At 51, John Benson suddenly found himself laid off from work with a family to support, including a daughter in college. Deciding to gamble on himself for a change, he started a disc copying service in the bedroom of his Aurora home. Now, 15 years later, his company, Beta Graphics, is up to $7 million a year in sales.
How did he do it?
He and his wife of 44 years, Beverly, will say luck played some part, being in the right place at the right time. But he’s also a methodical researcher and planner, someone who works hard, continually studies the competition and stays current with the latest technology.
Furthermore, he enjoys a challenge, actually relishing diving into a problem. And being out of work in 1982 definitely qualified as a challenge.
“At that time there was a recession, and there weren’t many jobs for a man of my age,” said Benson who had worked for nearly 30 years for large publishing companies such as Grolier, Scott Foresman and Encyclopaedia Britannica. He had spent 13 years at his last position as director of film strips and multimedia packaging for the Society for Visual Education in Chicago when it was sold and his job was eliminated.
“I was devastated,” he said.
But Benson likes to solve problems. “He thrives on problem solving,” said Beverly Benson, who is secretary of the company. “He likes the challenge.”
In his last job, he had noticed that there was a shortage of computer disc copying businesses in the Chicago area — in fact, in the entire Midwest. He wondered what it would take to start his own business and fulfill that need.
So he hopped in his car and drove to Mitchell, S.D., to research the cost of buying discs in bulk from a major manufacturer there, then headed south to Dallas to visit a company that made disc copying machines. With facts and figures in hand, he headed home to compute startup costs.
Two local investors, G. William Moore and Lee Thurow, both of Aurora, heard of his plans and wanted a stake in the startup business as well. They put up $30,000 between them. Benson matched that with money from his savings and a retirement plan and then set up shop in his Aurora home.
He named the fledgling business Beta Graphics, using the word for the Greek letter “B,” for his name, Benson.
His first customer was one of his former employers, Scott Foresman. Four representatives of the company watched the process of disc copying, so engrossed in what he was showing them that they forgot they were crowded into a 12-foot-by-15-foot bedroom rather than an office, Benson said.
“I knew I could show them things they had never seen before,” he said. “They knew they would have to go to California to see another piece of this equipment operating.”
The demonstration landed him an order for 500 to 1,000 discs for a project called Probe, which was to be offered for grades K-12 in a variety of computer formats, including Apple II, Atari, Commodore and TRS-80. (The norm at that time was 5 1/4-inch discs.)
And his business was launched. He did $18,000 worth of business his first six months, and then things began to snowball. The second half of his first year sales rose to $120,000 and haven’t stopped since.
During that first year, he hired recent college graduate Craig Kent to provide technical expertise. Kent has been with him ever since.
“I thought I had the wrong address,” Kent said, recalling his first meeting with Benson. “I was expecting a larger corporation.”
The business looked promising to him, however, so he accepted the job. He admits he is surprised at the level of success they have achieved.
“It has been phenomenal,” said Kent of St. Charles, who is now the director of programming and electronics and describes his work as problem solving in the areas of computers and electronics.
When the bedroom got too crowded with computer equipment and people in 1984, Benson rented a 1,000-square-foot facility on Farnsworth Avenue in Aurora.
In no time, he needed another 1,000 square feet, then the need mushroomed to 7,000. In 1990 he decided to start another company, Beta Pac, that would manufacture the vinyl notebooks and pockets that discs come in. He rented a facility in Batavia to house that.
Things kept booming, and he rented another 11,000 square feet on Industrial Drive on the west side of Aurora for a warehouse. By that time he found himself paying $100,000 a year in rent, so he purchased eight acres west of Aurora near Hankes and Norris Roads, spending $1.9 million to put up a 40,000-square-foot structure that houses 78 employees and has a view of a lake and farm fields and plenty of room to expand.
In the meantime, he expanded his business into copying CD-ROMs and bought printing presses, enabling him to print the instruction sheets, cover sheets and other assorted materials needed for his customers’ products. He now makes CD-ROM discs, copies discs, prints necessary instructional material, packages it all and ships it. All the customer has to do is provide the software and material to be printed.
“Beta Graphics is excellent to work with,” said Susan Mussey, production coordinator of educational software in the high school educational materials division of Holt Rinehart and Winston in Austin, Texas. “We’ve worked with them for a number of years. They handle the packaging and everything; it’s not just the software. We give them the whole job, and they run with it.”
His goal, now, Benson said, is to continue to grow to be the equivalent of R.R. Donnelley & Co. in software service. “They are the largest printing company,” he said. “We do work for them, and I would love to be the largest software service company in the U.S.”
Moore, one of the initial investors and who still is a part owner, said he has never regretted putting his money and trust in Benson. “I had a lot of confidence in John. He seemed like a fellow who knew what he was doing,” Moore said. “Also, he treats people like you want to be treated. Plus, he’s very progressive and is always interested in improving his facilities. And he’s a very hard worker.”
If you met John Benson on the street, you might not think he was a successful entrepreneur. He looks more like a doting grandfather. Tall and slender, he speaks slowly and methodically. Those mannerisms belie the fact that his brain is always whirling, he said, thinking of many projects at once.
And one of them often has to do with airplanes, because one of his great loves is flying. He set up his own company, called Beta Air, which he uses to deliver his shipments and pick up supplies. At least once a month, though, he tries to get into the Cessna U-206 (a large, single-engine, high-performance, six-passenger plane) and fly himself. He is also interested in buying a World War II fighter plane to restore.
Tennis is his other hobby, and he serves on the local board of the United States Tennis Association, which hosts regional competitions.
He equates flying a plane with running a successful business: “You don’t have to be afraid as long as you understand what you’re doing. I know that at 8,000 feet, for example, I can glide for 12 miles, and (in an emergency) you can find a lot of places to land in 12 miles.
“In business, when fears threaten to overwhelm me, I study the facts and figures and get into the depth of the problem, and that washes the fear away.”
