Blain Topel
Blain Topel
Blain Topel, former co-owner of Topel Blueprinting and vice president of ABC Imaging, has joined Crisp Imaging in Southern California as senior vice president. Topel joined the company in January.
“I’m a Midwest boy who has lived on the East Coast most of my life, and Southern California was not someplace I had ever wanted to move to,” says Topel, who was born in Iowa and moved to Washington DC when he was in junior high. “But I knew Gary Crisp (the owner of Crisp Imaging), and we met in December and talked about what his company was doing and it seemed like a good fit. To my wife Dawn’s credit, she said ‘Let’s do it.’”
Topel started in reprographics as a foot messenger for A&E Blueprinters in Washington DC in 1978, and worked for a couple of other companies before co-founding Topel Blueprinting in 1986. Topel Blueprinting eventually had locations in Silver Spring, Maryland; Washington DC; and Fairfax, Virginia. In 1997 the company was sold to ABC Imaging, and Topel went to work for that firm.
He left ABC earlier in 2017, and spent some months considering his next moves. Then industry veteran Joel Salus, for whom Topel had worked at one point, told him Crisp was looking for a new executive.
“Part of what intrigued me about this position is they are growing,” Topel says. “And opening new locations was something that I had done with ABC and I enjoyed it. Integrating acquisitions into a new company is something else I did at ABC that I enjoyed. I also liked the atmosphere at Crisp and the attitude of the people I had met. If you’re going to move 3,000 miles you want to make sure you’re into a good atmosphere. It seemed like a good spot. And I think I’ll get used to get to the sunshine, but it might take a while.”