Island Pro Digital : The Problem Solvers

While most companies were trying to remain afloat during the recession in 2009, Hauppauge, NY-based trade printer Island Pro Digital was just getting started. By creating a physical and digital media platform, co-owners Kurt and Kyle Kubik poised the company for growth and transformed it into one of the most successful (and busiest) trade shops in Long Island.

"After working 22 years for a prepress company that was going out of business, I was at a crossroads and needed to decide if I wanted to work for someone else or start my own business," recalls Kurt Kubik. "So, I spoke with my wife and my son Kyle, a communications major with a video background, and Kyle and I decided to launch our own company."

Feeling that the general public has a misconception of the printing industry, they decided to move away from falling into that category of business, and started billing Island Pro Digital as a media fabrication company.

Today, aside from the trade and specialty work that other printers can't handle, the company serves a variety of vertical markets, including ad agencies, designers, manufacturers and small businesses/independent entrepreneurs. It offers a wide range of services, including sheetfed offset and digital printing with variable data capabilities, wide-format digital printing, binding and finishing, as well as the production of cartons, mockups and short-run packaging.

An Expansive Reach

The 13-employee operation now serves hundreds of clients in the greater New York area and across the United States. To accommodate this growth, last October the company moved from a 6,000-square-foot facility in Islandia, NY, into a 10,000-square-foot location in Hauppauge, NY.

Printed products range from posters and banners, to business cards, stationery, forms, calendars, and trade show and point-of-purchase (POP) displays. Island Pro also offers video and audio production, Website development, Website hosting and e-mail blasts. "Research and development has become a unique part of our business, as well, because it really pushes our limits to what we can handle and produce with the equipment that we have in-house," adds Kurt Kubik.

Today, Island Pro Digital rarely turns down a project and finds that, from conceptualization to fulfillment, most jobs can now be produced in-house. For example, when a client needed a large box order of 60,000 boxes—a typical run is 15,000 boxes—the shop was able to produce them in just five business days. "It wasn't based on our prices, but more that we were able to turn around a job like this—which isn't really our niche—in such a short amount of time," Kurt Kubik points out. He also recalls another job where a client needed 150 boxes the next day. "I told the customer to come back in an hour. While he was gone, we created a mockup. It wasn't perfect, but it was good enough for us to know which direction we needed to take. I will never forget the look on his face—it was like I birthed his first child."

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