I started my print career at Kinko’s. For any younger readers (not sure I have any), you might not know about Kinko’s. It was a national chain of copy and print centers that was purchased by FedEx in 2004 who changed the name to FedEx Office. 

I worked for Kinko’s in the 1990s when it was a freewheeling set of partnerships who could make independent decisions from the mothership. We basically said yes to just about anything the customer asked for and then turned around and figured out how to get it done. At some point in my career at Kinko’s, a consultant came in and did a financial study of what we made money on. No surprise there: it wasn’t passport photos, notary services, resume services, or oversized faxing—it was full color printing. To be more specific, it was full color printed and bound business documents. We lost money on lots of products but made so much margin on full color bound business documents, our business looked extremely healthy.

The “we can do anything'' approach was reined in from the mothership and we started to focus on what was actually profitable. This resulted in a reduction in our product/services offerings and a simultaneous increase in our bottom line. There was a lot of reluctance to make this “more focused” change at Kinko’s. A lot of people in the field wanted to be that one-stop shop, hero for the customer, do anything they asked. There was good intent around that desire, but the math just didn’t work out.