KINKO’S Franchise Startup Cost, Profit & Opportunities

Interested in Kinko’s franchise? Are you searching for a photocopying, printing, document production and distribution business, and are looking forward to joining the FedEx Kinkos franchise?

I suppose that is why you are here reading this so that you can garner as much information as possible about Kinko before making an informed decision to join them.

It is important to note that Kinko is not the traditional business franchise. One could manage a Kinko’s store, and one could also have a promotional relationship with a Kinko’s store, but one could not own one’s Kinko’s store.

About Kinko’s Franchise

Kinko is a company that achieved market success and business growth not by cutting back on costs but as a result of redefining the standards. Kinko’s franchise (more officially recognized as FedEx Office Print & Ship Services, Inc.) otherwise known as FedEx Kinko’s was founded by Paul Orfalea – who was nicknamed “Kinko” as a result of his curly hair – as early as 1970, more than four decades ago, under the name Kinko’s.

It is a chain of stores in the United States that offers a retail outlet or channel for FedEx Express and FedEx Ground (which includes home delivery) shipping, in addition to photocopying, printing and binding services. At the moment, it has its headquarters situated in Plano, Texas, and all its office stores are corporate-owned.

Paul Orfalea first started Kinko, with a photocopier (copy machine), as a copy shop in Isla Vista college community situated very close to the University campus of California, Santa Barbara. Ten years later, Kinko had already established 80 stores, each store having an average size of 400 square feet. By the late 1980s, Kinko had already grown and established 420 outlets, each having an average size of 1,500 square feet.

Paul Orfalea later transformed Kinko into a string of loosely jointed personal partnerships between each of the Kinko store owners and himself; and by the year 1997, more than 127 Kinko’s partnership had already been established.

After selling a large stake of the company to the investment firm Clayton, Dubilier & Rice (CDR) in 1997, he later left the company three years later as a result of a disagreement between the investment firm and himself.

Kinko was later transformed into a business model that assumed central corporate ownership instead of the previous partnership model, and most of the stores were open 24 hours a day. Nonetheless, this new business structure made it appear a little effortless for the CDR investment firm to eventually put Paul Orfalea out of the company he had worked hard to build.

For so many years, Kinko had its corporate headquarters at Ventura, California. It was not until 2002 that Kinko had its headquarters moved to Galleria Tower, Dallas, Texas. Kinko was later sold to FedEx in the early part of 2004 for a fee that amounted to $2.4 billion and then the name “Kinko” was reformed into FedEx Kinko’s Office and Print Centres.

It was at this time, after Kinko had been bought by FedEx, that the number of hours the stores were open became reduced for most of the locations.

In the 1990s and late 2000s, the company established an expansion strategy that saw them, during those years of immense growth, expanding into other countries aside the United States; countries such as Canada, South Korea, United Arab Emirates (UAE), Lebanon, Kuwait, Australia, China, Japan, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, and Mexico. But due to low demand in Australia, the Netherlands, and Mexico, the company decided to fold up its stores in those markets in 2008.

Also, Kinko folded up its stores in the United Kingdom and China during the global recession period that lasted from 2008 – 2012 and sold its stores in Japan to Konica Minolta.

At present, Kinko has close to 2,000 facilities and provides services to small businesses and home office clients; and has revenue of more than $2 billion. Today, in a ranking of the leading printing companies in all of North America, the company is ranked as #7.

Most of Kinko’s key competitors in North America include Office Depot, AlphaGraphics, Staples, Vistaprint, The UPS Store, Speedy, and OfficeMax. One of the key persons in the company is Brian Philip, the Chairman Executive Officer (CEO) of the company.

The major services of Kinko’s stores, aside the obvious full-service copying and printing, also include providing numerous service features such as color and monochrome copy machines, digital photo printer kiosks, fax machines, as well as more than a few desktop computers for rentals with Adobe Systems applications (like image scanner and other design software) installed.

Although some Kinko’s stores that are new have only one color printer which their desktop computers for rentals are connected; most of the other Kinko’s stores have no less than one color laser printer and monochrome laser printer. Apart from these obvious services that Kinko provides, they also offer the sales of a variety of business books and office supplies.

Required Startup Investment to Join

At present, Kinko is not a traditional franchise. You can manage a Kinko’s store, and you can also have a promotional relationship with a Kinko’s store, but you cannot own your own Kinko’s store. So the franchise cost stands at $0.

The reason is that they cherish the idea of making a lot of money with someone on the bottom line rather than on the top line, according to founder Paul Orfalea. That way, they share profits.

There is currently no public display of the detailed financial requirements or any requirements at all, to join them.

How to Open a Kinko’s Franchise

To know more about Kinko franchise and join them, you will have to make a visit to their official website on www.fedex.com and request for more information by locating and selecting Contact Information.