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We Are Proud Of Our 65 Year History
1960-2025
2025 marks a significant milestone for Kalblue Group as we celebrate 65 years of excellence in the printing and visual communications industry. Since our inception in 1960, Kalblue has evolved from a small, family-run blueprint shop into a leader in visual communication services by consistently adapting to new technologies and market demands.
Our longevity is a testament to our commitment to quality, innovation, and customer satisfaction. As we reflect on our rich history and look forward to the future, we remain dedicated to delivering exceptional service and fostering relationships that have stood the test of time.
Join us in celebrating over six decades of memories and milestones at Kalblue Group, as we continue to set the standard in our industry.
The 1960's
Kalamazoo Blueprint & Supply was founded in downtown Kalamazoo, Michigan in 1960 by Jerry Lind.
With the aid of his childhood friend John Hodgin, who was owner of Commercial Blueprint in Lansing, the two became business partners and brought about a new blueprinting company to Kalamazoo to compete against the already well established Wheaton Blueprint. This new company, called Kalamazoo Blueprint & Supply, opened its doors on January 4th, 1960 on 914 East Vine Street in Kalamazoo. Offering the new whiteprints, dubbed as “K-Prints”, they would eventually replace traditional blue background blueprints. This innovation made an instant impact. While whiteprints were still ammonia developed, they were faster to make than traditional blueprints, providing the ability to offer same-day service. Same-day blueprint services were unheard of in the ‘60s, and thus, a successful business was born.
The 1970's
Expansion and growth continued on into the ‘70s.
In the late ‘70s, Kalamazoo Blueprint & Supply began offering whiteprints from a new cutting-edge service to the architectural drawing industry: overlay drafting. Overlay drafting was a multi-layered procedure that allowed architects and engineers to share and view their drawings overlaid together during the traditional hand drafting design process. Once all of the individual overlays were complete, we would then produce composite mylar originals of the overlays using our massive ACTi-Centaur Camera. Those mylar originals were then printed together into one complete view of all of the drawings, allowing for multiple copies to be made quickly. As our brand grew in clientele and awareness, our name started to shorten in ease of conversation to “Kal-Blue”, and the new moniker stuck.
The 1980's
The 1980s saw Kal-Blue & Supply Co. heavily focused on improving whiteprinting productivity. Shifting from sheet-fed whiteprint machines to roll-fed whiteprint machines in the ‘80s sparked a productivity boom. At our peak, we had three automated roll fed whiteprint machines running near nonstop, daily. We could now print more square footage of paper faster than ever before; almost every construction document in the West Michigan area came from one of our machines. By the mid 1980s, our massive ACTi-Centaur camera was now primarily being used to scan historical photos for local library documentation and large format reproductions. In the late ‘80s, we became a leading member of the Mini-Max organization, a group of print industry leaders that promoted information sharing. To showcase our growing array of blueprinting services, we updated our name with the new word “reprographics”, which indicated a category in the print industry that includes both the copying and duplication processes.
The 1990's
The 1990s was one of Kal-Blue Reprographics’ most historical decades for change: introducing digital color printing.
The advancement of digital printing was a pivotal transition in blueprinting's history, and in turn, ours. In 1994, we took the iniative in innovation and invested into new machinery to expand our wide format digital color printing capabilities; we could now color print 36” wide by nearly endless lengths. Our new wide format digital printing services immediately replaced ammonia developed blueprints. This change was driven by the rapidly developing drafting software AutoCAD. Digital blueprinting and the use of computers now allowed architects, engineers, and contractors the ability to print directly from their AutoCAD documents, providing a much faster and more efficient document printing process. Due to the successful diversification into the digital color printing world and no longer handling just blueprints, we decided to simplify to ourselves to “Kal-Blue”.
The 2000's
In January of 2000, Kal-Blue was sold to employees Doug Shrout and Christopher “Kip” Young.
This new partnered ownership would allow Jerry Lind to step back and begin winding down for retirement. We continued to build up our digital printing portfolio throughout the 2000s by focusing on expanding our narrow and wide format digital color printing capabilities. The recession of 2008 brought about a heavy shift in blueprint production, pushing construction documentation to adopt digital sharing and creation nearly overnight. As blueprinting volumes rapidly dwindled, the growing digital color printing offerings replaced the sudden decrease in blueprinting revenue. At our peak, we printed more than 10 million square feet of blueprints each year. Today, that yearly volume has dropped to less than 1.5 million, but is still a staple department in our business model. At the end of the 2000s, we removed the hyphen from our name and expanded our tagline to showcase the shift in our printing capabilities beyond the blueprinting industry.
The 2010's
In May of 2010, Doug Shrout sold his shares and retired; thus Christopher “Kip” Young became sole owner.
KalBlue came out of the lingering problems of the 2008 recession by further investing in color printing and finishing technology. In the early 2010s we purchased a large format CNC cutting machine and a 96” wide state-of-the-art digital flatbed printer to expand our wide format capabilities. In 2015 we reinvested in our narrow format department by adding a new high-end digital color printer along with upgraded finishing machinery and equipment. The 2010s saw us growing and building a strong portfolio of printing versatility to better weather market change, continuing our streak of being an innovative market leader of the Southwest Michigan print industry. With the full transition from blueprinting to color digital printing of all sizes, our image needed to evolve, resulting in a new logo and tagline to be utilized.
The 2020's
Throughout the 2020s KalBlue grew and worked hard to diversify and expand their team and capabilities.
In 2021, a need was seen within our clientele for digital graphic design services, resulting in the Blue360 Creative Services department being formed. KB Swag was also brought to life at that same time to showcase and promote businesses through apparel, drink ware, and other paraphernalia. These exciting additions broadened the KalBlue name into services beyond just printing, and brought about the need for a complete rebrand. And so KalBlue evolved into the KalBlue Group. In November of 2023, our first acquisition was officially added to the group - the long-standing local business Portage Printing of 1116 W Centre Ave was purchased, their narrow format and offset printing and finishing capabilities acquired. With our team and machinery roster rapidly expanding, we had outgrown our original building on 914 East Vine. At the end of November in 2024, for the first time in KBG history, we moved. Welcome to our new state-of-the-art facility on 5870 South Sprinkle Rd, Suite 1, in Portage, Michigan, where we continue to push for growth in both people and our capabilities.