CHICAGO (WBBM NEWSRADIO) — As the family story goes, F. John Cushing went from driving a truck for National Blueprint Company in the early 1900s to buying out the company’s owner just prior to the 1929 stock market crash that plunged the world into the Great Depression.
Not bad for a person described as “an uncompleted high school student at Lane Tech.”
“We think he strung together a … shoehorn deal with this gentleman to buy National Blueprint Company, which he later renamed Cushing,” said Joe Cushing, who currently co-owns Cushing Company in Chicago and is F. John Cushing’s grandson.
The company started as a blueprint business, Cushing said. He said the company moved with the technological tides.
“Now it’s digital document storage, document conversion tools, and we collect documents for closing out construction projects,” Cushing said.
He added that the 94-year-old family business, though, does more than just blueprints and document storage. Cushing Company is invested in making signage once a construction project is complete.
“Sixty percent of our business is graphical — display graphics, branding graphics,” he said.
There’s a good chance you’ve seen their work. Cushing made signage for the NBA All-Star game in 2020 — when it was held in Chicago — as well as signage for large apartment buildings, quick service restaurants, and more.
“A lot of corporate headquarters,” he said. “We just did one for Underwriter’s Laboratory downtown. We’re going to do another one for them, I believe, in Northbrook.”
A number of businesses talked about pivoting during the changes brought by the pandemic. Cushing said his family business has been pivoting since 1929.
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