Copy Products Inc. keeps ownership in the family

Copy Products Inc. co-founders Vernon and his wife Toni Starks sold the company to their daughter and her husband.

Their daughter is Chief Financial Officer Heidi Crane, who’s married to company President Erik Crane. Heidi has been active in the business since she was a teenager, and Erik became president in 1995. Financial terms of the deal were not included in a news release.

“Heidi and Erik have done such a wonderful job of taking CPI into the age of high technology and keeping it on pace with the constant changes,” Vernon Starks said in the release. “Not only has the company remained family-owned and operated, but it has seen continued growth, thanks in no small part to the exceptional people Erik and Heidi have recruited, hired and retained.”

The Starks credit the Cranes with expanding CPI’s commercial services to include digital signage, managed network and print services, and document management software. The Starks founded the company in 1963 as a traditional print shop in Iola, Kansas. The company now operates offices in Springfield, Joplin, Mountain Home, Arkansas, and the Kansas cities of Iola, Pittsburg and Wichita.

The Cranes plan to transition the name of the company to CPI Technologies from Copy Products Inc., according to the release.

CPI ranked first on Springfield Business Journal’s list this year of the area’s largest office equipment dealers, with 55 local employees. The company was founded locally in 1991, and it operates at 2103 W. Vista St., according to the list research. CPI ranked second on the 2016 list. Its major brands sold include Toshiba, Hewlett-Packard and Konica Minolta.