End of the Line for Kinko’s

We recently heard about the end of Kinko’s. If you haven’t heard, FedEx, the current owner of Kinko’s has decided to change their name from FedEx Kinko’s to FedEx Office. They will be dropping Kinko’s entirely.

This is a huge change for the printing and copying industry. For many years this brand-name was synonymous with photocopying. It was almost as popular as the name Xerox. Because it sounded funny it was the punch line of many jokes and story lines in sitcoms. Now it’s just part of history.

As a printer I have mixed feelings about FedEx’s decision. Kinko’s has been a standard bearer in our market’s mind. While printers have not measured themselves to Kinko’s, some customers have. This has given us a good standard to follow to point out our strengths versus them. For instance, in Illinois copy shops like Kinko’s have to charge sales tax. Print shops do not. We are considered value added resellers. In my county, this saves my customers 10%.

Nevertheless, there is still power in brand names. Once I had a customer take a long walk across my parking lot to walk in and asked me if I knew where the closest Kinko’s was. When I asked him what he was looking for and he just said copies, I said that I could do them here. He seemed to be more than a little surprised. He explained that he needed to have Kinko’s copies made. When I told him that we had similar equipment and we can do everything that they could do, he was still not satisfied. He left explaining that Kinko’s copies are better because they’re from Kinko’s.

FedEx’s decision to change the name is a puzzling one. They bought the company because it had the best name in the industry. Now that they have written off about one third of the value of the venerable copy shop, they have decided to strip most of the rest of the value of their purchase away too. It’s sort of like buying a McDonald’s Happy Meal and throwing away the toy.