Last month, I was in Syracuse University’s Carrier Dome, watching the SU football team lose to perennial rival Pitt. To avoid watching the action—such as it was—on the field, I decided to cast my gaze elsewhere and paid more attention than usual to the signage, banners, and other printed graphics adorning and festooning the Dome. (Oh, and of course, the graphics at the concession stand. I saw those rather a lot....) The other reason I was paying such close attention to the Dome graphics was that the day before, I had visited the company that printed a fairly large percentage of them—SpeedPro Imaging of Central New York in East Syracuse.

SpeedPro of Central New York has been findng itself doing more and more vehicle wraps

Founded about four-and-a-half years ago, SpeedPro of Central New York is owned and run by Bob Kelleher, who came to the printing industry from an engineering and software background. After 35 years selling software for electronic design automation, he began to weary of the ups and downs of the software business. “It’s very cyclical,” said Kelleher, “so during the last downturn, I thought maybe it’s time to find something else.” A number of his peers were looking into franchise opportunities, so he paid a call on a franchise consultant in New Hampshire who introduced him to available franchises in a variety of different industries, such as health care, house painting, floor covering—and printing. SpeedPro Imaging was looking to open a location in the Syracuse area and even though Kelleher lived 75 miles south in Binghamton, the franchise opportunity appealed to him—not just because of the high-tech equipment, but also the small staff (SpeedPro of Central New York has five full-time employees).