Federal purchase agreement boosts local firm

A small Colorado Springs company has made a big impression on the federal government.

Access Products, which sells toner and printer supplies, saw revenue of about $6 million in 2010. This year, owner Bob Roth is anticipating $15 million to $18 million in revenue; in the first quarter, revenue and profits were up 2 1/2 times over a year earlier. The company has added nine employees in the past year, nearly doubling its workforce, and may hire at least a few more by year’s end.

“I couldn’t be more thrilled,” Roth says.

The road to success has been paved by the Federal Strategic Sourcing Initiative, which is aimed at delivering cost savings to federal agencies through strategic buying. Under the initiative, Access Products was awarded a purchase agreement last fall by the General Services Administration worth up to $500 million over four years.

The agreement, an extension of an existing contract, provides for agencies such as the Department of Defense and the Environmental Protection Agency to purchase office supplies and equipment directly from Access Products. The Springs company is one of 15 office supply contractors awarded blanket purchase agreements under the initiative.

“We really sacrificed,” Roth said. “We gave them incredible pricing. And some of the federal agencies really stepped up.”

Though pricing’s the key issue, customer service is also critical in attracting government business, he said.

“One thing that government employees really like about our company is that we don’t have a phone tree,” Roth said. “You get a live person within three rings.”

Access Products began as Imaging Systems in 1986. Imaging Systems originally used Access Products as its brand name in dealing with the federal government; with that part of the business now dominating, the entire company is transitioning to the name.

Roth, who served in the Navy for a dozen years and has worked at Compaq and HP, bought the business in October 2009; he’s the third owner.

“I was looking for something,” he said. “I didn’t know I was looking for something exactly like this, but I was.”

Marie Oharek has worked under all the owners; she began at the company 16 years ago in production and now is general manager.

As the business grows, the biggest challenge is keeping up with the changes, she said.
“You get into a routine, but you’ve got to change. You learn to grow with the business.”

Roth acknowledges a few growing pains. Space is getting tight, he said, “so we’ve discussed moving into an adjacent building with our landlord. We’ve had to develop some more efficient processes including automating our orders from the government.  That took quite a bit of time, money and training but we’re pretty much complete.”

Access Products sells remanufactured toner cartridges along with new cartridges from other companies; it also has a computer/printer service line. The remanufacturing takes place at its facility on Center Park Drive, near Fountain and Murray boulevards. While some companies “just drill and put toner back in,” Roth said, Access Products takes the cartridges apart and rebuilds them to ensure a quality product.

By remanufacturing cartridges that have been built in countries such as China and Japan, “that brings jobs back into the U.S.,” he says. And the remanufactured cartridges sell for as little as half of the price of the original ones.

Access Products has some local customers, but Roth would like the company to have more of a presence in the area, such as on local military bases. While Access Products has sold to military installations around the country and even overseas, it hasn’t sold to, for example, Peterson Air Force Base or Fort Carson.

“We haven’t made a big impression in our own backyard, and that’s one of the things that we’re looking to do,” Roth said.