IO Labs in Pawtucket specializes in high-end digital printing, such as this reproduction of an historical map of Little Compton. Pictured, from left, are Brad Foster, Cara Burgess, and partners Stuart Linacre and Ted Peffer.
COMPANY PROFILE
IO Labs
Owners: Ted Peffer and Stuart Linacre
Type of business: High-end custom printing and imaging
Location: 558 Mineral Spring Ave.,
Pawtucket
Employees: 4 (incl. owners)
Year established: 2000
Annual revenue: WND
Pawtucket company specializes in fine arts, textiles, one-of-a-kind items
Rhode Island's Market Has Changed. Developers, Builders, Investors and Sellers Must Change With It.
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The moment you step into IO Labs, you’re surrounded by art: drawings and paintings, photographs, hand-drawn maps, intricately designed fabric banners and multicolored signs.
It all comes out slowly, in big sheets, out of oversize printers in the middle of the room.
Then, IO Labs’ team of four takes the sheets and hand-cuts them, as needed, on large tables.
The colors are intense and full of life; the blacks are crisp. The papers are nothing like what you’d find at ordinary print shops. They’re thick rag papers, museum-quality photo papers, and display materials that, if you inquire, you’ll discover may be fire-rated for use as wallpaper or indoor decorations. There are also textiles, from cotton twill to silk chiffon.
IO Labs is a printing company, but it’s a very different kind of printing company than you’re likely to find, say, in downtown Providence or College Hill.
Typical customers, said president and co-owner Ted Peffer, include artists looking to produce high-quality copies of their work; historical societies looking to preserve old maps, photos and documents, by making high-resolution copies; and interior designers and architects looking for one-of-a-kind wall coverings, scrims and banners.
“We opened IO Labs to address more high-end fine art and photography and interiors, as opposed to signage,” Peffer said. “We wanted to find a niche [as a] more customized digital printing company. And on the whole, we’ve been pretty successful.”
This is the second printing company Peffer has co-owned. A veteran of the graphic design and printing worlds, he used to be a partner at a printing company in downtown Providence, and Linacre was an employee. In 2000, the two decided to start a new company together.
They set up shop in a converted garage at Eagle Square, with just about 1,500 square feet of space, Peffer said, but a good base of commercial clients. Since then, they have grown at a rate of about 50 percent per year, he said.
Some of it has been word-of-mouth and personal contacts. Their local clients include well-known institutions such as the RISD Museum, the Bell Gallery at Brown University, the Trinity Repertory Company, and AS220.
They also work with large business clients, such as Delta Dental of Rhode Island. But while about half their revenue comes from commercial print jobs, they’ve focused their marketing on interiors and fine arts, and that’s where they’re growing the most, Peffer said.
They advertise in Art New England and Art on Paper, as well as online, with Google ads and Web listings geared to artists who need fine-art prints or textile work. Already they’ve built a solid out-of-state clientele – about 20 percent of their current business, with jobs so far in about 40 states and 15 countries, according to Peffer’s staff.
Nicole van Dam, a Santa Barbara, Calif., artist who paints silk scarves, sends them high-resolution images of her paintings and they print them for her on silk chiffon.
The Mount Vernon Estate, in Virginia, sent them a strip of carpet from a room there and they made a one-twelfth-scale replica of the full carpet in cotton twill, for a miniature of the house.
Every week, Tiny Showcase, a Providence-based Web site dedicated to spotlighting artists in Rhode Island and worldwide, sends them an image from which to make 100 limited-edition, postcard-sized prints that sell for $20 apiece, with $5 going to a charity of each artist’s choice.
Along with its specialized focus, IO Labs differentiates itself by its approach to jobs, Peffer said: While most printers just take the assignments and do the jobs, as they’re told, IO Labs likes to work closely with clients to get the best possible results.
The approach has worked. This spring, with their Eagle Square shop bursting at the seams, they moved into a 3,400-square-foot space in the Lorraine Mills complex, in Pawtucket. The partners still have just two employees, Cara Burgess and Brad Foster, but the new space has allowed them to add two extra work stations, and by year’s end, Peffer said he expects to hire one more person.
The partners also are hoping to add more printers and expand their range of materials – with a focus on eco-friendly papers and boards. But although their new space is big and airy, at the rate they’re growing, Peffer said he’s not sure how long it will be enough.
“Hopefully, we won’t grow out of this too soon,” he said. “But it’s amazing how quickly we filled it.”
IO Labs can be reached at (401) 365-1330 or www.iolabsinc.com.
