Fifty years is a long time for a shingle to hang in an evolving business climate, but Bob Gobin has his mother—who grew so bored with playing bridge in the afternoon that she opened her own small office supply company—to thank for planting the seeds of what would become Gobin’s Business Solutions, a pillar in the dealership community of southeastern Colorado.
Bob Gobin, President of Gobin’s Inc.
Bob Gobin entered the family business in the late 1970s after graduating from Colorado State University-Fort Collins. He’d worked for a savings and loan company and spent some time with an accounting firm before joining Gobin’s. At the time, it wasn’t unusual for businesses to cold call via a knock on the prospect’s front door, and Bob Gobin did just that, procuring a little more than $1 million in business from a large defense contractor.
The gumption Gobin showed in obtaining that huge chunk of business provided a gateway to pacts with other governmental operations in the area. Expansion has also been a key to the company’s growth, as Gobin’s has branch offices in Alamosa, Canon City, Colorado Springs, La Junta, Lamar, and Salida, in addition to the Pueblo headquarters. Today, the company enjoys just north of $11 million in annual revenue, carrying products and services from vendors such as Canon, Konica Minolta, and Lexmark.
The dealership has been highly decorated in recent years. In 2010, Gobin’s garnered the GreatAmerica Dealer of Distinction award, given to market leaders who exemplify qualities like ethical business conduct, the highest degree of customer care, and loyalty to worthy business partners. Another kudos Gobin’s has earned for more than 25 years running is the Pro-Tech service gold standard award from Konica Minolta.
We checked in with Bob Gobin to learn about how the company has concentrated its focus more to better serve customers, and he shared how the company earned its wings with customers–and competitors–in the educational space.
How has business been this year? What are your best opportunities for growth?
Gobin: Our last fiscal year was very good; we hit our revenue target, but more importantly, our bottom line was better than it’s ever been. That’s a result of having sold off our office supply and furniture division and focusing on what we do best, which is business equipment and solutions. It was a decision we agonized over for quite a long time. The argument some people made was that office supplies and furniture covered a lot of overhead. And that was true, but I pointed out that they also generate a lot of overhead. It’s a decision we probably should have made five years earlier.
This year, we’ve set an ambitious revenue target, but we think we’re going to hit that. We have budgeted for some additional expenses that will probably impact our bottom line, but that’s by design. Hopefully, it will bear fruit in the future.
What does Gobin’s pride itself on?
Gobin: The fact that we’re dedicated to this geographical area. The management and ownership all live in this geographical area, and most employees were born and raised in this area. We truly pride ourselves on being good corporate citizens. A lot of the employees are volunteering their time for community projects and nonprofits, and we provide a lot of financial support to community projects. We’re devoted to where we work and the people that we serve.
Do you follow any vertical markets?
Gobin: It’s fairly comprehensive. One vertical we really dominate is the educational market. I think that’s somewhat due to the fact we have committed some of our employees to helping out projects in the schools. Most employees were born and raised in the area, so they have connections that are still involved in the school districts that we serve.
What are some of your newer areas of business?
Gobin: This year, we’re moving into the production print area with Canon. We’re also trying to strengthen our solutions offering. We’ve been selective with what we’ve done with the solutions and we’ve tried to focus on just a few solutions: document management, Canon’s uniFLOW product, a few of the Lexmark solutions. We want to avoid getting into the trap of the solution of the month.
Gobin’s Team
We’re excited about moving into production print–we’re a month in and we think we’ve done our homework. It’s a little too early to know what’s going to happen. We’ve had a long history with Canon, dating back to 1985.
Is there a product or solution that you are looking to add in the near future?
Gobin: We’ve been sitting on the managed network service sideline for about five years now and we’ve made the decision that this is the year we’re going to jump in. We’re looking to acquire an IT company and move into that arena. We have identified some acquisition targets for the IT company, but have not acquired anyone, yet. We think we’ve done our homework, we’ve tried to hire the type of technicians and support people who can transition into that type of business, but our business plan is to acquire an IT company and partner with somebody like a Collabrance. I visited with a number of fellow dealers that have been down this road and we hope we’ve kind of learned from what they’ve done.
Another area we’re looking at is trying to integrate our document management solution with our MPS solution, where our clients can add document management for an incremental cost to their MPS click cost. We’re trying to do the same thing with uniFLOW. We haven’t quite got that figured out yet, but it’s an idea that LMI presented to us. We’re exploring that and we think there’s a good opportunity there.
If we can figure out a way to integrate the document management solution into our MPS, where customers are paying a small incremental increase in their click charge, it takes us out of competing at that fourth decimal level. It could be a selling differentiator for us.
What was your dealership’s most significant accomplishment or biggest win last year?
Gobin: I think it would be a couple of larger deals that we were able to land last year. One was a company that we’d been after for years: it was about 40 machines involved throughout the state that we were able to work with. Another that sticks in my mind is a larger school district in Colorado Springs where we won the contract four years ago. We kind of snuck up on some of the branches and the dealers in Colorado Springs at that time, because we were the new kid on the block, but we were able to get that contract.
This go-around [for the renewal], we knew it was going to be a dogfight. At the first pre-bid meeting, there were 27 different dealers and branches at the meeting. Still, we were able to win the contract back, and it wasn’t a price-based award. We provided some solutions and good service over the previous four years. We were told when we were awarded the bid that [the school district] was leaning toward [a manufacturer], but our final presentation by the team was very good and we won the contract.
What do you look for in your employees? How do you recruit and retain good ones?
Gobin: The number one thing is, do they fit our culture? We utilize a program that GreatAmerica provides called PathShare HR Services. They provide us with consulting and have a seven-step interview process that we utilize. As they say, culture trumps everything. We feel we can bring somebody in and teach and mentor them the skills they need to be effective in the business.
We’re really dedicated to doing what’s right for the customers. We always emphasize to all of our employees to treat your customer like you would want to be treated. Take ownership if there’s a problem, and if we need to talk about the solution afterwards, that’s fine, but nobody’s job is in jeopardy if we’re doing what’s right for our clients. We don’t want to have to hide behind the stack of corn cans at Safeway when one of our customers comes into the store.
What was your biggest challenge in the past year?
Gobin: Over the last couple years, really, the challenge has been moving our sales team from a hardware-centric to solution-centric team. We’ve worked hard at that and will continue to, as we still have a long ways to go. We’re making progress. The little details of designing the comp plan that motivates the solutions sales, the little things like that, we’re still tweaking and working on.
Who do you see as your biggest competition, and how do you differentiate your company from them?
Gobin: The Globals and the [OEM] branches. We don’t buy into the fact that other independent dealers are the bad guys. I think that the competition we primarily see is the branches we compete against. We’ve got Toshiba, Ricoh, Konica Minolta—all of the tier one manufacturers are in the Colorado Springs market. The fact that we are involved in the community and are locally owned and dedicated to this geographical area is the differentiator we like to emphasize.
What are your goals for this year?
Gobin: Number one is customer retention. All but our Colorado Springs markets are markets that are not growing. They’re pretty stable markets, so it’s paramount that we retain all the customers we have in those areas and additional net new. We’re going to make the plunge into the managed network service arena, that’s a goal for this year. We’ll also continue to work on our solutions offering.
We had high single-digit growth in 2016, and we’re forecasting low double-digit growth in 2017.
How do you view the industry changing in the future and what are you doing to adapt?
Gobin: We’re going to see the manufacturers change their distribution strategy to where they prefer to work with the larger dealers and let the larger dealers acquire the smaller dealers. It seems some of the marketing programs that are starting to roll out for the manufacturers are indicating that’s the direction they’re heading. You’re going to see the rollup of larger dealers buying smaller dealers continue. I think what we need to do is make sure we’re at that critical mass, that we get the manufacturers’ attention and have the volume and the size that puts us in that category where the manufacturers will recognize and support us.
What keeps you motivated and excited about the work that you do?
Gobin: I like the industry and I like the people I’m working with. I still enjoy going to work; I’m getting up toward retirement age, but I still enjoy suiting up and going into battle.
