Connections! in SW Florida - Featuring Chris Rabkin with ImageProjektions

Good not afternoon yet. I always want to say afternoon. My days start so early that it feels like half a day is done, but it's still before noon, so good before afternoon. Thank you for joining us. My name is Renee Hahn, and I am here to bring you one of our local business Spotlights and am honored to have the opportunity to bring Chris Radkin here with you, with me, with all of us. So Chris, I'd love to have the audience learn a little bit about you before we jump in talking about image projections today. So share with us, please help us meet you.

Yeah, hey Renee, you know, thanks for having me on. I am a commercial artist. I'm also an IT professional. I started out back in the '90s after I went to school, came back here to Naples to start a business. And, you know, so we've been kind of doing this print and design and large format stuff for quite a while now. I helped manage some of the Florida Sir Speedy art flows with Sir Speedy Corporate. And so I have a pretty vast background of printing and we roll marketing into that. We've hit just about every division of industry you can think of from realtors like yourself. We used to own a company called Marketing Pro Realtor. And then I had a really great partner who moved up north and she actually bought me out and took the business up there. We had another company called 99logos.com where I think in 5 years we did 25,000 logos, which was kind of crazy. Wow, wow. And then, you know, I'm actually heavily involved in the aquarium side of the pet trade because of the large format capabilities. Trade shows are a big part of that industry. They're not so much now because we haven't had any trade shows since October of last year because of this COVID-19 thing, and we haven't had any domestic trade shows since the end of February.

Yeah, well, I'm sorry, Chris, go ahead.

Normally we would be designing trade show booths and printing the associated marketing materials and designing those materials and websites that go along with them, but now we're kind of retooled things to adapt to this new situation.

So yeah, well, and I want to explore more on the business side because that's so important and a key part of what we're talking about. Before I let you off the hook completely though, Chris, I'd love to know, I I know you have children. Yes. Where are you originally from? What brought you here?

Well, I've actually been a resident of Naples since 1975. My parents moved from Tulsa, Oklahoma to Naples, Florida. My grandparents moved a few years prior. My grandmother on my dad's side She was actually a registered nurse and she worked at the Naples Medical Center for, I don't know, 20, 25 years, worked for a gentleman, Dr. Myers. And so we have some longstanding roots. My wife's parents, her dad moved here back in the early '80s and her grandmother, you know, they're part of the Naples— we call them the Naples Originals. Uh, you know, they're— we have roots with the Turners. Uh, we have Allen Construction. Well, all those people have been part of our lives for years and years.

I love it because, as you probably appreciate, a lot of people I meet here in Naples are from somewhere else. It's been the melting pot of the U.S. in some terms, so it's not very often that I get to meet people that have had such longevity and roots in Naples. So thank you. I just wanted to make sure people got to know who you are. And one of the things I've loved about doing these connections things is it's introducing me to new businesses as well. So Chris, before starting this, I hadn't had occasion to come into contact with you either. So I'm as excited as the audience is to learn a little bit about your business. So we started to talk about some of those things and the fact that you've got this IT background, you've got some marketing pieces to it. Talk to us about Image Projections, because even when we were doing the introduction, I know there's different segments that you're obviously hugely talented because you've, you've built other businesses that have gone off and flourished. But give us the boundaries and the full scope of Image Projections, and then we can talk about any of the subparts that make sense.

Okay, well, the full scope of what we do is creative design, and then that travels and translates into printed matters for marketing, large format print. We do, like you said, trade show design. We have an extensive network of manufacturers that will, will build trade show booths per our specs for our customers. We print just around 3,000 boxes of business cards a month, or before the, whatever this is going on right now, we were doing that. So we have a traditional print background as well. We do everything from full-color print to traditional thermographic printing, foil. And then we have a web and e-commerce side, which is where my IT background comes in. We have, you know, there's some security and some other things. So my IT degree is actually in information system security with an emphasis on PCI compliance and web and internet security. So mainly what we do when we, let's say, we're, you know, you come to me and you say, I have this great business idea and You know, I, this is where I want to be in 5 years. So we take that box that you just handed to us and we unpack it and we produce everything from your basic logo all the way to, you know, your marketing materials, your printed matter. And, and we can do web and e-commerce for you. We do have a consulting side. We do, uh, we do some ERP consulting. We've, you know, I've— we've done some work for a company that was owned by Fila. Um, we actually built a, uh, a website that you can custom create knitted socks. And this company, they produce socks for just about every college in the country, as well as, you know, Susie Soccer Mom and Freddie Football Coach. And, um, so we, we help them integrate their, their website with the designer, which then helps you, the soccer mom or the, the football dad, track that order through a dealer from its position in the art department to the knitting floor all the way out to shipping.

So now let me ask you, Chris, on any of those things, do you ever— is it always the package or are there pieces? So just hypothetically, say somebody came and they, um, they wanted a logo, they didn't need the website, they wanted bits and pieces. Can you customize those packages for your customers based on their needs?

Everything is customizable. You know, it's piecemeal. The, you know, the Image Pro 365 website that we're working on now that will have a, you know, that has a single print component. So it has the majority of the print offerings we have from large format to standard business cards. It also has a self-designer. So if you already have something, then you can, you know, you can go about designing it yourself. There's design assistance feature as well. And then any of the local customers can call and say, hey, you know, I just, I need help with this logo, or, you know, we have this logo that we've been using for years. We just need to refresh our marketing materials. So each, each vertical in our, our company can be compartmentalized or it can be offered as a complete balanced package.

Okay. And I have some follow-up questions, but I want to, I want to stay with a high-level one for a minute. You talked about, you know, your, Your services are obviously industry agnostic and size of company agnostic because you can work those things. But give folks some examples. You gave the example relating to myself earlier that you could, it could be an individual entrepreneur like a real estate professional, or in some cases you support big companies. Tell me a little bit about sort of the sweet spot, because what I've found in businesses most of the time businesses can support, you know, their talent and services could apply to anyone, but maybe it's not budget efficient for big or small, or, you know, where's your sweet spot in your, you know, your cross-section of what makes the most sense customer-wise?

I don't want to say we don't really have a sweet spot because everything that we have can be tailored to the size of and budget of your business. We have print products, we have luxury print products, and then we have budget-friendly print products. Most of our products are, if you were to compare us to say Vistaprint, our entry-level products are what they would consider their luxury products. And we're able to offer them at right around the same price. You had already contracted with somebody and had all your visuals done, but you needed large format print stuff for trade shows. We have a multitude of, of products that will support just about every budget. And then, you know, we're not here to put anyone out of business, and we're certainly not here to, to not help people. So we have programs that we, um, that we participate in with our suppliers. Like, we have a, uh, an incentive program. It's based on the amount of products that we buy. They give us incentive dollars. And I've done this with a few startup companies where I can take those incentive dollars and I can apply them to trade show products, which essentially lowers the cost for us to buy them on the supply side. And then I can lower the price. And so you're really just paying for design and delivery.

Yeah, that's fantastic. Thank you. I appreciate that. With, you know, some of the offerings for a simple-minded person like me are very obvious. I get, you know, website design. I know what that product looks like. I understand business cards. When you're talking about the trade shows and some of that, what are some of the print collateral things that you work on outside of just pure paper stock, right? So talk to us about some of those offerings if somebody were to, get involved, get you involved because they were going to participate in a trade show in their space, what would some of those offerings be that you would have? Both the design as well as the printing execution.

So we'll take some of our local quote unquote trade shows. The Better Business Bureau has a business gathering that is like a mini trade show. There's a big wedding expo up at the Hertz Arena usually every year. Trade show products would be retractable roll-up banners. They would be tension fabric backdrops, which are basically, they're like big stretchy pillowcases that we dye sublimate print. And they're fitted over a frame and they can be illuminated from the inside. What it does is it creates a branded space for your business. And we can, because this is full-color printing, We can put photographs on there. We can custom create things based on what business vertical you're in. Some of the other things would be lighted signs. We have companies that we partner with that will do LED acrylic signs. We have table throws. We full-color print dye-sublimated table throws in different lengths. And then every once in a while we'll have someone that has a unique circumstance where they'll have kind of like a pop-up trade show booth that doubles as a retail space. So it's kind of like a mini booth and we'll custom create tension fabric coverings for that, and we can pretty much customize a product for everything.

No, that's great. And I agree with you talking about those things, Chris. My mind's running because even in my tiny window of the world in real estate, Naples Area Board of Realtors does a big trade show every year. And so we have, whether it's security companies, photography companies, title companies, all of those actually have trade show booths that they set up and use a lot of the products that you're talking about. One question I have, and this may vary by product, I recognize, so I'll ask it as a general question and you can answer it as specific as you need. When people, you know, there's, there's obviously some people that will have a need starting back to your point. If I'm a new business startup, I may need help on the design front, and then you can take it through the lifespan of some of the other marketing collateral that you've talked about, whether that be site or print. What, what are some of the turnaround times if somebody wanted to engage with image projections? You know, what are your planning and execution timelines and some of your big product offerings?

Most of our timelines are pretty short. If you came to me and, you know, we had a complete idea package, generally the design takes 2 or 3 days. And then we have some of the fastest print turnaround times in the industry. Without our friendly COVID-19 issues, our lead times have been extended a little bit because some of our production facilities are short-staffed. But normally it's, you know, if we finish something and it's approved in the morning on a Monday, it prints that day and it ships out the next day. And we ship all over the world. We've been, normally we would be doing real estate yard sign packages now. Now we've converted that over to, hey, our restaurant is open yard sign packages. And those are taking anywhere from 2 to 3 days to produce in the 5-packs that we're offering. And then, you know, UPS and FedEx are a little slower these days because, you know, I don't, I don't know whether they're short-staffed or not. It seems things are taking longer to get there, but normally it's pretty quick.

We're just thrilled they're still working. It's like the only visitor we get these days, and I keep them. I can tell you selfishly, I do a lot of printing, as you can imagine, from whether it's brochures to business cards to postcards. And I can tell you, Chris, that the turnaround time that you're talking about is very impressive because it's not unusual. You know, Visa is an extreme, right? That's usually because it comes out of the US. Outside of the US, that takes a good week or more. So with your turnaround times, you know, I think that's a great idea. Even if— but first of all, it's really good when you need something quick. But even if you don't need it, you know, getting the collateral on hand is important. So I'm glad, glad that you shared that. Chris, talk to us a little bit about, you know, we are— and one of the reasons I started these live streams is because of the challenges that businesses are facing with COVID and what that's done. Talk to us a little bit about your world with COVID Is there— have you guys been able to continue to do everything you're doing? Anything that that's affected? Anything you want to share in terms of within the COVID situation that we're in?

You know, it's crazy because never in my life when I started this would I have thought I'd be printing floor decals that say, "Stay 6 feet away from me." So that's one of the things that's changed. One of the other things that that's changed for us is just kind of the scope. We have plastic or acrylic barriers that we're offering. We've retooled some production lines to help make plastic face shields for just people that work in the grocery store or healthcare workers. Helping out restaurants to say, you know, hey, we have curbside available. You know, I don't know if some of your viewers are probably on our mailing list. That's another thing that's changed as well is the focus of our mailing list has been to show people that we have visibility products that say that we're open, but also convey a sense of even though I'm open, I still care about your health and your safety, and that's why we're providing these non-skid floor decals that say, "Stay 6 feet apart," or, "This is a one-way aisle," or this banner says, "Curbside pickup available." Those are the things that have kind of changed the most. Most of our production is still as it was. The traditional print and full-color stuff hasn't changed. Large format has changed drastically. Like I said, with the floor decals, we haven't been producing any trade show graphics at all because there's no trade shows. So, I mean, order volume's gone down, but work really hasn't changed much. I mean, we still have websites that we're managing. We have several big e-commerce websites that we're managing for companies in the pet trade. They've mentioned to me that their order volume has slowed down, but they're using this time to add more products, to clean up things. We have some really fantastic systems that help manage e-commerce with one of our specific software packages. So this has kind of been the time where people are just rethinking things. We've rethought things. We have, you know, it's given us time to really dig into our website. We started working on the ImagePRO365 website and the new one in August last year, and we're just about ready to finish. So it gave us time to finish that online designer. It gave us a chance to add another 2,500 singular products on there. So once we're done at the end of the summer, we'll have probably close to, I wanna say 6,500 products on the website for print.

That's great. That's one thing you hope to exploit because COVID has been a really tough situation for many, whether it's for health or for income. But there have been some side benefits, you know, the house cleaning, getting to, for each of our businesses, really kind of looking at doing so that when the doors open and when the demand starts to pick up, you know, we're ready for it and we're better than we were when the doors closed. So you're right, there's, there's an opportunity either through your services, if people need them, you know, whether it's, it's, if you've got a website that you've been neglecting, you know, that's one of the things I, I built my website on a, on a Weebly platform. And I know at some point I've gotta do something about that. So whether it's the time to do that, or maybe you've been working on something and you wanna do some redesign work. I think one of the things that's really unique, Chris, about Image Projections is, and I attribute this to you, is it's not often that you find people that have the technical side that you do. And also have the creative side. And then, oh, by the way, you can create some executable products. So I think that's a lot of diversity under one roof.

Yes. So, you know, one of the things that, you know, because this is eventually going to end, you know, so realtors and, you know, restaurants especially, now is the time. And we've always, even with ImagePro, um, the, uh, Marketing Pro Realtor company. You know, there's always ebbs and flow in, in the market, and the successful people in real estate are the ones that know that they have to market all the time. You have to continue even when times are tough. You can't cinch your pockets shut because if you don't market, then you're not visible. And that's unfortunately even with large companies Across any industry, that's usually the first budget that gets cut is marketing. So we taught, we teach people to do what's called cyclical marketing, where they plan on a 28-day schedule and you try and get everything you can done in that 28-day schedule. And what doesn't get done, you don't just not finish it, you roll it over into the next month. So it continues on and on and on. And that helps you stay visible. Even if you have to pare back the amount of visibility marketing that you do, it's still never a good idea to not. So with restaurants, really, this is now the time to start thinking about how you're going to stay in front of your people, you know, whether it's posting on social media or it's putting out banners that say, you know, We're open. And the products that we have, I mean, they're very inexpensive. So they're almost, I don't wanna say disposable, but most of them are. With yard signs, you could actually have a set of yard signs that go with each phase of Florida's reopening. So that's what you should be thinking about now. You just have to retool your thinking.

Yeah, no, that's fantastic. One thing I wanted to ask in terms of your customer base, because you mentioned you guys can ship anywhere globally, I'm just curious, Chris, if you took your customer base and put it in a pie graph, what percentage of that, those customers are local, or what percentage do you pick up outside of Southwest Florida?

Um, I would say that my Southwest Florida customer base is right around 10%. It should be more, but, you know, most of my customers either come through word of mouth through social media. In the past, they've come through word of mouth through other customers. And, you know, I don't exactly know why it hasn't been more on the, you know, the local side, but, you know, I have far more customers outside of the state of Florida in general than I do on the inside. But, you know, now is a good time to, you know, start advertising. We have been advertising, we've been sending out emails, letting people know of our product offerings. So we're gonna stay more local.

Well, we need to change that, don't we, Chris? We're gonna, we're gonna have to take your business because there are probably more people like me that to that point didn't know about image projections. And it's, you know, again, I'm impressed by the wide array of offerings that you have. So, so thankful. I do— we've got about 4 minutes left, and I want to come back to highlighting some of the other segments we're going to have. But let me just give you an open-ended one, Chris, for anybody that's tuning into this either while we're live or as a follow-up when they're sitting down later and catching up on their Facebook, what would you like to share with the viewers today that we haven't already covered?

Well, I just want to say, you know, we have, we have products that any division of industry can use. You know, in driving around and doing some of my day-to-day business, I've seen people adapting, which is good, and I've seen people have adapted kind of in a not so good way, recycling banners and using masking tape to say we're open. I just wanted to promote the adaptation in circumstances like this and that there's always a way for us to help. You know, if you don't have the money for a banner, then we have avenues to help people at a very low cost provide good visibility services. So, you know, with that said, adaptation is good. We all have to do it. Even under normal circumstances, we have to adapt every once in a while. Adaptation is essential for growth. So, you know, we're all in business together, so let's, let's help each other stay in business.

Amen to that. I, I think that's a great way to close this out. So whether you've got needs on the front end of helping with some creativity, of whether it be logo design or, or any design, you've got Image Projections that can help with that. If you've got print needs in any form, whether it's on paper or, or other products, trade show things, banners, banners, image projections can help with that. If you've got website hosting, it sounds like not just the creation of, but the ongoing hosting as a form of your marketing or commerce, image projections can help with that. So for those of you that don't know Chris, no more excuse, now you do. Um, I wanted to highlight a couple of the segments we have coming up going into the end of the week. And as a reminder, these sessions, these live streams were all about connecting people and businesses. We are so privileged and blessed to live in a slice of paradise of Naples, or if you're in Fort Myers or Bonita Springs, you know, we enjoy a lot of things by living down here. And a big part of what we enjoy is all in and thanks to the businesses that are here, whether it's restaurants, whether it's service providers. And so I really want to make sure that we are doing everything we can to buy local, support local, utilize local services. And to your point earlier, Chris, we can all come out of this stronger. So I hope that, I truly and sincerely hope that a few people that didn't know about image projections do know about them. After today. Some of the other businesses I've got tomorrow, Massage Heights, locally owned. It's a franchise business, but those are all locally owned here in the, you know, the offices in Naples. So we've got the dancers coming on for that. I've got Hattinger Floors and Cabinets coming on the day after that. So that would be Thursday. Friday, I have a very artistic entrepreneur coming on to talk about Muralistica, and that'll round out the week. I've got a few scheduled for next week. So if you happen to know any businesses that you think would benefit from a 30-minute segment to be able to talk about their business, please send them my way, Renee@YourNaplesExpert.com, and I'd be happy to, to get them scheduled on. So Chris, we are at the hour, so I, or the half an hour. I want to give you one last shot. What's the best way to get a hold of you if someone is interested in working with Image Projection?

Um, you can go to imagepro365.com and send a message to the website, or, um, I'm on Facebook, Chris Rapkin. They can search for me, I respond to my messages, and then they can search for ImagePro 365 on Facebook, um, and Image Projections. It all comes up to the same page and they can send messages through that.

Well, great. And Chris, I'm so happy to have gotten to meet you. I believe everything happens for a reason, and I'm, again, I'm glad this forum has given me that opportunity to meet you and get to know you a little bit better.

That's awesome, and it's great to have seen some of the people that, like Henger Flooring, I worked with Judy for a long time and her husband Tom. You know, yesterday's segment. I know them, so it's really great to see local people on this, and I really, you know, I'm really appreciative of you doing this. It's really a great service.

Well, my pleasure, and I hope everybody has a great Cinco de Mayo. So cheers! Cheers! Thank you, everyone. Thanks for joining.

Bye, take care.