Corporations: Copying in Black Ink

A pioneer in the office copying field, American Photocopy Equipment Co. was a Wall Street favorite back in the 1950s. Then it faded fast. Trouble was, while the Evanston, Ill., firm had scored its success with machines that turned out wet copies, other companies—notably Xerox—were building huge new markets with "dry" electrostatic copiers requiring no messy chemical developers. APECO tried to do the same, but its first electrostatic machines were plagued by costly production defects. From a 1961 high of $4,925,000, its profits went downhill, and in 1966 the firm finished with a deficit of $1,972,000.

Yet even as it was sliding into the red, the company was turning a corner. Much of the 1966 loss could be traced to the fact that it had decided to write off its entire inventory of obsolescent machines and concentrate on a new copier called the Super-Stat. President Clayton Rautbord, 40, also increased his company's sales force. The payoff has been handsome. A compact, relatively low-cost ($985) machine, the Super-Stat has caught on where the company's earlier dry-process copiers foundered. Last week Rautbord announced record 1967 sales of $35,618,000. Even more important was the black ink—a profit of $1,182,000.