Posted on Sun, Nov. 4, 2007
Success comes home to S. Jersey
Three local men can finally sell copiers here after building their business in Pennsylvania.
By Rusty Pray
Inquirer Staff Writer
Home, sweet home.
It took them a while, but Rich Hahn, Ed Peach and Ron Fairhurst finally have made it to South Jersey. Actually, they've been here all along. But now their business, the one they've cultivated with the attention to detail of a teenager polishing his hot rod, is in South Jersey, too.
Keystone Digital Imaging - KDI for short - opened an office in Voorhees in July after a 10-year wait.
"We've always wanted to have a presence in South Jersey," said Peach, KDI's president of corporate sales.
Peach, 46, and his family lived in Haddonfield for many years before moving to Cherry Hill about a year ago. Fairhurst, 48, had lived in Marlton since 1990 before moving to Mount Laurel a few months ago. Hahn, 57, grew up in Oaklyn and was a well-known baseball player at Collingswood High and Camden County College. He has been a high school football official in South Jersey for more than 20 years. He lives in Sweetwater now.
Their business is selling and servicing copiers, although they'll quickly and emphatically point out that KDI is much more than that. They couldn't do it here for so long because KDI is a Savin dealer and for years the Savin dealer in South Jersey was Stewart Industries of Mount Laurel. The family-run business was the top-selling Savin dealer in the country, holding accounts with 400 of the state's 600 school districts.
But in 2004, Stewart was acquired by Global Imaging Systems. This year, Xerox bought Global, which lost the right to sell Savin.
KDI "could never get authorized [to sell Savin copiers] because of Stewart," Peach said.
Once it did, he said, the company made $350,000 in its first month in South Jersey.
KDI also offers products from Okidata, HP, Toshiba and Lexmark. The business was started back in the late '80s by Rick Salcedo, its president and chief executive officer and the only executive without personal ties to South Jersey.
It was called Innovative Technical Services, and it was service-only in the beginning. Salcedo ran it from the basement of his home in Folcroft before moving to a storefront in Drexel Hill, both in Delaware County.
He eventually became a Savin dealer, and it was through sales that he met Peach.
Peach became a partner in 1994. They changed the name of the business to KDI and moved its headquarters to Broomall, then Aston, both also in Delaware County.
It has grown steadily, earning awards from respected trade publications along the way. Last year, KDI took in $12 million. It has offices in Philadelphia, Wilmington, and Lancaster, Pa., as well as Aston and Voorhees. It employs 100 people, about a dozen out of the South Jersey office. Among KDI's South Jersey accounts are the school districts of West Deptford, Delran and Medford and Gloucester County Special Services.
The partners hope to do $5 million to $6 million in sales in the first year in Voorhees.
Fairhurst joined the company five years ago, and Hahn signed on in May.
Hahn was a particularly nice addition because of his experience - he had worked for Stewart since 1999 and, before that, Savin for 18 years.
"When I heard about [Stewart] being acquired, the first person I called was Rich," Salcedo said.
More important, Hahn is deeply entrenched in South Jersey. He's lived there his whole life. He has an army of connections.
"Wherever I go, I turn around and somebody will say to me, 'Hey, remember that time' this happened or that happened," Hahn said. "The business spirit in South Jersey always has been you buy something from somebody you know."
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