Bid Results - for City of St Petersburg (FL) Reprographics Services Bid

A couple of weeks ago, one of my reprographics industry friends brought to my attention that the City of St Petersburg (FL) had recently released a invitation to bid for the City’s “reprographics services” requirements. Two year contract.

Bids were opened on February 15^th.

There were three bidders – here are the profiles of those three bidders:

S&R Blueprint

Which is actually “Rapid Blueprint Co” of Tampa, and Rapid is owned by Chris Zametz. (Chris also owns Digital Imaging Services, a company that sells and services reprographics equipment.) S&R Blueprint is a small shop in St Petersburg, which is located in a facility that, at some point, must have been someone’s house.

Ridgway’s LLC Southern, which, of course, is owned by American Reprographics (ARC)

But, actually, the name of the ARC division that would be the vendor for the work would be National Graphic Imaging, NGI. The ARC/NGI downtown St Pete location was recently relocated to a modern retail store in downtown St Pete. For approximately 5 years by now, NGI has been the “contract vendor” for the City of St Pete’s reprographics work (under the previous bid and contract issued by the City).

Jiffy Reprographics

Jiffy does not maintain an office location in St Petersburg, but does have a large, modern reprographics facility in downtown Clearwater, about a 25 minute drive from downtown St Petersburg (when traffic is not totally choked up.) Jiffy is owned by Bob Roperti and Mary Dianne Roperti. Bob Roperti is one of the premier veterans of the reprographics industry, and he and Dianne have owned Jiffy since around 1988/9. Bob is currently the Vice President (and a Board Member of) the IRgA.

The “low” bidder for the deal was S&R Blueprint. So, it looks like the “incumbent vendor”, NGI (Ridgways/ARC/NGI), will soon lose the work that the City of St Pete was buying under this contract.

For those of you who like to look at the “bid abstracts” of reprographics bids, I’ve posted, on Google Docs, the “bid abstract” prepared by the City of St Pete Purchasing Department. You can find that bid abstract by clicking on this link:

https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&pid=explorer&chrome=true&srcid=0B81al4kFAU9JYTI3NjAxMmMtMGUzNy00MmMxLWJmZGItNmJlYzg4MzBiMTBi&hl=en&authkey=CK_W7PcL

If you do look at the bid abstract, you will see some funny stuff. What I’m referring to are the unit prices that were bid for quite a number of different line items – the “unit prices” for many of the items vary greatly. You seldom see this in a bid for “printing” services, but it is not uncommon to see wide variations in unit prices (bid) for “reprographics” services. Games people play?