$1 Million of High Technology Equipment Comes to Thunder Bay from
Xerox
By Scott A. Sumner
Thunder Bay Business
Young Entrepreneur Dave Grady, owner of Thunder Bay Xerograpics, Inc was determined to showcase the best of the best in graphic technology to Thunder Bay on October 19th at the Travellodge Airline.“ We worked as a joint partnership- Thunder Bay Xerograpics, Inc and
Xerox Canada to bring a million dollars of production print equipment, document management service scanning all the way down to a small office product. We had $ 1000 printers and fax machines to a $ 500,000 full digital press,” noted Dave Grady.“ Usually Xerox is doing road shows in the very urban areas of Canada like Toronto, Calgary, Montreal,Vancouver or Halifax. I talked to them about getting from Toronto to Calgary you have to go through Thunder Bay so let’s stop in Thunder Bay. If this is cutting edge technology today it is just as important for people to see it up in the north, maybe even more important than in Southern Ontario.”
The trade show style event was held all day long with approximately 150 organizations or groups attending, both businesses and non profits. “ We have some real geographical challenges in the north. You may have some groups operating from many locations and people are asking questions about communication between those groups,” stated Grady. “
We spoke a lot about a product called Xerox Docushare. It is document and content managment software that is quite inexpensive. That was one of the big hits I took out of the show. There were many questions about it. We had CEO’s who were interested in how do you scan everything in and what do you do with it.”
People attended the show from Marathon, Nakina, Greenstone and Ignace. Everyone pooled in driving 3 or 4 hours to get here to the event. “ It wasn’t a sales event. It was to show some new technologies, some of which aren’t even on the market yet. A large group might come
in and ask questions. They collaborate in an event like this when they are all here together. Lets try to figure this out together between groups,” stated Grady. “ We learnt a lot about the industry. You can share data in a secure way via the internet. It is like a gigantic library. You can take out information and use it, checking it out with vigorous levels of securities.”
“ I bought the business just over a year ago.The economy is a bit of a challenge but we are seeing new businesses and that is exciting for me as a young entrepreneur. I see young people opening businesses and I have to applaud them. Everyone is trying really hard,” smiled Grady. “ Local companies can always offer better service than large conglomerates. Competition is the way of business. We all need to go and do more. There are many people trying business and they may need more focus. I think Thunder Bay is a beautiful place to live. The economy is hurting but there are some new things happening. Technology is slow sometimes and can be costly but we work with people on a custom level.”
