June 20th, 2008
In today’s edition of PrintAction‘s weekly newsletter, I
found the headline: FEDEX KILLS KINKO’S BRAND. I had read this elsewhere, but
had not previously encountered the embittered remarks of the company founder, Paul
Orfalea.
I could paraphrase the accompanying article, but as I’m a
contributing writer to the publication, I hope that editor Jon Robinson will
not object to my quoting it in full:
In a surprising move by the
shipping company, FedEx will be rebranding all of the FedEx Kinko’s stores into
entities known as FedEx Office. This move came just before the company
announced a $241-million loss, mainly attributed to Kinko’s. The name will cost
nearly $700 million.
“Kinko’s was primarily a copy and
print-service provider when it was acquired in 2004,” said Brian D. Philips,
president and chief executive officer of FedEx Office. “The name FedEx Office
more accurately represents our broader role of providing superior information
and services through our company-owned, digitally connected locations around
the world. We are a back office for small businesses and a branch office for
medium to large businesses and mobile professionals.”Â
Kinko’s founder Paul Orfalea issued
a statement about this move. The first Kinko’s store was founded in Isla Vista,
California in 1970; Orfalea left the company in 2000. “Friends, acquaintances
and journalists have been asking me for comments on FedEx’s recent decision to
drop the Kinko’s name from their copy and print centres. Although I sold my
financial interest in Kinko’s several years ago, this news hit me hard. I have
mixed emotions, because Kinko’s as I knew it has been gone for a very long
time.
“For 30 years, I worked with tens
of thousands of fellow Kinko’s co-workers to grow an innovative customer-driven
business. Every stage of life required Kinko’s: being a student, business
owner, bride, job-seeker, sales person, event planner, soccer parent and much
more. We took pride in helping customers achieve their goals and always put
customers first.
“Those of us who built the company
from a single site in a hamburger stand near the campus of UCSB in 1970 to an
international network at the millennium assumed our grandchildren would know
what it meant when we said we created Kinko’s. Sadly, they won’t. At Kinko’s
our motto was ‘In Ideas We Trust.’ Those ideas, expressed in the way we shared
power, shared profits, and shared knowledge, touched tens of thousands of
coworkers and millions of customers from 1970 to 2000. The signs may be coming
off the building, but when you next meet a former Kinko’s coworker and he or
she brightens up to tell you how it used to be, take note of the fire in their
eyes. That’s the Kinko’s I’ll remember.”
I think that most
business owners realize that when you sell your company, you’d best focus on
enjoying the payout — the new owners will do their best to remove any evidence
of your legacy as soon as humanly possible.
