UNLV Copy Center Reborn in Student Union

Just three weeks into his new job as manager of Reprographics & Design Services at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, Tom Tozier got some alarming news: the student union had solicited bids to fill its retail space, and an outside print services vendor had sent in a proposal to open a copy center.

“We ran to them and said, ‘Wait a minute. We’ve got a copy center,’ ” Tozier recounts. It was inside the in-plant’s main facility on the west end of campus—a more out-of-the-way location, true, but it offered students a better deal than any outside vendor could.

So the student union asked him to create a business plan for moving the copy center into this retail space. That set Tozier on a 14-month quest to both defeat the vendor’s copy center plan and relocate his existing copy center into a much more visible locale. He was successful on both counts.

In July the in-plant opened the doors of Rebel Copy and Send, staffed with 2.5 full-time employees and eight students. The official grand opening was to take place this month.

“It’s a fantastic location,” enthuses Tozier. “It’s right between Jamba Juice and a frozen yogurt place.” Almost all of UNLV’s 28,500 students pass the copy center every day.

To make it happen, the in-plant partnered with Delivery Services, which is providing FedEx shipping in the center. The in-plant handles the digital printing, wide-format printing, binding, laminating and faxing.

Faxing? Tozier, too, was surprised by its persistence.

“People still fax—a lot,” he reveals.

But much of the work at Rebel Copy comes from copying resumes, printing and binding dissertations and printing wide-format projects, not to mention one-off copies and small-quantity runs. The operation uses a Xerox Color J75 Press, a Xerox 4112 black-and-white printer and a Canon imagePROGRAF iPF8300 wide-format printer.

Great Location

At just 927 square feet, the new copy center is much smaller than the previous one. But location, Tozier knows, is everything.

“Instead of being off to the side of campus, now we’re in the center, and people know about us,” he says. He acknowledges that many people were unaware of the old copy center and were using off-campus quick printers. The convenient new location aside, he lists several other reasons students will appreciate the center.

“The prices we charge are lower than the competitors out there,” he notes. “We don’t have to charge them sales tax.”

Plus, he adds, students can use their UNLV RebelCards to pay for prints.

Creating the new retail center was not cheap, Tozier notes.

“We spent a lot of money building up that space,” he reports.

The cost was split 75/25 with Delivery Services, with the in-plant using money from its reserve fund. It took a lot of work, but now that Rebel Copy is open for business, Tozier is pleased with the new visibility it brings to his in-plant.

“We’re able to demonstrate our value to the campus,” he says.