By Jolene Farley
Blue Chip Book Binding, owned by Gene and Carol Scheerhorn, opened for business in 1980 and has stayed in business because it fills a business niche.
Blue Chip Book Binding began in a trailer adjacent to the Scheerhorns home in Hills. In 1986 Blue Chip moved to the former Demuth Hardware building. The business purchased the former John Deere building later and still uses both buildings.
Blue Chip Binding does perfect binding, spiral binding or multi-binding. A perfect binder glues pages onto a soft wrap-around cover. A multi-binder is a stapling machine that staples booklets.
The business serves mostly the South Dakota, Iowa and Minnesota region. Blue Chip is able to take on jobs with smaller quantities while larger companies usually do not want to gear up for such a small amount of work.
"We've had to change with the times," said Scheerhorn. "We are busy because not everyone has big orders, and big companies don't want to set up for small orders."
The Scheerhorns went into business one year after the Pipestone natives moved to Hills, according to Crescent reports.
Publishers Preston Ver Meer and George Schlueter encouraged the Scheerhorns to embark on their business venture. In fact, Gene designed his first coilmaker and his special binding punch in George Schlueter's garage.
"I built three machines for a little over $300 and a lot of time," said Gene.
Everyone said he couldn't do it, according to Carol Scheerhorn, but that just made him more determined.
It takes special people to run a small business. The Scheerhorns never bought new machinery for their business. "We just couldn't justify it," they said.
The Perfect Binder machine the Scheerhorns purchased at a sharply reduced price had two previous owners and would have cost $25,000 new. Gene is very mechanically inclined so he is able to work on the various machines the business uses.
In the past, a large portion of the business was devoted to making covers for funeral guest registration books. At one time, Blue Chip Book Binding produced more than 100,000 cookbooks per year from all over the world.
"Our end and the printers' end has increased in cost so they (cookbooks) are not quite as profitable as before," said Gene.
Gene estimates jobs for the company. He says he has been in the business so long he can just about estimate how long it will take and the costs involved.
The Scheerhorns stated it is not unusual for some of their machines to sit idle for a few months while the company uses another process. It is this flexibility that has kept the company going.
Blue Chip relies on word of mouth to keep the business going. "We try to do good work and get it done on time," said Gene.
"The business has its ups and downs. You don't always have a paycheck at the end of the week," said Gene. "We started a business and we made a good living at it."