Debtset – Bailiff-Sheriff Aust MEMBER Login
Kwik Kopy saves SME owners from wasting marketing time
By Leon Gettler, Talking Business >>
PRINTING business Kwik Kopy is one of Australia’s oldest and biggest franchises.
The business was established in Australia in 1982 when Penfold Printing acquired the Australia-New Zealand rights to the USA’s expanding Kwik Kopy network and it was purchased outright by Stephen Penfold in 1985.
Stephen’s son Matthew is now chairman of the board, several years after running the Darling Harbour NSW franchise.
The business has been growing successfully despite all the changes in the print industry.
Kwik Kopy started a copy shop on every corner, but it evolved massively over the last 10 years with the type of printing that can be done on digital machines. It now does digital print as opposed to the ‘old school’ offset print and it does that through its franchisees which are all local based businesses.
Customers include corporates that want part of their printing done for messaging purposes, but the bulk of the business comes from small to medium sized businesses. It does everything from their business cards to banners to pull-up signage. It is now moving into design and digital marketing.
Coping with digital disruption
Sonia Shwabsky, the CEO of Kwik Kopy, said the industry had gone through a lot of digital disruption over the last 10 years.
This included the big international printers coming into the market, new design tools like Canva and retail type operators and then the big offset printers moving into the digital space.
“What we’ve been able to do is to address that by saying: ‘We provide personalised local service. If you want to talk to someone and you want someone to help, which you do need, it’s a high-involvement type product, you can come and see us,” Ms Schwabsky told Talking Business.
That’s opposed to an outfit like Canva, which is basically all about software.
“You don’t have anyone to talk to, you have to do it yourself and what we find is a lot of people outgrow that,” Ms Schwabsky said.
So an SME needing a logo might find an online design tool but then find they have to translate that out into all of their communications.
“That’s when it gets more difficult and people lose interest in doing it themselves,” she said. “They should be focused on growing their business and not designing.”
IT pressure on business owners
The other issue for a lot of SMEs is that working with these tools requires small business owners to be really IT savvy. Not all are like that.
“They don’t have the time to learn, even though the tools are relatively easy,” Ms Schwabsky said.
“But what we find is that when you’re a small business owner, you’re wearing so many hats.
“To sit there and learn something that you’re not going to use in the rest of your business takes time away from the real core business activities you should be doing – so that’s where we come into it.
“We can take info from an initial idea and turn it into that marketing collateral that you need.”
Significantly, Kwik Kopy now scores a massive 97 percent on the Net Promoter Score – the score used to assess customer satisfaction and the extent to which customers would recommend the business to others.
“Our franchisees, because they’re business owners, it is directly related to their livelihoods and their success,” Ms Schwabsky said.
“So the care that they take and the service we provide, they go above and beyond.” 
Hear the complete interview and catch up with other topical business news on Leon Gettler’s Talking Business podcast, released every Friday at www.acast.com/talkingbusiness
ends
