Self serve customer walk up print/copy environment

[[email protected]]

So I was wondering how many printers/commercial printers/quick printers have their shop setup to allow walk-in customers to do their own copying.

Kind of like how Staples is set up. There's the person behind the counter with the larger equipment and then several self serve units.

Do you like that idea? What machines are best suited for that work? Does it make sense to offer it? Thoughts?

 

[pauly92]

Not my kind of business. But i suppose it's good, Only if you get a lot of people walking in the door or local to a shopping complex

 

[Possumgal]

Our shop thought about that for a while. There are many drawbacks, however, that I can think of.

First of all, unless your copy machine is really, really simple, somebody will need to be around to show people the ropes or answer questions or undo problems caused by doing the wrong thing. Second, can you trust that people will keep their children away from them? Kids like to press buttons for fun. Third, how do you handle payment? Not on the honor system, I hope.

In short, you'll need a dedicated person to oversee the operation, or at least somebody always keeping an eye on it. It may cost more than it generates.

 

[MailGuru]

IMHO, it's the beginning of a trip down the wrong path. What makes you think you can go head-to-head with Staples, Office Depot, OfficeMax, FedEx-Kinko's, UPS Office, etc. and win? A better strategy would be to find your niche, those things that you are better at than those big guys, and exploit the hell out of it.

 

[Shawnd]

I did that back in the early 2000's with my Shipping store, more of a hassle than it is worth, brought them back behind the counter after a year. People are dishonest and will make 5 copies "to get it right" and then only want to pay for the 1 "good" copy.

Only way I would do it is on some sort of prepaid card swipe system, they prepay for X amount of copies then swipe the card at the machine and it charges them, mistakes and all.

 

[[email protected]]

Interesting. I'm not sure if you guys have little grocery stores with a copier in them. Almost everyone around here had a walk up machine, even our post office had one. They usually weren't maintained well but you had to put the coins in before you could do anything. I just kind of realized that there's very few of them left. The post office copier is gone and the larger chain grocery stores don't have them anymore either.

I'm thinking with the popularity of those little MFP or inkjet printers that scan that people must be doing their own stuff at home these days.

 

[MailGuru]

I'm thinking with the popularity of those little MFP or inkjet printers that scan that people must be doing their own stuff at home these days.

Yeah, I hadn't even thought about that. I think you can get them pretty cheap (less than $200) online. Not only can they copy in color, but, they can scan to a PDF. Wouldn't hold up in a production environment, but, for home/personal use....................................

 

[gregbatch]

If you have a few production machines, ask your dealer for a simple walk-up machine. We got ours free. Xerox gave us a 7835 Workcenter. We pay the same B/W and color clicks as our production machines. It defaults to B/W. We can enter a code to do color. That keeps customers from running of a bunch of color copies they don't want to pay for. It also connected, so works as a backup machine for doing odd jobs during peak times. Scans to PDF and email too.

As far as walk-up customers, we don't care about the money they generate in copies. But they come through the door and can see that we are much more than a Staples, FedEx/Kinkos, etc. Then they ask questions and before long we can have a nice customer to build upon. If you are looking at the value of the sale and not the lifetime value of a customer you are going to miss out on lots of opportunities.

In one case, we took care of a woman who frankly was a PITA, but she was nice and we just made her feel like she was just as important as any other customer. We had no idea her husband owned a very large company. She told him how nice and helpful we were to her and he started using us for everything we could produce. $5 worth of copies turned out to be a solid long-term customer worth thousands.