What started as a small operation has grown to become one of the top dealerships in the New York Metropolitan area thanks to a commitment to digital color devices.
Top >>> Watch Video: Jerry Blaine and the LDI team reflect on the company’s 20 years of success, including its culture of innovation, its strategic partnerships, its commitment to customers, and its commitment to giving back to the community.
Above (left to right): Paul Schwartz, partner/COO and Jay Feldman, partner/vice president, major accounts & MPS.
Above: President and CEO Jerry Blaine with his daughter Becky, LDI’s director of marketing.
In honor of LDI’s 20th anniversary, I asked our Editor-in-Chief Scott Cullen if we could write an article on the company’s recent celebration. Though we were invited, we were attending the PRINTING United Conference in Dallas and missed out on the fun. Yet, we wanted to tip our hats to this innovative company, one we have visited many times, and its accomplishments over the past 20 years.
On October 12, 1999, LDI (Leslie Digital Imaging) opened its doors for business. Jerry Blaine, current chief executive officer, and Paul Schwartz, current chief operating officer, became LDI’s first two employees of this new venture. Their first task was to assemble a team of professionals to address the most competitive marketplace in the U.S.—New York City.
Jerry and Paul reached out to former associates and invited them to join this new company, offering them a clean slate. This fresh start meant that those signing on would have an opportunity to help design an entirely new architecture as an imaging dealership.
They attracted 17 experienced individuals who were well seasoned in the marketing, sales, and servicing of products that print. Readers, I cannot overstate the challenges Jerry and Paul had to overcome to get LDI off the ground—they were considerable.
Looking back at 1999, data collected from our trip to Japan revealed little growth in product placements. With information and observations from our Japanese manufacturers about the global market, we learned numbers were clearly flat. The Japanese market was set to consume 777,384 placements and 80% of the placements were coming from Fuji Xerox, Canon, and Ricoh. At the time, the good news was that 63% of Japanese production was digital.
The market conditions in the U.S. were not much different, and everyone was rushing to come up with a digital product. The opportunity to convert an analog MIF to digital presented a huge opportunity, especially with the added element in the growth of color. In 1999, the projected U.S. market for digital color devices was 36,000 units, representing the “state of the art” for the copier/printer world.
In a well-defined and very mature market saturated with competition, Jerry and Paul were able to differentiate LDI by building on their knowledge and tapping into the growth opportunities.
Above: The departmental workgroup area in LDI’s showroom at 1500 Broadway in New York City.
“We had expertise in digital color by virtue of our experience in selling the first successful digital color copier, the Canon CLC-1,” recalled Jerry.
Having established a foundation in digital color, LDI emerged as a leader in the graphics market, adding “Color ToolBox” to the LDI name. The dealership had no difficulty in convincing Canon that LDI was fully capable of selling and supporting digital color copiers.
Being centered in the New York Metropolitan market, LDI broadened its approach from digital graphic color to pursue the enterprise space. Keep in mind, we are talking about 20 years ago, and the number of dealers that were successful in selling into that segment of the market was rather insignificant. Many dealers had become servicing partners for companies such as HP.
LDI seized that opportunity and took it one step further. Selling into the enterprise requires a national network of servicing dealers, but Canon did not have one. With Canon’s support and agreement, LDI built a service network for Canon products across the country.
By 2001, LDI had 100 employees and began its steady climb in the imaging space ranks. Today, LDI employs more than 300 people. The company has also added Sharp, Toshiba, and HP to its existing Canon relationship.
In recognizing the total adoption of digital printing, LDI opted to build a state-of-the-art IT services group that has enabled the company to add yet another profitable revenue stream to its business-mix equation. Additionally, working with eCopy and Nuance not only drives the digital engines, but it enables LDI to provide storage, retrieval, and document management for its rather substantial MIF of some 25,000 MFPs and 17,000 single function printers.
These strategic moves have enabled LDI to secure increased services revenue to its already well-established hardware business. As a result, LDI will have exceeded $80 million in revenue by the end of their next fiscal year.
LDI’s remarkable success story is one of creative strategic planning and innovative vision. Jerry and Paul launched LDI at a precarious time in the imaging industry, as the copier market was maturing. They had the foresight to understand that the conversion from analog to digital would be a winning bet, and they were right.
Today, LDI is one of the industry’s leading independent dealers, and none of this would have happened were it not for the strong and determined leadership of Jerry Blaine and Paul Schwartz.
We, at The Cannata Report, congratulate Jerry, Paul, and all of LDI for their 20 years in the imaging industry. Here’s to many more!
Above (left to right): Left to right: Barry Bunsis, partner/CFO | and In-house counsel with Laura Abele, vice president of operations.
Above (left to right): Dan Reyes, LDI CONNECT CIO and George Zurich, director of business development.
Above (left to right): Mark Marturano, partner/SVP, support services with Stephen Uresk, partner/SVP, technology.
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