OCB Reprographics and Consolidated Reprographics both begin operating under the ARC brand name

Yesterday, I noticed an article in the Orange County Register (newspaper, the on-line edition) about the “name change” of two ARC-owned companies, OCB and CR.

For those of you who haven’t seen this news, here’s the article:

Two Orange County printers, OCB Reprographics and Consolidated Reprographics, are changing their names to their parent company, American Reprographics Co., or ARC for short.

The name change is effective immediately but will be introduced throughout the year. Both companies will continue to serve Orange County, said ARC senior regional vice president Roger Lackey, who started his career working on OCB's production floor.

ARC is a publicly traded company based in Walnut Creek.

Irvine-based OCB was founded in 1926 and has locations in Irvine, Costa Mesa and Orange. Costa Mesa-based CR was founded in 1966 and has locations in Tustin, Costa Mesa and Anaheim.

OCB joined ARC in 1993, and CR joined the larger company in 2002.

"We're taking on the name of the company we've helped build," Lackey said. "OCB and CR were built from the ground up here in Orange County. ARC offered both companies a chance to take it a step further, and we all jumped at the opportunity."

Historically, reprographics has been a niche business serving the construction industry and printing large format documents such as blueprints for architects, engineers and builders. More recently, reprographic companies have taken on small-format documents, color imaging and software for a variety of industries.

Joel’s comment:

This isn’t new news. It’s my understanding that this news was issued as a “Press Release” over a month ago, even though it may not be published on www.e-arc.com.

As most reprographers are aware, OCB [owned by David Hayes and his brother before it was sold to ARC (and, after ARC acquired OCB, it was run by Chuck Hayes, David’s step-son, until he passed away)] and Consolidated Reprographics (CR) [which was, prior to ARC’s purchase, owned by Lason Corp, who purchased CR from Greg Lundeen and partners (after the business was purchased by them from Phil Siegel)] are both very large, well-established players in the Southern, CA marketplace. Prior to ARC’s acquisition of OCB and CR, they were very keen competitors, but, in spite of the competition, both managed to grow large and quite profitable. ARC maintained the “separate” brand names (and operations) of each for years beyond ARC’s purchase of the companies. I would venture to guess that ARC’s decision to “consolidate” the two companies under one name, the ARC name, was driven mostly by the cost savings that will be derived from the consolidation of the two businesses. C2 Repro competes in that same market, and, rumor has it, that C2 Repro is expanding and doing quite well, in spite of the recession and in spite of the fact that ARC (OCB/CR) is a very formidable competitor.

Prior to the consolidation, A/E/C firms in the Orange County market basically had three “major” brands to choose from, OCB, CR or C2. Now A/E/C firms will have only two, ARC and C2.