\u201cEugene has always had a fascination with technology,\u201d said Paula, Eugene\u2019s wife and co-owner of Allegra Marketing Print Mail in Corona, California. \u201cHe keeps an eye on it and moves into it early on because he enjoys the challenge of figuring it out and working it into the operation. That\u2019s how we\u2019ve kept up with the times.\u201d<\/p>\n
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Eugene launched his printing business when he was in high school in 1972 working out of his mother\u2019s garage. \u201cI was doing silk screening and had a multilith press and a paper cutter,\u201d said Eugene. \u201cMy mother was the bookkeeper.\u201d<\/p>\n
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Paula and Eugene married in 1976. \u201cEugene moved the business into a little shop,\u201d said Paula. \u201cI finished two more years of school and was going to get a job, but we were ready to get into typesetting and I could type. So, I became the typesetter. Neither of us has ever had another job or employer. It\u2019s always been our own business\u2014our baby.\u201d<\/p>\n
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\u201cWe first got into wide-format printing through a company called Encad in the late \u201890s,\u201d said Eugene. \u201cTheir wide-format inkjet printers were primarily for engineers and architects. It had its limitations, but it grew into other industries.\u201d<\/p>\n
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As independent printers, Paula and Eugene were active members of the National Association of Quick Printers. \u201cIt provided us with benchmarking, peer interaction and educational opportunities,\u201d said Paula. \u201cWhen it began to crumble, we looked for something to replace it\u2014another association or peer performance group. We made a list of what we needed to have. We were very surprised when Eugene encountered Allegra at a trade show and found out they provided those things on our list, including succession planning, because at some point we\u2019ll want to sell the business.\u201d<\/p>\n
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Paula and Eugene became Allegra franchise owners and members of the Alliance Franchise Brands network in the fall of 2010 and rebranded their independent print business on January 1, 2011.<\/p>\n
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\u201cOur wide-format business kept creeping up from 2% to 4% of sales, and when it hit 10%, it was growing into its own department,\u201d said Eugene. \u201cWe wanted to continue the growth trend, but there was a lot of training and product knowledge that we didn\u2019t have. We knew that if we added the Image360 brand from the Sign & Graphics Division of Alliance Franchise Brands to our business, we\u2019d get the information and training we needed to push on to the next level.\u201d<\/p>\n
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Paula and Eugene signed their Image360 franchise agreement in January 2017, and officially opened their dual-brand Allegra and Image360 Center on three months later. \u201cIn the first year, our wide-format business grew to almost 25% of our revenue,\u201d said Paula. \u201cIn 2018, for the full year, sales increased to 35% of our total business. We’ve done some huge projects over the last couple of years that we probably wouldn\u2019t have been asked to quote on. We like to say, \u2018A sign for every surface\u2014windows, walls and floors.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
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\u201cFor the future from a wide-format technology standpoint, everything is digital and pretty soon everything will be customized,\u201d said Eugene. \u201cInstead of going to the store and buying off-the shelf wallpaper you\u2019ll be able to design your own. Even now, when you buy ceramic flooring tiles, they\u2019re actually inkjet printed and then fired.\u201d<\/p>\n
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\u201cPart of our wide-format sales strategy with Image360 is we\u2019re reaching out to a larger marketplace,\u201d said Paula. \u201cEighty percent of our clients are within a 10-mile radius of our dual-brand Center. From our Allegra side, we\u2019re able to promote our Image360 business and wide-format printing through direct mail. We have an outside sales person and we\u2019re always networking, which brings me to Eugene\u2019s second life: he\u2019s completed four terms on the Corona City Council and served as Mayor in 2007, 2012 and 2015. He’s always had an active interest in signs and how they affect businesses. He has the institutional knowledge that has helped inform our clients how to comply with city regulations.\u201d<\/p>\n
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\u201cIf we have a niche, it\u2019s our ability to build customer relationships,\u201d said Eugene. \u201cThey know that we\u2019re a one-stop solution and one less thing to worry about for all their marketing and printing needs and now their branding and signage projects. They know they can throw whatever at us, and we just handle it.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
\u201cEugene has always had a fascination with technology,\u201d said Paula, Eugene\u2019s wife and co-owner of Allegra Marketing Print Mail in Corona, California. \u201cHe keeps an eye on it and moves into it early on because he enjoys the challenge of figuring it out and working it into the operation. That\u2019s how we\u2019ve kept up with…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":4086,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18,25],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4085","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-business-development","category-the-print-industry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.allegramarketingprint.com\/franchise\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4085","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.allegramarketingprint.com\/franchise\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.allegramarketingprint.com\/franchise\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.allegramarketingprint.com\/franchise\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.allegramarketingprint.com\/franchise\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4085"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.allegramarketingprint.com\/franchise\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4085\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.allegramarketingprint.com\/franchise\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4086"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.allegramarketingprint.com\/franchise\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4085"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.allegramarketingprint.com\/franchise\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4085"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.allegramarketingprint.com\/franchise\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4085"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}