For the catalogues, KSC doesn’t just shoot the models. They cast them, fly them in from New York, or wherever they are, and put them up in hotels. He also employs a team of stylists and make-up artists.

Inside the warehouses, Tuckman created several sound stages for shoots. Doing this allows him to control and cut costs. Just moving changing rooms closer to sound stages cut production costs by 15 percent, he said.

“I learned that from a manager at Starbucks, who was complaining about the coffee machine being moved and slowing down work.”

All photo shoots are also streamed live on video, so clients can watch and make suggestions as needed.

With half of his business in print and half online, Tuckman has had to hire an entire tech staff that in addition to helping clients build web sites also develops software like the Non-Flash 360 Degrees or an app that allows customers to shop from their phones. He has so much merchandise amassed over the years that he has fully stocked prop rooms.

“We have to be our own prop house,” he said. “We don’t have time.”

Tuckman said his business model is fairly simple.

“Everyday can be your last,” he said. “We’re not a publicly traded company. We don’t have an angel investor. We built ourselves up from nothing. It’s that attitude that keeps us pushing. Our biggest problem is we won’t say no.”

Tuckman, 38, started shooting pictures when he was in college at the Rochester Institute of Technology. In 1993, he interned at a studio in New York City just as digital photography hit the industry and met someone working in Florida who offered him a job. When he graduated a year later, he took the job. In 1997, he started his own company — Studio FX — and landed Sports Authority as a client, growing quickly. Sports Authority eventually made up 80 percent of his business.

So when Sports Authority moved in 2001, the business was hit hard. Tuckman, however, said he was quickly able to land Office Depot and managed to not lay off a single worker. But he learned a valuable lesson: Today, no one client accounts for more than 30 percent of his business. That same year, Tuckman met his former business partner, who had created KSC, and teamed up. In 2003, Tuckman bought out his former partners but kept the name.

“I kept the KSC name because I didn’t want people to think we were going belly up. It’s all about image,” he said.

What makes the company unique, said Jason Arena, vice president of brand strategy and marketing, is its diversity.

“A lot of technology companies are doing bits and pieces. But we’re the only ones developing content with technology,” Arena said.

Tuckman won’t say how much, but estimates he spends in the millions each year on technology.

“You can’t have the technology without the creative. You could, but you’re not going to have the success. Then you become a commodity,” he said.

In a word, they try to do it all. Recognizing that time is money, they have shrink-wrapped all the needs of marketing into one package, from production to management. So in addition to the sheer production, they help come up with a company’s master plan which includes a suite of software to manage the project; the ideas behind the marketing; execution of the marketing, whether in print or online; and analysis of the campaign’s performance.

This year, KSC Kreate even added a new division for making movies and completed its first full-length film, Finding Joy (see box).

“There’s no path to success. No anything. Some of it’s opportunity. Some of it’s luck.” Tuckman said. “It’s always what’s next.”