Company History: Rein D. Gillstrom got the idea for CDI after designing a “mock, humorous magazine cover” spoofing Montana Golf and thought that the idea would sell well in the form of an affordable novelty item sold directly at Motor Sports, Car Shows, and Youth Sporting events. With a business plan edited multiple times, a $25,000 SBA loan, a $5000 loan from his former father-in-law, and a small room in the back of a Manhattan (MT) house, and a “nearly never there friend” to occasionally provide IT help, he went at it. After the first season, and too many weekends away from the family, Rein decided to switch the business to something more local, more family friendly (his mostly) and a lot time manageable. He bought the companies first 36” wide large format poster/art printer from a local ENCAD dealer, 1 MS-DOS Workstation, Image Alchemy (Post Script Poster Printing Software), Photoshop 2, CorelDraw 3, and a 42” Banner American large format lamination and finishing press. 14 years later, with 2 professional digital camera bodies, more computers, scanners, and archival Giclee printers with widths of 24”, 44”, and 62”, and an additional 63” wide lamination and mounting press, a new and revised history is being rewritten and archived for CDI®, in the form of what has now become . . . GicleeWorks®.
GicleeWorks® Logo 2011
Initially, Rein formulated this business idea as an artist looking for a creative way to survive as an artist, without starving in the artistic process. The idea was to help produce other designers, fine artists and photographers works, while at the same time adding to his own art career as a painter and illustrator, teaching himself photography and building an inventory of personal photographic art that the artist could market later as the companies primary products. GicleeWorks® is the succeeding result of all those years of CDI-Covershot Digital Imaging.
