Editor’s Note: This is the fourth and final installment of the Keith Cox Chronicles. When we left off in the previous segment, Keith had just left his position at Plan Express (click here to read the previous installment).
After leaving Plan Express I joined up with Doyle Cryer at SCP (Scan Copy Print). We had the Colorado software, which was a scan-to-print solution. In addition, we offered the Daylight RIP, which was an exceptionally good and very fast color printing tool. About this time SCP was just beginning to develop their own version of PageMasters and PLP print management software called ReproControl. SCP obtained a commitment from HP to offer the software bundle with their next generation of printers. Doyle and I
Keith on the job
helped shape the software solution and get it launched.
Somewhere in the middle of this KIP bought SCP. This is another illustration of how the industry is really small. KIP was using the SCP software as the backbone for their scanning and color printing. By purchasing SCP they were able to control development.
Doyle left SCP shortly after the KIP purchase and went to work for Tekgraf. This was the company I had worked for in the ‘80s and early ‘90s, but things had changed. It had been formed into part of an entity called the David Group, which was a group of regional distribution companies formed into one national distributor called Tekgraf. Tekgraf was acquired by Scott Barker, who was an original owner of a regional distributor called Computer Graphics Technology. The new Tekgraf was based in Greenville, South Carolina and held distribution agreements for Canon, Vidar, and other color graphics devices.
I stayed and ran SCP America, now KIP, working for Sherman Sawtelle. KIP had kept the HP business that SCP started, and KIP had a keen interest on what HP was doing in the print industry. In the meantime, I am selling the SCP software with HP printers and heavily involved in all their new product introduction shows. Traveling around the country with HP helping to launch products while working for KIP created real conflict of interest issues.
Keith with Synnex colleagues in 2019
Balancing the need for a job and supporting my family was hard. Those were tough times – 2009 to 2010. We were all coming back from the 2008 crash. I remember one trip to Phoenix, having worked there with PageMasters in the late ‘90s. The economy there was quite robust. By the late 2000s, it's now like a ghost town. Observed the same phenomenon in South Florida. Repro shops just disappeared. There was an RSA member out of the Orlando area. They were a fairly successful shop, but with a change in the economy they were gone…almost overnight.
It is now 2010 and here is where the industry shows once again it is a small world. We were doing a new product introduction show with HP in Atlanta. I'm showing the ReproControl software on the HP T2300, the first of the new generation of scan-to-print devices introduced by HP. I'm standing there showing the software, showing the scanning, and Scott Barker -- remember him from Tekgraf -- he's now the VP of the wide format division of Synnex. Scott walked up to me and said, "Hey, I understand you're going to be my new consortium guy [selling to affinity groups like RSA and ReproMax]." And I said, "Oh yeah, is that right? Nobody's asked me."
Randy Waterson and Keith Cox
That's exactly how it started. We started talking, and honestly, for as much as I'd been around the country and been all over the place, in out of repro shops everywhere, I had no idea who Synnex was. Not a clue. They were nothing like they are today, but even back in 2011 they were a $12 billion company. I started working for them in January 2011.
My time at Synnex was great. Because of their size and ample resources, we were able to do things with repro shops that we could never dream of doing before. I was able to bring different technology concepts to companies. Even though my job was to sell printers principally to the reprographers, I learned early on that my job was to present new ideas. Present alternative technologies. Things that were not just neat and maybe a little bit cutting edge at times, but which allowed the shops to leverage their customer base.
Repro shops by 2011 were real survivors. Chances are your firm had changed significantly over the past three years. Many firms had limits on cash, resources, and time. My challenge was what could I bring you to not tax your bandwith and at the same time appeal to your customer base? Going outside of your current market was not an option. Digital signage seemed like the perfect option to bring to shops.
Do you remember John Cronin? John played a small role in the Image Machines group. He had a company called Digital Paper that he went on to sell to Xerox. Cronin had posted somewhere around 2010 that every time you see a digital sign, remember it replaced a static sign. And I used that example with the repro shops. The idea was, “Here's an opportunity.”
In fact, every time I would walk through an airport or a hotel and see a digital signage example, I would take a picture and send it Rick Bosworth [then-president of ReproMAX], just to let him know. Being on the road, you don't always eat at the most elegant places: When McDonald's went from static menus to digital menus, I took those pictures and made note of that to him.
But Rick was skeptical about it all. He was always telling me, "Look, you've got great ideas, Keith. But these people don't want the ideas that are going to make 20 points of gross margin. They want the ones that are going to make 70 points." My response was that much has changed and new money opportunities were not just around every corner anymore.
Now, you could make more money in digital signage, but if you're just going to get into it and not develop it, you're only going to make 20 points. But if you get in and develop it and build a practice around it, with installation and training and basically managed signage -- where you manage the signage for the client company – you can make a lot more money. But it all starts with that, making that 20 points. If you can't see that, then there's no point in me trying to convince you that you can make 80 points.
I always tried to make it a point that the reprographics shops should leverage their customer base. The fill-the-trailer concept evolved from this idea. I looked around Synnex and saw that we could fill a construction trailer with all the technology we have, everything they use except the furniture. The idea was that you shouldn’t visit an AEC customer and walk past all these opportunities just to get to the printer.
I think for those companies that are willing to expand and leverage their customer base, take a hard look at what they're doing and offer products and/or services that fit with those companies, I think there's a real bright future there.
I've been very fortunate and very blessed to have worked in so many different parts of the reprographics industry. When I sent out my note that I was leaving TD SYNNEX I received so many responses from so many people. I can't tell you how many. It was truly humbling. I think the big lesson in all that is the only thing that you have is your name and your integrity. And I think I managed for the most part to keep that together all these years.