Company History

In the mid 70’s, a local teacher named Keith Dawson was on a vacation with his family in Florida. While his wife was teaching their sons how to dive in the motel pool, Keith walked across the street to a print shop that was advertising printing while you waited. They were using a process called “instant printing” using paper printing plates instead of traditional metal plates. Keith had worked with print shops in the past and knew that even simple print jobs often took several weeks. He recognized the potential of “instant printing” in his hometown of Chatham-Kent. So, even though he had no experience in printing, he bought some used equipment and opened up The Instant Print Shoppe in 1978 in Chatham, Ontario, Canada.

The promise of very fast turnaround with reasonable prices allowed us to grow quickly. At a time when most printing firms took two weeks to print an envelope order, Instant Print & Promo would commonly print envelopes within 24-hours.

We soon became known as a shop that could handle almost any job, including many large projects that smaller printers were unable to complete on time. One such project was the printing of thousands and thousands of student handbooks for schools around Ontario.

Keith was not only a wise businessman, but he was also able to develop his own computer software to price and track printing jobs. This was in the 1980's, when most print shops were using a pencil and paper to do this. So Keith set out to visit hundreds of printers throughout Ontario and shared his software with him. This also allowed him to develop a network of peers which continues to this day at Instant Print & Promo.

We were originally located at 180 Keil Drive, in the building that now houses Concentrix. In 1998, we moved to our current location in a former Dixie Lee chicken restaurant at 111 Richmond Street. In 1994, we put on an addition which doubled our size to ensure we could adequately serve our growing customer base.

Our current owner, Keith's son David, joined the company in 1993. He has been leading the company since Keith's retirement in 2016, and in 2019 updated the name to Instant Print & Promo to better reflect the work that we do.

With a strong focus on our customers, Dave is excited to add new products and features that will help local businesses and organizations succeed.

It seems like every company talks about the importance of customer service, but one of the lasting cornerstones of our business is the way our customers feel about doing business with us. We work very hard to be super-convenient and to have a rock-solid reputation for dependability. Our customers often tell us that they can rest easy when they trust us with there printing and signs. We do not take that for granted.

We invite you to consider using our printing firm the next time your company needs printing. There's a reason why thousands of local businesses have trusted us over the last four decades. We believe we can provide the best all-around experience for you if you'll give us a try.

If you would like to talk to one of our customer service representatives, please call 519-352-6813. We would be happy to discuss how we can help your business succeed. Feel free to ask for David Dawson, the owner, when you call, and to inquire about taking a personally guided tour of our business, hosted by Dave. We bet you'll find this behind-the-scenes tour quite interesting!