The date was Jan. 9, 2006. Chris Taylor, the newly minted president and CEO of Fisher’s Technology, donned an apron bearing the company’s old logo and stood before his crew of 40 employees.
These were the same people that the outgoing boss described as “40 headaches.” The former leader also offered Taylor this pithy observation, “This would be a great company if it weren’t for the damn customers.”
Taylor was “a punk 32-year-old kid with no experience.” No, that wasn’t an assessment from anyone other than the man himself. Well, maybe an employee or two secretly harbored that notion. But in the minds of anyone with extensive knowledge about the Boise, Idaho-based dealership, this was a broken company that, theoretically, couldn’t get worse under Taylor’s guidance.
While it was true that Taylor was an office technology and leadership neophyte, a “dry sponge,” he was also an extremely intelligent individual who graduated summa cum laude from the University of Idaho with a degree in chemical engineering, and would later garner an MBA from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Sloan School of Management. If ever there was an unproven quality prepared to be thrown into dysfunction and disarray, it was Taylor. And since his father-in-law, the owner of Fisher’s Technology, recognized the need for an overhaul but didn’t relish undertaking himself, Taylor was eager to take a crack at the challenge.
It stands to reason that a pep rally wouldn’t work for a winless team. Taylor recognized that instead, this team needed two things: a common direction to run in and a leader who would listen. So, as he stood before his new charges, Taylor opted for the direct approach. He told them, “I don’t know what I’m doing. I’m here to work for you. You know what we need to do in this business, you know what investments we need to make and the process that we need to take. You tell me what to do and I’ll do it.”
Willing to listen and act was one need fulfilled. The other was a common direction. Taylor didn’t plan on it, but a gut feel turned into a theme he made up on the spot: create extremely happy customers.
“Every investment we make, every person we hire and every process that we change is around that one mission,” Taylor said. “We didn’t know what we were doing, but we got lucky. We finally got everybody rowing in the same direction. The organization was so ready for a cultural change, and I was cut some slack because that change was needed so badly.”
Citing the work of business author Jim Collins and his New York Times bestseller, “Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap and Others Don’t,” Taylor followed the bus analogy to business transformation—get the right people on the bus (in this case, Fisher’s Technology), the wrong people off the bus and the right people in the proper seats. That first year under Taylor’s guidance saw the heaviest turnover during his 15-year odyssey, but it was a necessary pain in order to deliver on the mission of creating extremely happy employees and customers.
“We invested in how we hire, and we hired for culture. It was a matter of working on teaming, healthy conflict and healthy work environments. And we were having a blast in the process. Now, our people love what they do and love taking care of our customers.”
Fresh Perspective
Perhaps one of the keys to Taylor’s success is that, as a chief executive with no previous experience at the helm of a business, he wasn’t beholden to any preconceived notions as to how an office dealer business should be run. In fact, Taylor still prides himself on maintaining a “beginner’s mind” and remaining curious about better and more efficient/effective ways of doing things. In asking so-called dumb questions, Taylor could maintain a fresh perspective and innovate as opposed to falling into the trappings offered by some traditional methods.
“We were lucky we weren’t from the industry, because we could ask all of those dumb questions and not have the blinders on [dictating] this is how we do it,” Taylor noted. “That was a huge advantage to ask dumb questions and be able to innovate on our company, culture and how we approach the market. The challenge now is keeping that beginner’s mind, because we’ve been at it for 15 years. We keep asking ‘Is there a better way?’ Our leadership is completely obsessed with reinforcing culture and innovating on the customer experience.”
There’s little disputing Taylor’s results. The company has grown from that single location with 40 oft-indifferent employees to 11 locations in three states (Idaho, Montana and Washington) and more than 150 team members who are fully invested in the “extremely happy” movement, which has yielded 6X growth. Fisher’s Technology’s sales are well north of $30 million annually—fueled by the Canon, Konica Minolta, Ricoh and HP product lines—through managed print services, managed IT services, production print, document management software solutions, security cameras and hosted phones, among other offerings. The dealer does business in 43 states.
That beginner’s/curiosity mindset also serves Taylor well as president of the Copier Dealers Association, a peer group which comprises 60 office dealerships totaling $2 billion-plus in revenue across the country. Wanting to emphasize the growing importance of managed services (particularly IT) among the dealer community, he spun out a subgroup called the Managed Technology Association, which was slated to have its second meeting last month.
Tested Fortitude
It’s safe to say that the launch of Fisher’s Technology 2.0 back in 2006 provided the dealership with the hard shell necessary to handle the 2007–2009 Great Recession and, of course, the current pandemic. On the latter front, Taylor and his team began laying the groundwork in the February–March 2020 time frame to counter a substantial hit to revenue by implementing a deep spending reduction program that included furloughs and pay cuts. While spending was greatly curtailed, communication reached an all-time high. Engaging employees and increasing transparency proved to be critical in plowing through the pandemic with as little pain as possible.
“We were doing all the basics to make sure we could generate cash and leverage that dry powder for whatever was in front of us,” Taylor said. “Even more important than having and executing that plan was communicating it to the company through ongoing videos and data modeling, showing cash generation and usage. What I found fascinating was we asked people to take pay cuts and furloughs, and reduced spending, but company morale went up. People were happy to know we had a plan, leadership was executing on it and they were part of the communication process.”
One of the effective tools used by Taylor is Fishing Hole Fridays, a weekly Zoom meeting that doesn’t have an agenda. Employees can log on and chat, ask questions and provide suggestions. The open-forum style ensures employees can ask tough questions and get deeper into the weeds of a given subject in a relaxed setting.
If the first quarter of 2021 is any indication, the worst of times are in Fisher’s rearview mirror. Taylor estimates the company is realizing 90% of traditional copier service volumes, largely due to business normalization in its Idaho and Montana markets. Washington state, among the earliest and deepest impacted, is still in the recovery process, which means the company’s Spokane market is somewhat lagging. Taylor is among those who believe traditional print volumes, at least in his markets, will soon be quite close to pre-pandemic levels. Whatever shortfall gap remains will be more than addressed through the dealer’s growth in managed services—print and IT—and cloud-based phone solutions. It was that uptick in managed services that sustained the company during the Great Recession.
Markets Returning
From the verticals standpoint, architecture, engineering and construction are incredibly robust, driven by large-city exodus. Hospitality continues to be challenged; as we’ve seen, hotels have been among the deepest impacted. And while education would also fall into that category, many of the dealer’s clients have returned to the classrooms and print volumes are exploding, according to Taylor.
One thing COVID did was prompt the dealer to pause its growth initiative. A majority of the 10 non-headquarter branches were launched or acquired in the three years leading up to 2020. Four of the branches were startups, the balance were added via acquisitions. The pandemic allowed Fisher’s Technology to take a much-needed M&A break, as the integration, onboarding of new employees and cultural merging take time to implement properly.
Still, don’t expect Taylor to sit by the sidelines for a prolonged period. “Our appetite for growth is now coming back pretty quickly,” he said. “We definitely want to continue that geographic growth.”
One of the true differentiators for Fisher’s Technology and a catalyst for growth is the company’s Boise Technology Show. The one-day event debuted in 2010 as a vehicle to bring potential clients to the company’s technology headquarters and meet the dealer’s team. The idea was to provide value-added content beyond the garden variety lunch-and-learn sessions. But as the show grew, Taylor and his marketing team wanted to widen its scope and speak to a variety of end-user personas beyond the tech-savvy folks. The idea was to cultivate content that could be grasped and appreciated by CFOs, controllers, entrepreneurs and business owners, along with marketing, human resources and admins.
As a peer group junkie in his own right (Taylor is a member of two YPO chapters and a Vistage CEO group), he wanted the show to provide a well-rounded experience that could meet the needs of an entire organization. The gatherings are peppered with regionally renowned keynoter speakers, music and fun, with a content balance of technology and leadership. Various topics covered include IT security, cloud transformation, multi-generational workforces, women-led business startups, A.I. and managing health care information. A number of Fisher’s partners have hosted booths or sponsored content, including Konica Minolta, Canon, Microsoft, Laserfiche, PaperCut and Kofax, among other regional and national providers.
The last show was held in 2019 at the Boise Centre East and attracted 400 guests, with an admission fee of about $50. The show requires an abundance of planning and preparation in conjunction with local colleges and universities (including Boise State), chambers of commerce, technical councils and other organizations that help devise the educational platform. Taylor jokes that the dealer has become a quasi-event-planning organization.
“If we just did nerd presentations, we wouldn’t attract those other personas, so we added lots of content around leadership, multi-generational management and economics,” he said. “Probably half the content was technology, but rest of it is appealing to those other personas. That made the show different from anything else in our markets. We wanted it to be value-added content and not sales pitches. We wanted to make it an overall experience.”
For now, the focus is on holding smaller events (lunch and learns, happy hours) at the various branches, but Taylor is hoping to reinstate the full show for 2022. Since Spokane was slated to host the event in 2020, that will be the likely candidate to host. The Boise Technology Show has strong brand recognition, but Taylor feels it will take some time to build the brand in Spokane.
Brighter Prospects
Optimism abounds for the dealer’s future. Taylor is fiercely proud of the way his employees rallied in the face of the pandemic, maintaining morale while providing the optimal customer experience he envisioned and hoped to achieve that winter day in early 2006, when he asked the team to come together. He brought everyone back last August and restored full compensation; in hindsight, it was premature, but Taylor wanted to communicate the notion that he was just as “all in” as the team members. While work levels were still lagging, Fisher’s Technology used that extra time to work on areas that time ordinarily wouldn’t allow, such as IT development and documenting processes. More importantly, the company grew closer.
As the post-COVID business acceleration garners more momentum, Taylor is eyeing 20% organic growth, which is ambitious considering the company generally reaps 11% to 17%. M&A opportunities in which culture and business model align will complement those growth endeavors. Security and cybersecurity will be cornerstones for all of its offerings.
But the cultural movement, more so than any other aspect of the business, is the true underpinning of success at Fisher’s Technology. That the company has won 13 consecutive Best Places to Work in Idaho, an award sponsored by the Idaho Business Review and voted on by employees, is a testament to the rebirth of this business. And while Fisher’s Technology was founded in 1936, it was truly reborn in January of 2006.
“For me, 2020 is all about how our team responded to adversity, fear, uncertainty and doubt,” Taylor concluded. “They rallied around each other, even though we had to do it through Zoom and Teams. Oddly, we grew even closer. There’s no doubt in my mind that maintaining and improving our morale was the No. 1 accomplishment. We’ve come a long way, and I couldn’t be more proud of our team.”
