Company History
The history of H&H Color Lab is one of tremendous growth and change.
H&H began in the basement of Wayne and Shirley Haub's residence
in a sleepy suburb of Kansas City, Missouri, in 1970. Wayne and
his brother Ted Haub owned a portrait studio that had just landed
its first high school senior contract. With a background in color
printing he had acquired when he was employed by the Allied Signal
Company, Wayne chose to install his own color processing equipment
rather than use a pro color lab.
Business increased, and so did
the need for additional employees. What began with one person (Wayne)
doing all the processing, printing, "art work", invoicing, telephone,
purchasing, building maintenance, etc., now took five people! The
small home business no longer encompassed the basement level, but
now engulfed the garage, extra bedroom, and kitchen areas. And with
a growing family, it was time to move!
In 1974 the first home of
our present location was purchased at 8906 East 67th Street. At
that time, the area where IT and receiving are currently located
housed all the functions of the lab from the customer service counter
to a final shipping area! Then in 1979 the first major addition
to the lab was built (the current film and paper processing area).
This took most of the backyard of the property.
By 1983 another
major expansion had become necessary. Two houses were purchased
on Kentucky Street and were joined under one roof along with the
main plant and all the basement areas, with a façade that made the
building appear as one unit. At this time the new addition included
the art, mounting, spray, billing, shipping, customer counter, and
undergrad departments.
The next decade brought more growth and change
- another house purchase, a new supply warehouse, and more additions.
And what's more, our customer list and employee staff continued
to grow. A fifth house on Kentucky was purchased and renovated in
1993 to house the new digital-imaging department. And with the 1994
addition of the third major expansion to the back of our main building
for the printing department, the Kentucky property became our new
parking area. Two more homes were purchased on 66th Street to expand
the current Kentucky parking area.
1996 and 1997 marked a watershed
for H&H Color Lab. In the original back parking lot, we built a
20,000 square foot addition and purchased the portrait division
of our long-term, friendly competitor, Custom Color Portrait Lab.
The influx of Custom Color's equipment and talented staff along
with our newly designed space uniquely positioned H&H Color Lab
for the challenges of the 21st century. As with most progressive
labs, H&H has invested greatly in digital imaging technology, starting
with the process as early as 1983 when Wayne's nephew, Steve Tuggle,
began experimenting with an Amiga computer.
Demand from portrait
and wedding photographers, coupled with a desire to keep the lab
current with the latest imaging trends, has driven H&H to create
their own suite of software ordering programs to make ordering digital
prints fast and easy. EZproof is used by lab clients to quickly
order traditional paper proofs and proof magazines - multiple page,
spiral bound collections of four images per 5x5 page; six or nine
images per 8x10 page, or twelve images per page for 10x13 magazines.
EZprint is used to order prints from wallets through 30x40, including
a broad range of digital retouching, art, mounting and coating treatments.
EZevent is a package based ordering program for use with schools,
events, portrait promotions, and sports.
H&H has also enhanced its
ability through working partnerships with a wide variety of third
party software solutions. These include Kodak's optical and digital
ProShots, Fuji's StudioMaster Pro, Collages.net, Eventpix, and LabPrints.
Other digital partners are always being researched, tested, and
added to the growing family of software and digital service providers.
Not since photographers changed from black and white to color film
has our industry experienced such a change in the way we do business.
As H&H was there in the paradigm shift from B&W to color, so it
is a leader in the new digital era. H&H has continued its commitment
to be a true "partner" with the photographer as the digital paradigm
marches on.
Therefore, in 2002, we formed H&H University with the
simple motto "Keeping you in touch with changing technology." Digital
technology has all of us scrambling for the right answers to our
countless questions. At H&H University we strive to be a respected
source of truth and to provide a place where photographers know
that the only agenda is helping them succeed and a world-class facility
where the focus goes way beyond just digital imaging.
Work arrives
at H&H Monday through Friday via FedEx, UPS, the U.S. Mail, and
a local KC delivery and pick-up service. A large portion of images
also arrive via FTS (File Transfer Service), a process created by
H&H's own IT department which sends individual orders in data blocks.
When a transmission error occurs with any data block, FTS will detect
the error and restart the transmission at the point the error occurred,
not requiring those data blocks successfully sent earlier. This
process ensures more reliable digital orders sent over the Internet,
a growing portion of images received at H&H.
One of the most significant
contributions to H&H's success during the past five years has been
Wayne's commitment to Lean Manufacturing and more recently, Six
Sigma production initiatives. Lean and Six Sigma are being taught
to all employees and implemented through the lab. This is seen in
the division of our customers into four workgroups called squadrons.
Each squadron is basically a small lab and therefore specializes
in the customers assigned to their workgroup. We chose to call our
cells "squadrons" because of the owner's love of flying. Besides
being very efficient, we have a lot of fun with it. The names of
the four squadrons are the Red Barons, Blue Angels, Gold Thunderbirds,
and Black Sheep. Each squadron has its plane as a mascot and some
have even found its patch.
From its modest beginning, H&H has grown
into one of the industry's largest single facility pro people labs.
It has grown and prospered using a combination of close customer
relationships, the highest possible product quality, and an aggressive
pricing strategy. Specializing in the pro people market, H&H offers
a complete product catalog for both traditional optical printing
and the latest digital lineup of printing and finishing services.
Servicing nearly every processing need for studios ranging from
startup mom and pop operations to some of the largest independent
school and specialty studios, H&H does business across the country,
servicing customers in every state of the union!
With all the changes
that have occurred in the past 34 years, H&H has seen a steady growth
pattern. We feel blessed and believe this growth pattern is related
to our company business philosophy as stated in our mission statement..
"At H&H Color Lab, customer satisfaction is not an unrealistic goal,
but a principle of our business. Our strongest interest and focus
is customer service because customer satisfaction is our strong
suit, our forte, and our customers realize this. We impute to them
in our business dealings that the virtues of honesty and integrity
are important. Thus we strive to make our relationship with our
customers one built on respect, satisfaction, and trust. We succeed
in achieving this end result because of our personal attention to
the needs of our customers and because of our personal attention
to detail as we process their orders.
We don't take chances or risks
with our customers. Stability is a by-word in our company. At the
same time, we are aggressive in our marketing practices and on the
cutting edge of technological development. .. Our customers find
that we put all three ideals of high quality, dependable service,
and low prices into practice on a daily basis at H&H Color Lab.
We relate to our customers, and we have a philosophy our customer
can relate to."