Moving Into Retail

Maury Kane decided long ago to leave offset behind and model his in-plant after the retail operations on Temple University's campus.

By Kristen E. Monte

While many university in-plants focus on forms and letterhead, Temple University Duplicating Services is competing with the retail copy shops congregating on its North Philadelphia campus. The main reason the 10-employee in-plant is able to do this is because its director, Maury Kane, has spent the past 17 years revamping the in-plant, and turning it into a full service facility.

Kane was born and raised in Philadelphia, and after graduating from Pennsylvania State University with a Bachelor of Humanities, concentrating on philosophy and literature, he started his journey into the graphic arts industry.

"I got a job in electronic publishing with a division of Lehigh Press," recalls Kane. "That is when I got really interested in the industry."

Kane worked for the now-defunct Lehigh division called Research in Computer Applications for the Printing and Publishing Industry (ROCAPPI), which operated from the early 1960s through the mid-'80s. At the time, the company was one of only a few to computerize typesetting and data input in books, catalogs and directories.

"Our company was 20 years ahead of Bill Gates," Kane says. "Electronic publishing was in its early stages, and we had an advanced system for the publishing marketplace."

After 16 years with the company, the division was sold to R.R. Donnelley & Sons in the mid 1980s.

"As far as experience goes, I spent many good years there," reflects Kane. "The demise left a lot of us in the composition business scrambling for work, and I ended up at Temple because of my background and experience in the industry. I was hired to do something a little different."

Temple University has more than 34,000 students in its 17 schools and colleges. In 1987, its in-plant used small offset presses, among other equipment. Kane's first goal was to get rid of the offset presses in the copy center.