OCB's Founding and History
In 1926, Charles "Ned" Hayes started a blueprinting service for local architects, engineers, and builders. Orange County Blueprint, as it was then known, first opened on North Broadway in Santa Ana, with one blueprinting machine and a silver-process photostat machine.
Ned Hayes worked hard to make his Orange County Blueprint a viable business, even through the lean years of the Great Depression. As it did in the rest of the United States, World War II brought a building boom to the area and to Orange County Blueprint. By the end of 1959, the company had grown to seven employees, including Ned Hayes' two sons, David and Richard. The purchase in 1959 of a Xerox 914 copying machine -- one of the first in Orange County -- expanded the company's services and brought in many new types of business customers. When Ned Hayes retired in 1962, his sons bought out their father and assumed ownership. The Hayes brothers incorporated in 1976, and steered the company through the economic downturn of the 1970s. Business eventually picked up again, and the company continued to grow. The two partners changed the company name to "OCB Reprographics" to reflect the growing variety of services they offered.
David Hayes' son, Charles D. "Chuck" Hayes, who began his career at OCB in 1974 as a seasonal worker while attending Santa Ana High School, became president of OCB Reprographics in 1994. Chuck's father and uncle retired upon selling the company to him and two partners. The new management team invested, piece by piece, in the expensive, all-important digital equipment that has helped OCB reach and maintain its position as a leader in its industry.
OCB's Continued Growth
OCB is a $65 million company employing more than 700 people at fourteen locations in Orange,San Diego, Riverside and San Bernardino counties. The company's longtime clients include virtually every major architecture and engineering firm in Orange County. It has been involved in the development of new communities including Irvine, Mission Viejo, Aliso Viejo, Ladera, Talega and Rancho Santa Margarita, among others. With the advent of the digital revolution and color capabilities, OCB has branched out to serve a host of new industries: retail, banking, legal, software design, advertising, surfwear and many others.
The company has occupied its current two-building Irvine corporate headquarters complex since 1976, and operates additional reprographic centers in the Irvine Spectrum, Irvine, Orange, and Fullerton, in addition to 2 San Diego, 5 Riverside county and 2 San Bernardino county locations.
Seeing an opportunity to provide unmatched service and one-stop shopping for clients in the San Diego marketplace, OCB merged with Harbor Blueprint in 1998, then added Tiger Reprographics in 1999. Both companies were combined under the Tiger name in 1999 then changed to OCB Reprographics in July of 2002, when they added a Sorrento Valley location, in addition to their corporate location in Mission Valley.
In Orange County, Fullerton Blueprint joined the OCB family in 1999, changing its name to OCB. In early 2001, Universal Reprographics South, Inc. was acquired by OCB's parent company, American Reprographics Company, and Chuck Hayes was made president of this new division.
The Future of OCB
OCB Reprographics strives to continue to be the leader in its industry through the renewed customer focus and green initiatives of new CEO and 20 year OCB veteran Roger Lackey.
