How money is made in copier biz?

[kleankopy]

I mainly only do rentals and been in business since 1998. Make way too much now than I should with only a GED. No college here but make as much or more than a Dr.

[BillyCarpenter]

I mainly only do rentals and been in business since 1998. Make way too much now than I should with only a GED. No college here but make as much or more than a Dr.

Quick story. Many years ago when I started my first copier company, we had zero customers and were competing against 2 dominant players in our market. I would lose 90% of the time when competing for the same customer.

Here's what I come up with.

I hired a person and all she did every day was call every business in our area and gather information. I told her to always get the fax number. This was before email was a big thing.

Once we gathered enough fax numbers I created a page that said this:


We will place a copier in your office at no charge. You will only be charged for the pages you use. You will not be locked into any contract. If you're not satisfied, we will pick up the copier and there will be no penalty. This is not a gimmick.


We were flooded with calls. The competition could no longer compete with us on most sales.

Once we gained enough market share, our focus shifted to selling new machines.

[BillyCarpenter]

I want to add a couple of things to this strategy. When I would eventually set up an appointment to nail down the "rental", I was met with great skepticism. Why? Because it sounded too good to be true. Who the hell would place a copier in someone's office with no money upfront? Well, this wasn't entirely the case. I would require the first and last month's payment upfront. They also had to give a 30 day notice if they wanted to return the copier.

Now, I was ordering copiers by the 18-wheeler load and only paying $100 per copier and they were all low meter. The average payment per month was about $150.00. So I was in the profit from jump. But they didn't know that nor did they care.

I can remember walking into an office for an appointment and them saying; "well, if it isn't Mr. Too Good to be True." lol

Funny thing is that I can't remember one customer turning their machine back in. We took care of them and there was never a major problem.

Once I got a call from a print shop and he asked that I come by to discuss our "cost per copy" plan. When I arrived the owner of the print shop was angry. I asked him why he was upset and he said that I was hurting his business. I was tripping on this and very polite said, sir, you have to worry about your business and I have to worry about mine. Have good day.

Trying to compete against the big boys is fools' errand in my opinion. That is, unless you have a huge budget, which I did not. It's hard to pick up customers when no one has ever heard of your company.

The first year in business is a make or break time. And the copier game is rotten to the core. The competition will tell every lie in the book on you.

I once got a call from a preacher at church that I never even heard of. He said he was in the market for a copier and asked that I meet him at the church the next day.

When I arrived, he said he had never heard of me but that he talked to a salesman for SMBM (South Mississippi Business Machines) and he told the pracher that whatever he did do not do business with Billy Carpenter or Digital Office Solutions - the name of my old company.

The preacher said that he couldn't even repeat some of the stuff the guy said about me. He went on to say that the reason he called is that he figured I must be doing something right for the guy to just start talking about me out of the blue. I made the sale that day. Eventually the sparked an all out war between our companies. I remember it like it was yesterday. It was at that point that I knew I was on to something big.

Thinking ouside the box is better than banging your head on the wall.