Though the business is less than two years old, the growth has been swift. Mark Simmons, President of SpeedPro Imaging Apex, N.C., has a long background in retail, having served as operational manager for Target and retail vice president for Advance Auto Parts, not to mention 15 years with Wegmans Food Markets in the northeast. Wanting more control over his life, Simmons weighed his options. “I felt like I was at the point in my career where I really wanted to make my own decisions,” he said. “I had always dreamed of business ownership and I did a lot of due diligence on assessing different sorts of franchise models.” He was attracted to SpeedPro Imaging. “I liked the business-to-business aspect of it,” he said, “and I felt like my background was well-suited from an operational and sales standpoint to make it work.”

Apex, N.C., is located just outside the Raleigh-Durham area, and although the region is served by three other SpeedPro studios, such is the bustling business climate that the area can support them. “There's quite a bit of business to be had out here,” said Simmons. “We don't really feel like we're on top of and competing with each other.” Like many print businesses today, he’s not locked into any particular geography and has a number of clients all over the country. Although Internet sales play a role in drumming up new business, it’s old-fashioned networking that lands SpeedPro Apex a lot of its major customers. “The out-of-state work has all been by networking through various business contacts, folks that I’ve met along the way in my career and even just establishing relationships,” said Simmons. He is currently producing airport signage and other display graphics work for American Airlines in multiple cities. “That was all established through a contact that I had,” said Simmons. “You do one job and then next thing you know, you're doing two or three jobs.”

SpeedPro Apex has also done work for Advance Auto Parts, Coca-Cola, as well as other national and local retail brands. “I work with the rep at Coca-Cola and they'll coordinate the work to do some rebranding on privately-owned convenient stores and we do the artwork,” he said. “We blend in Coca-Cola images along with the private business owners’ logos. We've done quite a few of those projects spread across North Carolina.”