Keith Fabry Inc., Richmond, Va., was one of five companies picked randomly to win a free iPad 2 with Wi-Fi and 3G in LexJet’s first-quarter printer promotion where everyone who bought a 42-inch or wider printer from LexJet received a $200 gift certificate and were entered into the drawing.

Operations manager Ricky Shannon says the promotion was perfectly timed since the company was looking for a printer with which to attack the fine art reproduction market. Since its inception in 1958, Keith Fabry Inc. has always seized opportunity. The company was founded to focus on reprographics and when plotting went full color, Keith Fabry went full bore into that market.

Keith Fabry still does blueprint work, but the majority of its work is now concentrated on high-quality, full-color output with a 4×8 flatbed, a low-solvent printer and an older aqueous printer. It was time to upgrade and seize opportunity once again so the company bought a 44-in. wide Canon iPF8300 to make it happen.

“We’ve had the printer installed for a week or so and have printed some work on Sunset Hot Press Rag and Sunset Photo Metallic Paper. The prints look great and with the printer’s ability to do edge to edge printing and back trim to the print is a big plus for our workflow,” says Shannon. “That machine will mainly be a fine art and photo machine, as well as some high end museum work, and we’ll offer high-end Sunset photo and fine art papers on it. We’ve toyed with this market before, but didn’t have the proper hardware to pull it off. It’s a small investment for what you can re-sell prints. We expect it will pay for itself very soon.”

We’ll stay in touch with Keith Fabry and profile some of the more interesting projects the company prints in the future. Other winners of the iPad drawing included Banko Beverage Company, Dave Zerbe Studio, Wine & Beverage Merchants of W.V., and Mears Photography.