Fit for printing

A focus on finding the right franchisees has underpinned the steady growth of the Kwik Kopy instant printing franchise system, as managing director David Bell explained to Andrea O’Driscoll.

KWIK KOPY BEGAN operating in Australia in the early 1980s when the Penfold family acquired the master franchise rights for Australia from the US company which had been started by a young entrepreneur, Bud Hadfield. Stephen Penfold sold the first franchise to his brother in law who opened a store in Sydney.

Kwik Kopy Managing Director David Bell
believes that the franchise system will be
able to ride out the tough economic times.Today, Kwik Kopy Australia comprises 109 franchises throughout the country, operated by 95 franchisees. Managing director since 2004, David Bell explains that, “The business grew out of New South Wales and expanded nationally after that. Our model is very simple. The Penfold family own the master licence and everyone else is a direct franchisee of Kwik Kopy Australia. We also have the rights to New Zealand but we no longer have a business over there.”

In addition to straightforward printing jobs, Kwik Kopy offers graphic design services, business stationery design and delivery, copying and the production of promotional material such as calendars, desk pads and point of sale displays. It can also print large format banners and signs, wide format plans and maps and produce fully bound reports and manuals.

According to Bell, the company is more concerned with finding people with the right business skills, than people with a background in printing. “Our typical ‘good’ franchisee is someone who has had experience in business, especially in business-to-business relationships because we are a b2b franchise,” he says. “In essence, we’re looking for business people who understand how business works. They don’t need any knowledge of printing at all.”

The selection process that all potential franchisees must go through is rigorous. “Probably the single most important job that I do is to approve new franchisees,” explains Bell. “We’re very thorough. When you enter into a franchise, of course, you’re putting your hard earned dollars on the line. We’re very conscious of our responsibilities to new franchisees and we think having a process to identify the people we think will succeed is vital. We don’t hesitate to turn people away if we think they might fail. We’re not interested in just taking their money off them. We also have a duty to the existing franchisees to ensure that the quality of the new recruits will add value to the business and not diminish it. We aim to continuously raise the bar.”

The process itself culminates in the issuing of a score that is calculated by the company’s profiling software. The software measures each candidate’s response to interview questions and the level of experience they have. “Potential franchisees go through a standard application process that is very much governed by the franchise code in terms of cooling off periods and disclosures and all of that,” says Bell. “But beyond that, we try and expose them to as many people within our organisation as possible. Initially it’s on an informal basis, but the process concludes with a formal interview at our head office with me, Stephen Penfold and two other senior executives. The interview process is directed by our profiling software that ultimately delivers a mark for each candidate that represents a pass or a fail.”

Because Kwik Kopy is an established franchise, the majority of franchisees who make it through the selection process move into existing sites. “At any one time around 10 per cent of our franchisees are looking to sell their businesses, more often that not because they’re retiring or moving on to something new,” says Bell. “A lot of new franchisees will move into these, but in some cases they will be setting up a new business from scratch in a new location.”