Steve Webb, the CEO and founder of Metropol Industries Incorporated, has
grown a small poster service into one of the largest print shops on Vancouver Island.
Steve built his company in Victoria from the ground up. When Metropol first began, it
earned about $1,200 per month. Today, it earns more than $2,000,000 in revenue per
year. Despite the trend of online printing services, Metropol continues to strive.
Providing direct customer service gives them an advantage over online services that
can’t give a product the same attention to detail.
The company began as Metropol Event Poster Services, when Steve was a
promoter for local nightclubs. Before you could advertise your venue on social media,
poster cylinders in the downtown core were the primary way the clubs advertised. Some
clubs would invest money in covering entire cylinders with a single poster to compete.
With approximately fifteen clubs battling over space, Steve saw an opportunity to offer
the city his services in regulating the poster cylinders. Steve says, “I was going to
approach all of these different nightclubs, and convince them that they should all give
me their poster contracts. I would fight for equal representation on the polls for
everybody.” He would offer everyone equal coverage, and give smaller, all ages venues
an opportunity to get advertised.
The city loved the idea, but a lot of individual promoters didn’t. After four years of
fighting it out, postering on his own downtown, Steve negotiated and got the final two
contracts on board. This was thirteen years ago, and Metropol hasn’t looked back since.
Postering continues seven days a week, but is the smallest part of the business,
accounting for only six percent of their revenue. After a couple of years Steve
recognized the demand he had for printing posters, and began printing his own. Steve
paid Lucky Bar to use a photocopier they had in the back of the bar. He eventually
purchased his own printer and cutter, and began designing business cards, and stickers
as well. Responding to the demand of his customers, he continued to expand his
services, and hire new staff. Steve says “When we opened our first ground level print
shop in the atrium, that was, I think, the moment where we really took the business to
the next level.”
Metropol expanded to multiple locations, including a shop in the Westshore
where they could accomodate large scale printing, and make signs. Metropol has four
locations with twenty-five employees, including designers, finishers, production staff, a
prepress department, customer service staff, and a postering department. Metropol is
also home to several of the largest printers on Vancouver Island. Steve Says, “We’re on
the verge of moving into one huge facility, amalgamating all of our locations, and we’ll
be bringing a print technology that no one on the island has. So, we’re pretty excited
about the future” Metropol expects to double its staff in the next year.
Metropol has developed from a small postering business, to a respected island
owned and operated printshop. Steve’s instincts to adapt his business to his customers
needs were what built his company into what it is today. With plans to bring the
business into the future with new technology, Steve continues to keep Metropol ahead
of the curve.
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