Bob Christensen isn’t quite ready to spend lazy days with his wife Sue, boating on the Atlantic Ocean while sipping margaritas under bright and sunny skies. But when the day comes that the president of AXSA Imaging Solutions of Longwood, FL, has finally had his fill of the office technology life, Christensen will know his company is in strong, capable hands, for he will have handpicked his successor.
Bob Christensen, president of AXSA Imaging Solutions
Christensen boasts an impressive resume that includes 32 years with the former IKON Office Solutions, and after a brief stint outside the industry, he (and Sue) acquired AXSA, a dealership that specializes in wide-format machines. Four years ago, he pivoted and added copiers and MFPs to the arsenal, and now serves the needs of clients in Florida and parts of Georgia. To this day, AXSA remains one of the leading wide-format device providers in the Sunshine State, and is one of the nation’s top three sellers of the HP PageWide XL platform.
At the end of 2017, the Christensens sold into the Visual Edge Technology (VET) platform. But instead of picking out retirement clothes, Christensen is ramping back up into familiar territory. He is one of VET’s core presidents, and much like his IKON days—where he was a regional vice president of sales for seven Midwestern states—he now has oversight responsibilities for a trio of Visual Edge holdings in Florida: WBS Technologies, FastForward Digital Solutions and Zymphony Technology Solutions. And last summer, Business Technology Partners of Orlando, FL, was acquired by VET and folded into AXSA.
AXSA Imaging Solutions owners Bob and Sue Christensen are avid boaters
Some things never change. Christensen is still a salesman at heart (with several accounts still under his management) while Sue focuses on the backroom operations and finances. We caught up with Christensen around the holidays to see the impact VET has had on his business and the new, ever-growing family that surrounds AXSA Imaging Solutions.
How was business in 2018?
Christensen: It’s been a good year in which we’ve seen revenue growth. Our profits continue to be strong and we’ve expanded our product line and offerings. This is the year when we really started to get recognized by competitors. We’d been this quiet little company, but now we’re on people’s radars. The HP PageWide XL product has been a real facilitator. We’ve had the line for three years, and every year we’ve been one of the top three dealers in the country. What helps is that we came out of the gate truly understanding how to sell a cost-per-square-foot model, all inclusive. We know how to sell color, so we’ve helped the architecture, engineering and construction market appreciate the value of color in what has traditionally been a black-and-white industry. That has provided tremendous growth, plus the A3-A4 side has grown nicely as well.
After years of providing wide-format solutions for the AEC space, AXSA Imaging Solutions somewhat recently moved into the copier market. How would you characterize this process and experience?
Christensen: About four years ago, we recognized that every time we went into a customer that had wide format, they generally had about three copiers somewhere in their building. So we sourced the Samsung product line initially and started marketing that to our current customers. We told them, “you’re happy with our wide-format, why not give us a shot for copiers?” Surprisingly, they were very open to it. It was a struggle at first, because the decision maker for the wide-format machines and copiers were two different people. Decisions were already being made on the copiers, unbeknownst to the people we dealt with. So we quickly learned that we needed to go deeper and wider into the accounts, and it’s been working for us. Plus, acquiring A3 dealers and getting that base built into AXSA has been helpful.
When you’re selling in the wide-format environment, customers are more methodical in their approach. With copiers, there are so many competitors out there that you have to move quickly or someone will eat your lunch. My wide-format salespeople now understand they have to be quicker at closing with copiers.
AXSA employee Carlos Rivera and a canine “assistant,” Gracie Christensen
What does AXSA Imaging Solutions pride itself on?
Christensen: We’ve done great job of bringing in and retaining good talent. We’re real proud of the way we empower people; we encourage them to look for ways to grow. They, in turn, treat their customers in the same manner. We live by the adage of treating everyone the same way we want to be treated. We have a great reputation in the market and we’re known as the premier wide-format supplier in the Florida market. When we were in the process of acquiring AXSA six years ago, people were asking me why I would buy into a wide-format company, because that business is going away. It couldn’t be farther from the truth and we’re capitalizing on that mistaken belief. It’s true that many others have tried wide-format and have fallen by the wayside, but we’re doing quite well.
In late 2017, your dealership joined the Visual Edge Technology platform of companies. What attracted you to the VET value proposition as opposed to the other industry consolidators?
Christensen: We really weren’t in the market to sell. What attracted me was the premise of coming into a growth company with a model that would bring us aboard and let us stay independent, while allowing us to continue what we do well. As Sue and I are getting along in our time on this earth, we really felt like we wanted to have more control over what happened to the company, where it went and more importantly, where our people would be if we weren’t here. Visual Edge has an aggressive growth plan and they’re looking for talent and leadership, so it definitely opened up a lot of doors for our employees. More importantly, it would allow us to stay as long as we wanted, and over time we’d be able to choose our own successor without having to sell it to the highest bidder. This allowed for a more thought-out succession plan.
What do you feel VET brings to the table that is going to enable your firm to continue enjoying growth?
Christensen: We value their encouragement of sharing ideas and best practices. As an entrepreneur, you don’t get a lot of opportunities to share ideas or pain points, or ask questions about what other dealers would do in certain situations. Visual Edge provides a fantastic team environment. Prior to being acquired, they encouraged us to talk to others and check out their experiences. I have known (Commonwealth Technology President) Troy Turner and his team, as well as others who have been acquired, so I already knew how user-friendly they were and how open they were to sharing ideas. That’s been extremely helpful. I’ve transitioned into a core president’s role. There’s 11 of us who meet and share thoughts, and we have a dealer council that talks regularly with Austin (Vanchieri, Visual Edge CEO). We get to be a part of that growth and along the way pick up a lot of ideas we can bring home.
Members of the extended AXSA family, representing WBS Technologies (from left): Mike Abes (KYOCERA), Sarais Castillo, Elke Friedman (seated), David Keller, Debbie Cummings and Peter King
In July, VET acquired Business Technology Partners (BTP), which was integrated into AXSA. How has the process of merging employees and customers fared so far? Were there any challenges?
Christensen: The people side has gone really well. We were able to assimilate and assign people into various positions. The challenge, as always, is merging the database, and in this case, we had a short timeframe to take BTP out of a 10,000-square-foot facility and move them into ours. That required a lot of real estate moves on my part. Of course, you can’t make real estate decisions prior to a deal’s closing—you have to do that after the fact. Miraculously, it all came through and we’re under one roof now. What’s been fun is seeing the sales force have a new group of customers to take care of. Everybody’s wrapped their arms around that customer base, and we’ve done well with it.
In addition to BTP, you have oversight responsibilities for WBS Technologies, FastForward Digital Solutions and Zymphony Technology Solutions. How would you describe your role within the VET organization?
Christensen: My role has been more of a facilitator of talent. We have four great companies here in Florida, with more to come, so the real challenge is to put all the pieces together and have the right talent in the right seats. Zymphony came on board in January, and I facilitated that integration. We’ve been putting the pieces together to where we’ve become one. We still allow and want to continue the local presence leadership, but we’ve built a nice team behind the scenes to handle aftermarket, service, operations and logistics. They don’t have to worry about the next inventory buy or other challenges. We’ve taken that off the plates of the presidents and sales leadership, which allows them to focus on what they really enjoy, which is growing the business.
Gracie Christensen and the AXSA fleet
Given all the vast additions you’ve experienced in the past year alone, what has been the key to harmonizing change management?
Christensen: It’s all about persistence and patience. You really have to be persistent when you’re making or suggesting changes. By nature, people aren’t excited about change, so you have to give it a chance to sink in. Often it doesn’t happen the first time around, or even the second or third time. You have to be persistent with it while being patient in allowing people’s minds to wrap around the concept.
What was your dealership’s biggest win last year?
Christensen: I really feel like we’ve solidified the players within the teams. We’ve got great presidents or general managers in place and we’ve got a strong Florida core. Everyone is working together in harmony. It doesn’t mean we’re all dancing to the same tune, but there’s a desire to attain the same goal. Some days I didn’t think we were going to get there, but we pulled it off. The next step is engaging and capitalizing on that successful team.
What was your biggest challenge in the past year?
Christensen: It’s been tough getting through some of the strong personalities. In any strong organization, you want strong personalities, and the challenge is to pull it all together and come out with the right team. If you have strong personalities in place already, then their ideas are automatically the best in the room. That may not always match up with what’s needed. Moving that needle a little bit and changing that direction is challenging.
Who do you see as your biggest competition, and how do you differentiate your company from them?
Christensen: Florida’s got some pretty big competition. This has been a 35-year venture for me in the copier industry, and it’s funny how one company may be your biggest competitor today, yet you don’t hear anything from them a week or a month from now. It’s as if the competition constantly changes. With our under-the-radar approach, we try not to make a lot of waves. We don’t advertise a lot or make ourselves known on a billboard. But we quietly go about acquiring customers, one company at a time. We’re just going about our business. In that regard, the biggest competitor is the one I’m facing today.
AXSA Imaging Solutions employees enjoy their annual holiday party that capped off a successful 2018
What are your goals for the next 12-18 months?
Christensen: The plan is to now take that great team and get everybody looking for synergies and efficiencies. We’ve capitalized on those savings and put them into sales, so that we can have great feet on the street creating more business. We’ve grown in some of our markets while some have shrunk, but as a whole, we’re steady. We’ve built our structure around growth.
How do you view the industry changing in the future, and what are you doing to adapt?
Christensen: I see the industry being challenged to grow from a revenue perspective. The prints will continue to be made, just not in the same quantity. Prices continue to drop, as does the cost of the equipment. So I think margin percentage-wise, we’ll continue to do OK, but it won’t be on the same revenue. We need ways to grow revenue, and the only way to do that is to take other people’s accounts. Also, we need to look for other ways to address the needs of our customers. The acquisition of Zymphony, a prominent managed IT services company, means that WBS, FastForward and AXSA don’t have to worry about the talent, labor and expense necessary to build out that competency. We can flip the switch and offer that to our current customers, and that differentiates us from a lot of our competitors. We’ve taken on telephony, and that matches nicely with managed IT services.
If you think about wide-format and the copier businesses as the mainstay of the tree trunk, we’re looking to branch out to help our customers. But we don’t want to go out so far on the branch that it breaks. We’re looking for products and offerings that match up closely to what we already offer. We depend on that for growth.
What do you enjoy most about your job?
Christensen: I get a kick out of working with the employees and seeing them succeed. We’ve got a new general manager we just promoted at WBS. John has been with the company for 16 years and has worked hard daily to be successful. He’s excited, eager to grow and eager to learn. It’s a lot of fun for me to mentor somebody like that. I just love it.
Outside of work, what do you do for fun?
Christensen: Sue and I are big boaters and we love to get out on the Atlantic Ocean whenever we can. We also love to travel, get out to every state and see what’s out there in those little towns. I don’t mind being home, either. We live in Edgewater, FL, right on the intercostal, so we bike down to our boat and hop on. I don’t think it gets any better than that.
