TORONTO—A familiar name in the industry has returned.

Hall Photographic started as a small camera shop in Toronto in 1957, but many will remember the business as Treck Hall after it merged with Treck Photographic in the 1980s.

But the evolution of the digital camera forced the business to branch out into selling wide format printers, to allow customers to print their own digital files.

With the photographic industry still taking a hit in the following years, the business merged with Mondrian to form Mondrian-Hall, and three years later it was bought by Unisource and operated as a division of that company.

While John Hall — the third generation of Halls in the business — was sent on his way from Unisource about a year ago (Unisource has since changed the division name to Unisource Wide Format), he has relaunched under the Hall family name as Treck Hall Wide Format.

With four employees and warehousing in Toronto and Vancouver, along with customer service/sales reps in both cities, the business has moved away from hardware and concentrates its efforts on wide format media. Product lines include HP, Epson, Ilford (Omnijet), and others, and the company is about to launch Ritrama, a vinyl substrate line.

"Our focus is 100% on wide format media and inks, I'm not in equipment. I have everything for a 24-inch Epson aqueous printer to a 126-inch outdoor printer," said Hall. While he's not in hardware, he doesn't mind giving hardware advice to customers, he added. 

Treck Hall Wide Format has a booth at the upcoming Print World show in Toronto. "That'll be my welcome back party," he said.

Treck Hall has a website (being built by Hall himself) here.