ColorHub

August 7, 2017

When Tim Harris saw a need, he knew there was room for him in the corrugated market. Partnering with his brother, Andrew Harris, and Steve Pastoor, they researched hard, ran the numbers, tested their model, and founded ColorHub, a startup company that is a digital trade printer, serving other corrugated companies with the latest, greatest technology.

They’ve built their business model around a key piece of machinery—the Barberán Jetmaster 1260, a single-pass digital press. It is their flagship and what they describe on their website as being “as fast as a cheetah and as fierce as a hawk.”

“Two and a half years ago, I saw a video while researching digital printing,” says Tim Harris. “The single-pass printing press blew my mind.”

Harris was then a salesperson for another corrugated company, one he says was not positioned to invest in such technology. His background was economics and math, and he describes himself as a big numbers guy. So, he pulled out a napkin and started chicken-scratching numbers on it to see if it was feasible.

“I started developing financial models around it and never got to the point where it didn’t work,” says Harris. “And that is what brings us to today—two and a half years later.”

Harris presented his business plan to Pastoor, the man who would become the operations guy—the COO.

“I took it home and reviewed it for a couple weeks and tried to poke holes in it, tried to figure out if I felt it was valid or not,” says Pastoor. “Then we came back together and developed it a little further. I was introduced to Andrew, and we met a few times to make sure we all felt comfortable with each other.”

Andrew Harris says their diversity has already proven to be beneficial.

In the fall of 2016, they placed the purchase order for their machinery. As of May 2017, they had hired the first handful of people and were just getting up and running and close to being where they could take their first orders.

For Pastoor, the Barberán press was the answer to the things he’d wanted to do with packaging in his previous position in the food service industry, but had been stymied at with multiplate presses.

“I was extremely frustrated with what I could not do from a packaging standpoint for the products I was producing,” says Pastoor.

When he learned about the single-pass press and how it operated without print plates, it was an immediate light bulb to him. This, he says, is what he needed all along.

The ColorHub team visited Bennett (profiled last issue) in Kansas City, Mo., where the first Barberán press was installed. Andrew Harris says they were fortunate to have the benefit of Bennett’s expertise and experience in being the first ones in the U.S. to ever work with Barberán.

“We saw the first Jetmaster run, and we were blown away,” says Andrew Harris. “The quality of what you see on it is amazing, and it can print a sheet of cardboard in a second.”

Pastoor says the cooperation he’s seen in this industry has been refreshing, coming from a different industry.

“People in this industry strive to help each other,” Pastoor says. “It seems like everyone within this industry is eager to share their knowledge and share their information. They care about each other.”

The three made the decision to become a trade printer—to service other corrugated companies who did not have access to the type of technology they were going to invest in.

“We believe everyone is going to want to have access to this,” says Andrew Harris.

Tim Harris says it was important to differentiate himself in the market. He wanted to be cutting edge. He says the three of them analyzed what set them apart. He says there are 10 corrugated companies within 50 miles, and what none of them has is a massive digital press.

“We didn’t need or want to be getting into competition with those 10. If they had access to it, they’d love to use it, so ColorHub is strictly for the trade,” says Andrew Harris. “Our customers know we will not cut them out, because we don’t sell to end users. There are roughly eight of these presses in the world. Everyone else purchased it for their own internal use and their own differentiation against their competitors in the market. We purchased it to allow everyone to have access to it.”

Their website describes them as dreamers and doers—something all three partners keenly relate to. They want to make sure that their creative spirit is matched with action.

“That’s how we put the team together,” says Tim Harris. “I am more on the overall strategy side and the sales side. My other two partners, while we’re all involved in all of it, they’re very good at being the boots on the ground and putting it into action.

“We want to be a very tightknit, family-oriented work environment for us and our team,” says Andrew Harris. “There is a really creative, fun, and supportive environment. Our guiding philosophy is that we don’t ever want to be settled with the status quo. There is always new technology or new software or new ways of doing things that we can learn from other people. We want to always keep advancing the bar of achievement for what makes a good printing company in the 21st century.”