All the Right Moves

HOW DID Ray Embury, manager of Konica Minolta's bizhub Image Center, Office Services and Community Relations get started on his career path? He followed his heart. Born and raised just north of Detroit, Embury headed south to the Sunshine State to earn a business degree at Florida Atlantic University. One sunny day in March 1974, Embury was boating with a friend when their attention was drawn by two young women—twin sisters—standing on a bridge.

"I said, 'Hey, Vinny, why don't you spin this thing around and give these girls a ride?'" Embury recalls. "He did, and the rest was history."

Embury hit it off (to say the least) with one of the women, a visiting New Englander named Cal. She was in town for five more days and, at the end of her stay in South Florida, he asked her to marry him.Cal agreed, with one condition: Embury had to be willing to move to Connecticut with her. He moved.

Embury had proposed on St. Patrick's Day and the couple tied the knot less than six months later on Labor Day. Today, still happily married, the Emburys have two 20-something sons, one of whom will wed his high-school sweetheart this November.

"35 years later, I'm still a believer in love at first sight," Embury declares.

Back in 1974, having moved to a new town with a wedding on the horizon, Embury needed a job—fast. He saw a help-wanted ad in the local newspaper, applied and was hired as a copier technician for the Royal Typewriter Co. in Windsor, Conn. As years passed, Embury moved up steadily through the ranks at Royal, which was purchased by Japan-based Konica in the 1980s. He served as supervisor at a branch office, and then returned to corporate headquarters as a product support specialist and, later, supervisor of publications.

Embury made the move to Konica's in-plant in 1995-1996. "I was running publications and sending all of my jobs to the in-plant," he remembers, "when I was given the opportunity to manage the print-business side. And that just opened up a whole new world for me and my career."

From Offset to Digital

When Embury arrived on the production floor, output was entirely offset. In 2000, Embury suggested and spearheaded the shop's conversion to a print-on-demand center using Konica's newly introduced 7075 digital copiers with connectivity capability. A projected year-and-a-half changeover actually took three months and was entirely successful.

Paradoxically, that immediate success—fewer manuals and parts catalogs gathering dust on a shelf, along with a considerable reduction in warehouse space—also initially meant less work for the in-plant.

"When I approached our president about phasing out offset, he thought I was pulling the rug out from under my own feet," Embury laughs.

Embury, however, had a plan to maintain solid footing: He wanted to expand the in-plant into a commercial printer.

"We blew our projections out of the water," he exclaims. "We anticipated $36,000 in revenue, but actually generated over $100,000 in the first year. Today we are over $350,000 annually—with a 61 percent margin." Embury no longer has to justify the in-plant's existence each fiscal year.

Local printers couldn't compete with the in-plant for short-run work. Yet Embury didn't just want to beat his competitors; he also wanted to join them in order to provide a full complement of services.

"We had our limitations," he acknowledges. "For example, our maximum sheet size is 13x19?. But if people walked in looking for posters, we didn't want to turn them away."

So, Embury established partnerships with a diverse handful of area printers and print brokers and still maintains those relationships.

The in-plant, which is now called the bizhub Image Center, has reduced its staff from 14 to five, but all of those former employees found work with the shop's print partners, he says. Currently, about 20 percent of the Image Center's work originates internally, while commercial jobs comprise the remaining 80 percent.

Now, at 62 years old, Embury has spent his entire career with one organization, which has operated as Konica Minolta since the merger of the two companies in 2004.

"Even though we've changed our name half a dozen times, we've enjoyed tremendous security throughout the years," he opines. "Other people are surprised that so many of [Konica Minolta's employees] have worked here for so long. But this company has shown us loyalty right back."

Big perks of working for a copier company, according to Embury, are access to (and in-house tech support for) the "latest and greatest" equipment—at cost.

"Our engineering group will ask us to put a lot of clicks on a new machine, or our sales force will request that we run proofs and samples on brand-new equipment," he remarks, noting that the shop presently runs the complete line of bizhub Pro equipment: 1050s, 6500s, 1200s, 920s and C500s. "And I don't have a problem with that." The shop also uses Konica Minolta's Print Groove for job tracking, invoicing, quote generation and inventory management.

In addition to handling the big-picture business side of the bizhub Image Center (Embury hired Mitzi Koninis, graphics designer and production supervisor, to run day-to-day operations), he also manages Office Services and, more recently, Community Relations.

"Community Relations is the most rewarding part of my job," he notes, explaining that he orchestrates donations by Konica Minolta to non-profit organizations, such as Alex's Lemonade Stand.

"And the toughest is the cafeteria [considered part of Office Services]," he jokes. "Everyone complains about food." Embury also serves on the board of directors of the Konica Minolta employees' credit union, and is a director on the board of Windsor's Chamber of Commerce.

Embury considers himself to be "one of the luckiest guys in the world," both in the office and at home. "We run one eight-hour shift, five days a week, and I can walk out of here, lock the doors with our equipment running, and come back the next day to completed jobs or machines that are filled to capacity," he declares. "I couldn't do that running offset. It's like having a ghost second shift.

"Most importantly, I have a wonderful wife and great sons," he concludes, noting that he hopes he has set a good example for his boys. "Sticking with one woman and one company all these years, I've tried to show them that there's something to be said for loyalty and longevity." IPG