Brand Recognition

Read this yesterday about FedEx changing the name of Kinkos to Office. Kinko's was founded in 1970 by Paul Orfalea in his garage making class notes for the University of California at Santa Barbara. Expansion followed to other university towns continuing to make class notes as they grew. The model was perfect for the time, 24 hour shops manned by college students and serving college students. Many a student has spent a sleepless night printing, collating and binding their final report just in time for class.

Being in the  copy industry, Kinko's was one of our biggest competitors and helped us develop our model of customer service. One of my favorite sayings during orientation was "Anyone can make you a copy, but we provide a service and solve problems". This philosophy was developed because it made it us different than the Kinko's, Print 'n' Copy and other copy stores in a university town. We're celebrating our 20th anniversary this year and have seen  a lot of stores come and go. 

But I hate to see Kinko's changing like it is. FedEx has a model in mind that discards the student base that built the company. When the purchased occurred in 2004 I was anticipating they would be combining Kinko's name recognition in the copy industry and FedEx shipping capabilities, really defining print on demand anywhere in the US. But FedEx headed for smaller, corporate centered stores that were "Your office away from the office" concept.

They are continuing with the concept but changing the name from FedEx Kinko's to FedEx Office. What I find interesting is the discarding of the brand name Kinko's. The name had built itself over the last 38 years to become synonymous with copying. Nearly everyone has been in a strange town and if they needed a copy started looking for a Kinko's.  I assumed that FedEx bought Kinko's because of the brand recognition, but after only four years they have determined the brand did not get them what they wanted, so are quickly discarding it.

I don't know what the future holds for the printing industry, Lord knows I've seen quite a change in my short 15 years in the industry, but to toss out a well known brand that took over 30 years to build seems a little short-sighted to me. I expect the FedEx Office store will start disappearing from the smaller university towns and relocating to the large cities to service the corporate client.