AlphaGraphics sees acquisition as a game-changer

From large to small: The new printer at AlphaGraphics also allows printing on a smaller scale, including adding logos to hockey pucks. (Photo by Paul Briand)

They were teammates on the University of New Hampshire volleyball team; now they’re teammates on a business venture they’re hoping to advance with a game-changing purchase they made during the economic uncertainty of the pandemic.

Chris Carrier and Chris Osberg operate AlphaGraphics, a visual marketing company at 933 Islington St. in Portsmouth’s West End that specializes in printing.

They own the AlphaGraphics franchise in Portsmouth and in Concord, Mass., as well as Infinite Imaging in York, Maine.

After graduating from UNH in 1992, Carrier worked in the technology marketing and sales sector, tired of living out of a suitcase and looking for a change. He bought the AlphaGraphics franchise in Concord, Mass., in 2016.

Osberg’s background was in operations, and in 2016 was also looking for a change.

“Chris and I have been friends ever since college. We were talking about it one day, and he was in a similar situation — it was time for him to do something different with his career also,” said Carrier. “So we decided to partner and not just here, but the whole company itself and expand.”

They acquired what was Infinite Imaging on Islington Street as well as the sister shop in York in 2019 and transitioned the Portsmouth location into another AlphaGraphics franchise on top of the one Carrier had acquired in Concord. Across the three properties, they employ 23 people.

“I was more the project management side, operations, which is one of the reasons why we thought this was such a great mix,” said Osberg. “He had more of the sales and marketing experience, and I had a lot of process engineering, process improvement and project management. A great combination of skills between the two of us would allow us to continue to grow and improve the way that both operations are running.”

Infinite Imaging had a longstanding presence in the West End, and for a while Carrier and Osberg co-branded the company.

“It was Infinite Imaging soon to be AlphaGraphics, and AlphaGraphics formerly Infinite Imaging, then just AlphaGraphics,” said Carrier.

Each AlphaGraphics store is 100 percent owned by its owners. Carrier serves as owner and president. Osberg is co-owner and chief operating officer.

They run what they describe as a business-to-business company, with 80 percent of their printing services provided primarily to business customers for visual marketing, large-format printing in particular.

“Every company that exists buys stuff from somebody, and we just try to convince them that they should buy all that stuff from us,” said Carrier. “Every business uses the services that we offer. We just have to expand that market and get into those businesses.”

“We work to build your thing, whatever that happens to be in that visual marketing realm,” added Osberg. “We work with the specific client to create that one thing that’s unique to them, that helps them to sell their brands.”

To that end, they’ve added another tool to the toolbox: a wide-format printer that can put an image on just about anything.

Their EFI Pro 16h LED Wide Format Printer was manufactured and supplied by Electronics for Imaging Inc. (EFI), a global technology company with a plant in Londonderry. The printer is capable of printing directly on a wide range of substrates that cannot withstand the high heat required for curing or drying with traditional UV or latex printers.

The new machine not only gives them more printing options, the work can be done more quickly and efficiently.

An example of the range of the new printer includes a 16-foot-high mural on the side of a building at 165 Court St. in Portsmouth commemorating Ruth Blay, who was hanged in Portsmouth in 1768 for concealing an illegitimate birth.

On the other end of the spectrum, logos and other artwork can also be scaled to fit on a three-inch diameter hockey puck.

In terms of efficiency, there are fewer steps in the process. What used to take an hour now takes eight minutes. Carrier and Osberg say they now save about four hours in labor every day and have eliminated the need for reprinted jobs that resulted from human error.

Like most businesses during the Covid-19 pandemic, AlphaGraphics had to shift, meeting their customers’ changing needs while maintaining a safe work environment, so that employees could come in and do the hands-on work.

“We have to be nimble, and when the business environment changes, we have to change with it, or we get left behind,” said Carrier. “When the pandemic hit, we knew that this was going to be long term. We had to change our business models. We weren’t visiting customers anymore. Also, we used to rely on revenue from events. What do we have to do? People were advertising that they were open, so all of a sudden we’re sending out a lot more mailers to people, sending menus to homes and Covid signage.”

They engaged in what they called “random acts of signage,” creating Covid-related signage at no charge to businesses.

“We would go into local businesses and say: Here’s a bunch of floor graphics you might need, on us,” said Carrier.

“When it came down to it, we had to be here and we were happy to do it, because we wanted to keep people busy. We didn’t want to lay people off. We wanted to make sure that our staff was kind of cranking,” said Osberg.

They made the printer purchase based on their belief that when the economy started to recover from the pandemic, they would be ready to respond.

“Knowing that things were going to pick up, that we’re still going to be around, because we made a determination that we’re still going to be around. It was the right timing, so we could be ready for everything to come back and rebound,” said Carrier.

“Our customer-facing folks have become more confident in committing to job fulfillment,” he added. “That’s a benefit you can’t necessarily measure, but you can feel it and it makes a real impact.”