Larry Weiss will try to sell the notion that he’s a boring guy, but don’t buy into that line of thinking. He’s a closet comedy writer with a fondness for Larry David of “Curb Your Enthusiasm” and “Seinfeld” fame (you can actually spot a brief cameo of Weiss in season eight, episode 10 of “Curb”). Weiss is a New Yorker in every sense—a diehard Yankees fan who could’ve done more for the team than General Manager Brian Cashman; a straight-shooter and fun-loving guy who feels more at home in a crowd than he does stuck behind a desk in a lonely office.
Like his beloved Yankees, Weiss—the president of Atlantic Tomorrow’s Office, a $140 million Big Apple giant—enjoys winning. He relishes the opportunity to discuss deals, strategize and collaborate with people. Weiss sees the business as a game—a sport, really—and there’s nothing that stokes his fire quite as much as winning.
“I love the business and everything about it,” he said. “I love learning, enjoy the technology and teaching. Watching our people adapt and grow in the successes they have is what it’s all about. It’s all a game, figuring out a win and all the energy that’s involved in it. There’s nothing better than high-fiving somebody after they sell a deal. It’s what I love. It’s me.”
Building a Dynasty
In the spirit of sport, Weiss took over an Atlantic team in 1982 that was in dire need of a rebuilding campaign. He bought the company, then called Atlantic Photo Copy, out of bankruptcy that year. The former owners had embarked on a quest to develop one of the earliest fax machines and ran out of money doing so.
At the time, the dealer offered the Mita and Royal Copiers lines. Weiss added Toshiba in 1984, then sought to branch out into other products. Word processors were the hot commodity in the early ’80s, but Weiss saw a greater opportunity in mailing machines and became an International Mailing Systems (IMS) dealer. He grew the company, which offered Hasler mailing machines, to the $8 million level before selling it back to Ascom Hasler in 2003.
Ricoh was added in 1986 and the Mita partnership was dissolved. Not wanting to be pigeonholed as merely a photocopier dealer, Weiss changed the name to Atlantic Business Products. In the late 1990s, Atlantic began offering what Weiss termed “primitive IT needs” such as setting up copiers and devices, as the copier was the cornerstone of the office. In 2005, Atlantic added its first IT help desk, and the information technology arm really took off, especially with health care clients in need of wireless systems.
This dictated another name change, so Weiss devised a contest for the rechristening. One person came up with Atlantic, Tomorrow’s Office (the comma has since been dropped), but the only other person who liked the name was Weiss.
“I felt I’d never need to change the name again,” he added.
A Konica Minolta partnership was added in 2010, followed by HP about five years later. The four primary lines serve Atlantic’s tri-state customer core of health care, legal, education, finance, accounting and non-profit organizations, among others. Weiss’ team numbers in the 400 range, with offices throughout New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania.
While the pandemic has sliced the copier business from $127 million to $114 million year over year, Atlantic continues to register solid IT growth in the 5% range, reeling in roughly $27 million (about 55% of the IT intake is managed service recurring revenue). The first few months of fiscal year 2022 (Sept. 1-Aug. 31) have witnessed a boost in hardware revenue, but the written business is tempered by the inability to deliver due to supply chain constrictions. Service calls are clocking in at 70% of pre-pandemic levels. Contract billing is on the rise, and Weiss notes that more toner is going out the door (an ongoing e-automate transition has made it difficult to get exact volume/click numbers).
“We were in the belly of the beast,” Weiss said of the northeastern businesses hampered by COVID-19. “But when you talk to dealers in the South, it’s almost like nothing ever happened. In New York City, only 40% of people are back in the office. Schools are back in session, so that’s huge. We’re forecasting 8% growth on the IT side. Plus, we’ve had a tremendous influx of new contracts.”
Addressing remote needs of clients has been a pivotal revenue source in the face of dwindling traditional hardware sales, the recent increase notwithstanding. Some clients found it a functional experience, while others abandoned their brick-and-mortar locales altogether. In either case, Atlantic’s document management business exploded with 150% growth.
“We have never sold as much document management solutions, primarily DocuWare, as we have in the last 18 months,” he noted.
Difference Makers
If there’s one area where Weiss feels Atlantic stands tall in the crowd, it’s self-sufficiency. Whether end-users have questions or issues related to PaperCut or DocuWare, the Atlantic team can handle it all without pulling in the software companies. The same holds for managed IT, print or security—Atlantic has W2 employees who can assess and address any issues without the need to place a call.
“We have subject matter experts who are second to none,” Weiss remarked. “That is the key reason customers do business with us, and it highlights our success with customer excellence. We’re obsessed with it. We don’t say no, and if one of our employees is incapable of saying yes, that call is passed on to a supervisor who can.”
One of the newer tools in the Atlantic arsenal is the Virtual Tour Experience. According to General Manager Adam Weiss, the sales and marketing team collaborated to devise a selling tool that would be more impactful than a traditional brochure. The interactive experience helps paint a picture of Atlantic’s value proposition of delivering a holistic approach to technology.
The Virtual Tour Experience includes stats and facts packaged with best practices and impact questions for reps to guide prospects and clients—all designed for the viewers to take stock in their current technology. It also provides reps with a structured selling formula that sets the stage for deeper engagements.
“The beauty of the platform is that we are capturing information as the client is going through the tour,” Adam Weiss said. “(Clients) leave with a customized summary on the status of their technology. We recently received feedback from a prospect who went out of his way to comment on how impressive the platform and technology was to him. We feel it is important to use technology to sell technology. We are implementing these advanced tools within our process of communicating and collaborating with our clients, which in turn shows our expertise in the solutions we are providing.”
While Larry Weiss doesn’t want to entertain another name change, Atlantic is fast becoming a media company as well. For years, the dealer shelled out hundreds of thousands of dollars in hosting in-person events that featured New York athletes and other celebrated figures—initiatives that were more geared toward building Atlantic’s tech brand as opposed to being an ROI vehicle. But when the pandemic put the kibosh on in-person meetings, Weiss and Co. devised a Netflix-flavored managed IT services/network security series that included trends, panel discussions and input from clients, industry professionals and Atlantic team members.
The series debut provided a journey through the company’s Virtual Tour Experience and featured a hard-hitting interview with Daymond John, one of the “sharks” from the ABC business venture investment program “Shark Tank.” Weiss grilled John on a number of topics, from business investment criteria/best practices to doing business during the pandemic. A Q&A session with clients proved extremely informative and entertaining for the 650-odd Zoom guests.
Weiss took great pains to ensure the production is done professionally, using a studio (Convene) and following rigid, scripted agendas. The first two have been well received (including an informative presentation following the hacking of Kaseya, the backbone of Atlantic’s managed service help desk). The plan is to hit the ground running in 2022 with a schedule of broadcasts, which has a working title of Curb Your Technology.
“We have the first three lined up,” Weiss noted. “I believe it will develop a huge following.”
Full-on Blitz
At the time of our interview, Weiss was mobilizing for the annual December Blitz, a three-week competition aimed at closing out the calendar year on a selling frenzy. The idea originated in 1992, when Toshiba approached Weiss about doing a blitz campaign, where the manufacturer would provide money to Atlantic for the purpose of a sales promotional period. While Toshiba suggested the idea early that summer, Weiss chose December for the promotion (“They thought I was crazy,” he recalled).
There was method to his madness. By starting the blitz on the Monday following the Thanksgiving Day weekend and concluding around mid-December, Weiss wanted his sales team to end the year on a flourish and ensure a happy holiday. In 2019, the team sold 513 units totaling approximately $5.7 million. A kickoff party takes place prior to the blitz and another is held at the end of the promo period, when the blitz winner is announced. In 2020, the first Blitz during the pandemic, Atlantic sold 359 units at $3.65 million.
“You can’t have a happy holiday if you’re in sales and you haven’t sold anything in December,” he said. “Usually, that’s the month clients and prospects will say, ‘Call me after the holidays.’ But the customers look for (the blitz), they perceive value and wait for it. It’s fun and stressful, but the reps love the additional money they make. When it’s over, they’ve sold so much that they can then say to the customer, ‘I’ll call you after the holidays’ because they don’t need to make any more sales. It’s a big deal to be the winner of the blitz…it’s off the charts.”
The sales reps also owe a debt of gratitude to Atlantic’s subject-matter experts, the “Jeopardy champions.” These tech gurus accompany the reps on the first in-person visit to ensure greater success in bringing clients/prospects through the pipeline quicker. With most of Atlantic’s offerings becoming increasingly technology based, Weiss doesn’t want to risk having the reps utter “let me get back to you with my expert” in an age when deals happen quickly and appointment time (not to mention patience) is at a premium.
“We find these conversations are so engaging that, in most cases, it leads to a follow-up conversation,” Weiss noted. “We learned long ago that if you need to schedule another meeting to bring in an IT person, that callback might not happen so quickly, if at all. It just makes sense to us to have our expert available from the start.”
Catching Fire
It’s difficult for Weiss to speak in post-pandemic terms when the shutdown continues to fester in the New York Metro area. The Omicron variant reared its head at press time, and pending COVID’s holiday season trajectory, Atlantic might currently find itself in a tougher bind. When the pandemic is finally retired to history, the dealer will need to rebuild its workforce to a degree; it’s currently operating with about 100 fewer people than pre-pandemic. And as the business world has witnessed, the Great Resignation has provided an unwitting game of musical chairs for the HR community.
Operating in a service business, Weiss believes employee engagement will be vital to the company’s success. “We’ve had our share of turnover,” he said. “We have to place more of an emphasis on recruiting, training and development than ever before.”
From and X’s and O’s standpoint, Weiss feels dealers need to ensure their product and service portfolio continues to be relevant to their clients, prospects and the market in general. Print is far from dead, he observed, as evidenced by the millions of dollars’ worth of hardware Atlantic sells each month. But security, document management, phone systems and cloud computing diversification as a hedge to dwindling clicks not only serves the dealers’ interests, but centers on the still-drifting challenges and needs confronting clients.
One area where Atlantic hasn’t thrived during the pandemic, but is positioned to prosper, is in the M&A realm. Weiss—who has engaged an M&A specialist for prospect hunting—has multiple NDAs signed with acquisition prospects on the hardware side and is in deep discussions with a pair of IT specialists, thus it’s likely he’ll be pulling the trigger on deal(s) in short order. Historically, Weiss hasn’t targeted companies far outside the metro map and probably wouldn’t entertain a West Coast option, but he isn’t ruling out much outside of manufacturer lines. Any hardware dealer acquisition would need to fall in line with Atlantic’s current relationships.
Along with its M&A foray, Atlantic will seek to establish a true managed security business with a full suite of products this year (a new initiative will be to hire a CISO who will help the company build out its security practice). Weiss is also focusing on automating the company’s managed print offering to enable true automated toner distribution and service response, a project that’s likely to take six months to complete. Atlantic has a strong front end, bolstered by its MyMPS proprietary software, and is working with partners such as HP, Supplies Network, Ricoh and Konica Minolta to shore up the back end.
Weiss has complete confidence in his team ensuring a successful 2022 despite the ongoing challenges. “We have some of the best people in the industry,” he said. “Our industry is blessed with the brightest, nicest, most generous people. It’s challenging when you go through these times. All our manufacturers are doing everything they can to ease the supply chain pain; they’re fantastic and have communicated with us like never before. I offer them a tip of the hat—I’m proud to be aligned with them.”
The Genesis of a Charitable Consciousness
Each year, Atlantic Tomorrow’s Office earmarks $1.2 million dollars to a wide array of charitable and non-profit organizations, all of which are chosen by employee teams and funded by the dealer. The giving doesn’t begin and end with writing a check. Many employees are involved with these organizations at various levels, serving on boards and committees, and organizing fundraising activities such as walks. The dealer is a strong backer of the National Kidney Foundation (NKF), in conjunction with manufacturing partner Konica Minolta.
At the center of this endeavor is Atlantic’s head honcho, Larry Weiss, who owes a debt of gratitude to two entities that helped shape his altruistic consciousness: Abraham Maslow and Xerox. Not exactly a cookies and milk mashup.
As a college student, Weiss was introduced to Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs model, which is the foundation for his psychology paper “A Theory of Human Motivation.” The model, represented by a pyramid, sets stages for the phases of growth people must eclipse to reach the top of the pyramid, which is self-actualization (an eighth level, transcendence, was later added). At the time, Weiss was wholly consumed with “money, money, money, money” and emerging from school with as little debt as possible. But money fell under “safety needs,” the second element from the bottom of the pyramid. The thought left the young Weiss flabbergasted.
“I thought the man was nuts, out of his mind,” Weiss said of Maslow.
Weiss’ thinking began to evolve when he started working for Xerox in 1973. The OEM, which had much credibility in developing technology, introduced its employees to the concept of giving back to the community. And when Weiss started his own company in the late 1970s, it really began to click. He coached youth sports for 30 years, helped raise funds for player scholarships, to enable them to join baseball and basketball leagues. He became involved with various nonprofits and even donated $2,000 to kick-start a marching band for young, local musicians.
“There was something really heartwarming about helping out,” he said. “When we did the marching band, every one of those kids thanked me personally. It was just incredible.”
The bonds truly resonate with Weiss, who enjoyed teaming with his buddy—former Konica Minolta boss Rick Taylor—in 2019 to raise $1.2 million for NKF through the charity walk. Witnessing the work of these organizations up close, such as Spectrum360, which serves the needs of people with autism/on the spectrum, was eye-opening. Atlantic provided production equipment that allowed Spectrum360’s clients to develop working skills and become self-sufficient.
Weiss participated in the NKF Virtual Walk in 2021, and was more than happy to join his team of 50 to do the walk in person, capped with a stop at a local establishment for beer, pizza and football. He was tired of hiding in his room, and the team spirit it invoked was more than a little cathartic. Weiss is longing for more of that togetherness, as giving is really about supporting people and forging relationships.
Maslow, it seems, was really onto something. “I soon realized he’s a pretty smart guy,” Weiss added.
