FedEx Office
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| Type | Subsidiary |
|---|---|
| Industry | Office services |
| Founded | 1970 |
| Headquarters | Dallas, Texas |
| Key people | Brian Philips, CEO |
| Products | Photocopying, printing, shipping |
| Employees | 19,000 (2006) |
| Parent | FedEx Corporation |
| Website | FedEx Office Homepage |
FedEx Office (FedEx Office Print & Ship Services, Inc., formerly FedEx Kinko's, and earlier simply Kinko's) is a chain of stores that provide a retail outlet for FedEx Express and FedEx Ground (including Home Delivery) shipping, as well as printing, copying, and binding services. Unlike its main competitor, The UPS Store, all FedEx Office stores are corporate-owned.
Besides traditional full-service copy and print shop services, all stores also provide a number of self-service features: color and monochrome photocopiers, fax machines, digital photo printer kiosks, and several desktop computer rentals, of which one always has an image scanner and some design software (mainly Adobe Systems applications) installed. The computers available for rental are connected to at least one color and one monochrome laser printer (some newer stores have only a color printer but charge less for monochrome prints). The stores also offer a selection of office supplies and business books for retail purchase.
The company's primary clientele consists of small business and home office clients. There are more than 1800 centers in Asia, Europe, and North America. With over $2 billion in revenues, the company is the 7th largest printing company in North America.[1]
The company was founded as Kinko's in 1970 by Paul Orfalea, whose nickname was "Kinko" because of his kinky (curly) hair. Its first copy shop—which Orfalea legendarily opened with a single sidewalk copy machine—was in the college community of Isla Vista next to the campus of the University of California, Santa Barbara. He left the company in 2000, following a dispute with the investment firm Clayton, Dubilier & Rice, to which he had sold a large stake in the company three years earlier.[2]
As Orfalea later disclosed in his autobiography, it took an enormous amount of work by a small army of lawyers at Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher to disentangle him from Kinko's.[3] The problem was that rather than adopt the traditional franchising model (by which the promoter creates a corporation that sells franchises), he had built the company as a series of loosely connected personal partnerships between each store owner and himself.[4] By 1997, there were over 127 Kinko's partnerships in existence.[5] All of them had to be carefully dismantled and rolled into a single S corporation in order to convert the company to a more centralized corporate-owned business model. Orfalea and several other key partners decided to go that route because they believed it would make the company more efficient (he was wasting too much time mediating disputes between different factions of Kinko's partnerships), and would enable the oldest partners, including himself, to cash out smoothly and engineer a transition of the company to a new generation of managers. Unfortunately, the new structure also made it easier for CDR to gradually force him out of his own company.
Kinko's corporate headquarters was based in Ventura, California for many years, but in 2002, the company relocated to Galleria Tower in Dallas, Texas.
In February 2004 Kinko's was bought by FedEx for $2.4 billion and then became known as FedEx Kinko's Office and Print Centers. Currently, Brian Phillips is the President and Chief Executive Officer, following Ken May's departure on March 7, 2008.[6][7]
Locations of FedEx Office centers currently include Canada, China, Japan, Korea, Kuwait, United Arab Emirates, United Kingdom, and the United States of America. Kinko's formerly operated in Australia, Mexico, and the Netherlands but withdrew from those markets in late 2008 due to low consumer demand for Kinko's services.
FedEx Office's primary competitors in the crowded North American market include The UPS Store, Office Depot, OfficeMax, AlphaGraphics, Staples, Sir Speedy, and VistaPrint.
On June 2, 2008, FedEx announced that they were rebranding FedEx Kinko's as FedEx Office, the retail branch of the FedEx Corporation. As of Spring 2010, some stores and branding still show FedEx Kinko's. FedEx Office offers the same services that FedEx Kinko's Office and Print Center locations did previously, with some small exceptions. To ease customer confusion during the transition period, many stores have a large purple sign in the window that says "Kinko's Inside."
Prior to the acquisition by FedEx, most Kinko's stores were open 24 hours a day. After the acquisition, FedEx reduced the hours for many locations. However every hub store is mostly open 24 hours a day
FedEx Office offers convenient locations in hotels and resorts across the country, locations are:
Anaheim, CA Anaheim Marriott
Atlanta, GA Georgia World Congress Center Hilton Atlanta Atlanta Marriott Marquis Hyatt Regency Atlanta
Boca Raton, FL Boca Raton Resort & Club
Boston, MA Boston Convention and Exhibition Center John B. Hynes Veterans Memorial Convention Center
Chicago, IL Hilton Chicago Hyatt Regency O’Hare Chicago Marriott Downtown Magnificent Mile McCormick Place Navy Pier Renaissance Chicago Downtown Hotel The Westin Michigan Avenue Chicago Sheraton Chicago Hotel and Towers Dallas, TX Hyatt Regency Dallas
Denver, CO Hyatt Regency Denver at Colorado Convention Center
Fort Lauderdale, FL Marriott Harbor Beach Grapevine, TX (DFW) Gaylord Texan Resort and Convention Center
Houston, TX George R. Brown Convention Center Hyatt Regency Houston Indianapolis, IN JW Marriott Indianapolis The Westin Indianapolis
Irvine, CA Irvine Marriott Jacksonville, FL Hyatt Regency Jacksonville Riverfront Los Angeles, CA Los Angeles Airport Marriott The Westin Bonaventure Hotel and Suites Las Vegas, NV Las Vegas Convention Center Mandalay Bay Resort & Casino/THEhotel at Mandalay Bay The Cosmopolitan of Las Vegas Miami Beach, FL Fontainebleau Miami Beach
Minneapolis, MN Minneapolis Convention Center
Nashville, TN Gaylord Opryland Resort and Convention Center New Orleans, LA Hyatt Regency New Orleans New Orleans Marriott
New York, NY Jacob K. Javits Convention Center New York Marriott Downtown Sheraton New York Hotel and Towers Waldorf=Astoria New York Hotel Orlando, FL Gaylord Palms Resort & Convention Center JW Marriott Orlando, Grande Lakes Ritz-Carlton Orlando, Grande Lakes Orange County Convention Center Renaissance Orlando at SeaWorld Orlando World Center Marriott
Philadelphia, PA Philadelphia Marriott Downtown Pennsylvania Convention Center
Phoenix, AZ Sheraton Phoenix Downtown Hotel JW Marriott Desert Ridge Resort & Spa Westin Kierland Resort and Spa
San Antonio, TX JW Marriott San Antonio Hill Country Resort and Spa Grand Hyatt San Antonio San Diego, CA Hotel Del Coronado San Diego Convention Center Sheraton San Diego Hotel & Marina
San Francisco, CA Hilton San Francisco San Francisco Marriott Marquis
Seattle, WA Washington State Convention & Trade Center Sheraton Seattle Hotel Vancouver, B.C. Fairmont Waterfront Hotel
Washington, DC Hyatt Regency Washington on Capitol Hill JW Marriott Washington, DC Washington Marriott Wardman Park Renaissance Washington, DC Washington Hilton
[edit] References
- ^ "GAOnline 101 Top North American Printers". Graphic Arts Monthly. unknown. http://www.graphicartsonline.com/info/CA6468782.html.
- ^ Forbes: Kinko's cuts ties to founder
- ^ Paul Orfalea and Ann Marsh, Copy This!: How I Turned Dyslexia, ADHD, and 100 Square Feet Into a Company Called Kinko's (New York: Workman Publishing, 2007), 171-176.
- ^ Orfalea, 60.
- ^ Orfalea, 173-175.
- ^ http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story/fedex-takes-charge-drop-kinkos/story.aspx
- ^ http://www.11alive.com/news/local/story.aspx?storyid=116720&catid=40
[edit] External links
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$34.7 billion 
