Komax owners Bob Maxwell and Becky Offutt.
One of the top office technology dealerships in West Virginia is KOMAX Business Systems in South Charleston. The company, founded in 1999 by co-owners Bob Maxwell and Becky Offutt, markets Konica Minolta and Muratec as well as KIP and Canon wide-format printers. The dealership is also doing a booming business in MPS.
I’ve been familiar with KOMAX for years thanks in large part to its frequent selection as an Elite Dealer, however, this was the first opportunity I had to interview Becky and Bob. Their thoughts on their dealership, the industry, and the reasons for their success made for an interesting conversation.
How’s business?
Offutt: Good, we’re on target to have our best year ever in 2014. We’re looking at about 15 percent growth.
What segments of the business are doing well for you right now?
Offutt: Production print and government sales. We’ve had about 20 percent growth in production print in 2014 and look for that to continue to grow.
What are you doing right with production print and what are you doing right with government sales?
Offutt: We’ve been fortunate enough to have landed the sole source contract with the State of West Virginia for all of their digital copiers across the state. That explains our growth in government sales. As far as production print we’ve placed an emphasis on production print education on the sales and technical side of our business. We have two sales reps trained and certified and at least four of our technicians have received additional production print training this year. We have a great technical support group, our sales group is clearly more educated and we are meeting those production print opportunities head on and having great success.
What’s been the biggest challenge of selling production print?
Maxwell: It’s a different mindset taking care of production print customers. You have to be able to respond quickly. Customers can’t afford to be down and we had to make the commitment internally to have the technicians trained and available to respond in that manner. In our geographic area the biggest challenge beyond that is there just aren’t as many production opportunities as there might be in bigger marketplaces. We’ve differentiated ourselves from the competition because we take good care of the customers and the word spreads on that.
Where are you finding the opportunities for production print?
Maxwell: It’s spread out between commercial printers and education—colleges and universities.
You’ve been doing MPS, what you brand as “Optimized Print Services,” for a few years now, what’s the one thing you know now about MPS that you wish you knew when you first started offering it?
Offutt: We’ve been doing MPS for about five years and honestly when we entered the MPS market we anticipated it would be a little easier than it really is. MPS is more complicated than a lot of what we sell because it requires a buy in from more departments, from IT to the CFO. Getting those important people in an organization together at the same time to make a presentation is sometimes challenging. On the other hand once you get them together it usually results in a long-term commitment and leads to other opportunities.
There’s another side of MPS sales that’s been challenging and that’s the supplies fulfillment side. We found that the existing software that was available wasn’t good enough so we developed our own software to supplement the information we’re getting. We’ve taken that to a whole new level with the ability to project an actual date to empty so we are managing that supplies fulfillment better. We actually see a growth in our MPS sales.
As far as creating your own software in house did you start seeing immediate results upon implementation of the software?
Offutt: Yes. In the beginning we were sending toner out when it wasn’t needed and missing some things. Implementing our own software has made a big difference in supplies fulfillment.
How would you describe your customers?
Maxwell: It’s a combination of small and midsize businesses and as Becky says, we’re the sole source for the State of West Virginia. We have about 5,000 customers with an emphasis on legal, healthcare, and education vertical markets.
Who are your biggest competitors, other independent dealers or manufacturer direct branches?
Maxwell: It’s almost all independent dealers. Ricoh is a tough competitor and has a branch and Konica Minolta has a small branch office. Those are the only two direct branches we have to deal with.
Do you have any plans to get into Managed Services?
Maxwell: We’re trying to. We’ve sent some people for training. Hopefully we learned a lesson when we started with the Optimized Print Services to apply here. You need the infrastructure in place to offer these types of services. There’s a stream of revenue out there we think we can go after, but we have to do it responsibly. Customers trust you and we have fortunately built a good reputation on taking care of them, but we have to have the infrastructure in place. We’re working towards that and that’s one of our goals to grow into in 2015.
Are there any other products, solutions or services you’re looking at taking on?
Offutt: We’re intrigued by 3D printing. We believe there is a good market here in West Virginia with our manufacturing and mining customers.
That Konica Minolta connection should certainly help there, especially since they have that partnership with 3D Systems.
Maxwell: We’re looking forward to going to the Konica Minolta dealer meeting [in February] and seeing that. They’ve told us they’ll have some additional products we’ll be able to see so we’re excited about that.
Your primary vendors are Konica Minolta and Muratec, why are they a good fit for KOMAX?
Offutt: We have a long history with Konica Minolta back to the days when it was just Konica. The Bizhub products are reliable, user friendly, and the fact that Konica Minolta has won Buyers Lab Product Line of the Year says a lot about the product. We have customers who love the Bizhubs. Muratec fills the space that Konica Minolta does not. We get great support from both companies and we feel that gives us the depth we need.
How long have you been selling KIP and Canon wide format?
Maxwell: We have been selling the Canon for about five years and the KIP for 10 or more. We were a KIP dealer before they had their arrangement with Konica Minolta. That’s another area we feel we can do better with, particularly in our state. The big thing is the natural gas industry, which is booming and we’re seeing an uptick with wide format for that industry.
Offutt: We also focused on education in that area this past year.
2015 will mark your 15th year in business, have you met the objectives you set out when you first started?
Maxwell: I think so. When we first opened, there were two reasons why we left a big corporation, Danka, and opened up our own dealership. We felt that the big corporation forgot what it was that made them so successful, and that was their employees. Likewise, we couldn’t make the commitment to our customers and know that it was going to be supported. We felt we could do it better.
Becky and I had both worked previously for an independent dealer so we had seen both sides of it and we felt we could open our own business here and make it a place that people could look forward to coming to work and make a difference with our customers. They could grow their career here and we do a great job of taking care of the customer when we have the right people in house.
When did you first realize the business was going to make it?
Offutt: We don’t know if we’ve ever stopped thinking about making it.
Maxwell: I don’t think we ever doubted we would make it, at the same time we’re also competitive and never want to be satisfied or so full of ourselves where we feel we’ve got to that plateau of success. When we meet with our employees we always try to impress upon them there are always competitors out there trying to take our customers and beat us out of business so we always have to be on our A game each and every day. We’re fortunate to be where we are and we worked hard to get here, but we don’t take it for granted.
What’s the biggest difference between the KOMAX of today and the KOMAX of 1999?
Offutt: The biggest difference is we have over 5,000 customers today and we had zero when we started in 1999. Another big difference is that our customers are more educated. The Internet has changed everybody’s business. There’s so much information available to our customers we have to be more informed about what our competition is doing. It’s easier to do research these days and we’ve been proactive in that area to make sure we’re well educated.
What’s the best part of running an office technology dealership?
Offutt: Changing technology. It’s exciting to see over the course of 20+ years the new products and the new capabilities of those products that become available to us. It’s an exciting business.
Maxwell: I agree, the technology has changed and that’s the biggest difference by far. Not only has it changed what our customer’s expectations and needs are as well as what the manufacturers are producing and capable of compared to when we first opened.
What’s the least favorite thing about running a dealership?
Offutt: The changing technology is the best part and least favorite part. Technology changes and the products and solutions we sell change so rapidly it’s hard work to keep current with those changing technologies to make sure we’ve got the right people in place to work with them.
What would you say is your proudest accomplishment of the past 15 years?
Maxwell: When we first opened our company and were recruiting employees, we asked people to take a leap of faith to leave the jobs they were in and come to work at KOMAX. The fact we’ve been able to provide a stable and positive work environment, and growing a successful company that makes me proud. We started with four employees, now we’re close to 50 and those people have a career here. We have little turnover. It’s a good place to work, a family atmosphere. The other part I’m proud of is that customers depend on us and they rely on us, and most important of all, they’re confident when dealing with us that we’re going to take care of them and do the right things.
And when you’re not working, what do you do for fun?
Maxwell: I’m a big sports fan, I love all sports, I love to play golf—I’m terrible at it—and I love to go to the beach with my family.
Offutt: Spending time with my family and also getting away from my family and traveling. I like to travel. I was lucky enough to go on Konica Minolta’s dealer trip to South Africa last January. That was awesome. Italy is my favorite place. I have family there. I discovered that by doing some genealogy research and went to visit them two years ago and met my family that I didn’t even know I had.
What are your expectations for the business in 2015?
Maxwell: We have to continue to grow our business in a responsible way. We’re going to do that by getting better with our Optimized Print Services, by getting serious about implementing the Managed IT Services, and we’re going to see what we can do with 3D printing. Plus I think we can still grow more in production print and potential growth for us in different geographic areas of the state we’re not as strong in. We feel confident about the future and expect to have another successful year.
