ten blueprinters. But then, due to some staffing problems, I found myself as a one man show keeping up with my entire workload with that one printer. That was the turning point."

The wide format Océ printer was also capable of doing poster prints which lead the company into the graphic design market of sign and banner production. By dealing directly with the ad agencies and providing a wide variety of printing materials Mr. Stephens estimates he gained 90 percent of the market within two years. The next step for Bermuda Blueprinting was sourcing and supplying speciality display options.

"The design firms were happy with the speed and quality of the work so they started coming to us for events and display products followed on from that," continues Mr. Stephens. "At the recent Captive Insurance Conference we rented out a ten-foot pop-up booth."

Their first big event was the Ross (Blackie) Talbot Charity Golf Tournament. Since then they have printed and displayed for the Bermuda Masters Squash Tournament, the FIVB under 19 Volleyball World Championships and the Bermuda Music Festival. They also produced all the Bermuda Hogges signage.

"We're swamped," admits Mr. Stephens. "People know if we say we're going to do it then it will get done, even if it means staying late or weekends. It has taken a lot of investment into equipment to make sure we can turn jobs around as fast as people need them but we're a service business and that means doing what we say we're going to do."

It also means finding new and innovative products that meet the needs of Bermuda's market. Bermuda Blueprinting have become the local dealer for Océ products which has required some of their employees training for the service and maintenance of the machines. It has also led to additional benefits that they can pass on to their clients.

"It took a lot of pressing but because we're the dealer we get fantastic tech support, our parts arrive faster and we've been able to explore everything Océ has to offer, particularly in the graphics market," explains Mr. Stephens. "Our most recent purchase is the Océ Arizona 250 GT direct to substrate printer that allows us to print on virtually any material up to four by eight foot and two inches thick. It is an award winning machine and we received the 19th machine shipped in North America."

Bermuda Blueprinting continues to innovate with products and services by making maximum use of online technology. They have recently rolled out two new products that streamline both their services and their customers' workflow. The first product is an online job submittal site that allows customers to upload job requests and printing sources directly to a server.

"It's much faster than sending files via e-mail. We also like it because the customer must fill out certain fields to submit the job and that means we get all the information we need," explains Mr. Stephens.

The second innovation is myplanroom.bm, an online document control and distribution site for project management. It allows users to coordinate all aspects of their construction project from a centralised, instantly accessible, remote website. With myplanroom.bm all the various stakeholders can remain up-to-date regardless of their geographical location.

"It's very, very exciting," says Mr. Stephens. "I absolutely believe this product will work in Bermuda because there is so much construction going on and much of it involves overseas consultants. Even in Bermuda we're operating in a global market and this tool fits the model."

Ten years is a long time in digital technology and as Bermuda Blueprinting expands to meet the growing the demand in Bermuda and there seems little they won't do to stay ahead of the game.

"We have competitors in everything we do," concludes Mr. Stephens. "But we were the first ones to put all these services under one roof and I have a staff where everybody can do everything so no matter what else is going on, we'll get the job done."