By Ed Avis
Don Razinsky spent 33 years working for Ridgways, and retired from ARC in 2011. But within a couple of years he wanted to get back into the business, and has since launched two new reprographics firms. His latest, ACE Digital in Shreveport, LA, opened in September, just an eighth of a mile from the former home of the Shreveport Ridgways location.
“When we were trying to choose a name, I was going to call it AEC,” Razinsky says. “But my partner said, ‘Why not make it ACE instead?’ So that’s what we went with.”
Razinsky’s previous business, GraphX Digital Services, was just a couple of years old, but his partner in that business wanted to focus more on vehicle graphics and other large color output than on traditional reprographics. So they parted ways, and Razinsky and his new partner bought GraphX’s reprographics equipment and launched ACE Digital with it.
“We moved into this space on a Tuesday afternoon at 3 o’clock and opened on Wednesday morning at 8 a.m.,” he says. “The hardest thing was just letting our customers know where we’re at.”
Razinsky has deep relations with the local AEC community – and the community at large, since he’s heavily involved in local organizations and the police department – so re-establishing the business has gone smoothly. (Click here to read an article about Razinsky’s incredible local involvement.)
He has found a solid client base among real estate management companies who use his hosted planroom to store project documents. They appreciate the 24/7 availability of the documents, including on their smart phones, Razinsky says. From a business perspective, these types of clients are beneficial because of the regular monthly income ACE generates for archiving the documents.
Another interesting niche he’s found is designers doing renovations who ask Razinsky to print a color photograph of the building being renovated overlaid with a drawing. This allows the planner to easily specify where changes need to be made on the building. He does that work on a KIP 860.
“So if there’s a broken window, they can see that right on the picture and can make a note on it that says, ‘Replace this window,’” Razinsky explains. “This was really going back to the basics, something we used to do on the overlay system back in the early days. I was talking to some architects doing a lot of renovations, and they thought the idea was wonderful.” (Stay tuned to the APDSP newsletter/website for a future article about this concept.)
Razinsky is confident his latest business is on the track to success: “We’ve done well so far.”