"We started July 5, 1995," recalled Steve Skelton, who owns the business with his wife, Susan. "In the past six years we have doubled the size of our operation."

Benchmark is operated by Steve and two employees. "Michele Ireland has been with us four years now," Skelton said. Dave Welker, a recent retiree from Procter and Gamble, now runs the presses, freeing Skelton to do more administrative tasks and to make sales calls.

The digital age has provided opportunities for growth in the printing industry. "We try to stay on top of what's current and available to us, and provide that service to the customer base," Skelton said.

Shortly after Benchmark began operation in 1995, it began producing legal exhibits. The company prepares legal exhibits for court trials, such as large photos and timelines big enough for the jury to see.

Benchmark continues to run the three presses it had in the beginning but it has added a collator which can collate and bind up to 30 sheets as one time. The company also uses a Xerox 3030 copying machine which can reproduce large blueprints and an HP DesignJet 2800 color printer which produces poster-sized color prints.

"We do print reproduction and we reproduce engineer drawings and bluelines. It has been our niche to do the big stuff," Skelton said. By using computer technology, Benchmark is able to touch up damaged photos and reproduce them.

Benchmark also produces banners. Indoor banners are made in-house. Outdoor banners are brokered to another firm.