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Comments on FedEx Aquisition of Kinko's

The air and ground transport service is acquiring business services company Kinko's in a $2.4 billion cash deal. Kinko's will provide a leg up in electronic document delivery, FedEx says. [CNet News.com]

Hmmm... this is very interesting to me personally. CNet has chosen to put a more technical spin on it and so they're relating it to e-document printing and delivery. The thing about that is my company, Mimeo, is much better positioned in e-document printing and delivery than Kinkos is. I've written about the Mimeo process before, so I don't think I need to go into it again, but if FedEx had truly wanted a quality e-printing solution, they would have purchased us... and for a hell of a lot less than $2.4 billion. ;) It's more likely that the importance of this aquisition is the Kinko's store front presence as reported by this article. FedEx needs to compete with the UPS Store and this is how they're going to get into doing that.

In any case, I wish them luck. We're getting ready to unleash some seriously cool stuff next year that's going to take the game to a whole new level. Competition is what it's all about... let's see if they can keep up!

Posted: Dec 30 2003, 04:59 PM by drub0y | with 80 comment(s)
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Robert McLaws said:

By e-document delivery, I'm pretty sure they meant physical delivery. By acquiring Kinkos, FedEx immediately acquires 1200 FedEx dropoff locations. Kinkos can remove it's delivery trucks from it's operation, because FedEx can deliver remote printing jobs through it's existing delivery network. FedEx can cease development of an e-document delivery system because Kinko's already has one. And Kinko's is already the center of printing for many business, schools, and communities anyways. If I had a dollar for every time I had to go to Kinko's in high school, I could fund my own startup.

As great as Mimeo's stuff is, I doubt that you guys have thousands of delivery trucks at your disposal nationwide. And I doubt you have the market saturation of Kinkos. After spending several minutes on the Mimeo website, I still fail to see the means with which you guys use to ship. However, with FedEx + Kinkos, you could conceivably have same-day delivery, at a cost savings that would nevr have been possible with Kinko's alone.

I think it was one of the smartest mergers in recent memory. Much smarter than Compaq/HP, much smarter than AOL Time Warner.

That being said, I can't wait to see what you guys have come up with. Hope it's built on .NET and involves public web services.
# December 30, 2003 9:09 PM

Drew Marsh said:

To answer the last piece of your comments first(without going into too much detail): yes and yes. ;)

FedEx can certainly use the extra drop-off locations that's the part that I agree with 100% and in that sense the aquisition makes total sense. In addition, as I said, it gets FedEx into the whole "store" mode that UPS has already shifted to. If they really wanted the print technology though, as the CNet article seems to imply, that's where I can't understand the choice.

You're right though, Mimeo doesn't have anywhere near the market saturation of Kinko's yet. We're only going on five years old starting this year. We definitely need to work on building our brand, which is something Kinko's definitely has a hell of a head start on (since 1970!). You're also right that Mimeo doesn't have thousands of delivery trucks. We don't have any!!! That's what we count on FedEx for. ;) Mimeo is essentially just a brick and mortar print service which happpens to leverage technology to deliver the e-documents that need to be printed and provide other services on and around those documents (combining, tabs, slipsheets, etc).

We actually use FedEx as our primary shipping provider. We only added UPS as recently as last year since our customers had been requesting it more and more frequently. Truth be told, we have quite an intimate relationship with FedEx. Our production facility is located in a building that used to belong to FedEx right next to FedEx's main hub in Memphis. They essentially back their trucks up off the runway at the end of every night. I don't see the relationship ending anytime soon, we love them. It's just a question of whether we can share information about our upcoming features with them anymore. Today it's done with NDAs, but I don't think that can even make sense anymore. I guess that's just a conflict of interest problem that needs to be solved by the higher ups.

I also agree that it was a very smart merger for all the reasons I've detailed, just not sure how much they actually value the print aspects of Kinkos.
# December 30, 2003 10:39 PM

Robert McLaws said:

I don't know that it's a branding issue, because you guys have decent exposure in the marketplace. The main problem is, if I have a problem, there are 8 Kinkos within 20 miles I can go to to talk to someone about it. Your distribution model is decent, and your technology rocks. The problem is, you have no chance of getting any face time with anyone. To many businesses, that's an important part of the printing process. And Mimeo's services are only useful if you don't need teh documents within 24 hours.

If you guys had more regional printing centers, you could reduce costs by rerouting print jobs to the closest regional center, and then sending your deliveries out by FedEx Ground. If I need 500 copies of a brochure.... I might not see a lot of value in having them shipped from Tennessee.

Also, it seems much more economical if a graphics house is in Virginia, doing work that will be used in Redmond, that the Virginia boys drop the work off at the local Kinkos, and the actual print job is done at the closest Kinkos in Redmond.

Having said ALL that, there is serious value in having public web services avaiable to integrate with .NET applications. You can't beat Kinkos there. Make sure you let me know when they come out... I have a few ideas on how they can be put to use.
# December 31, 2003 2:49 AM

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# April 10, 2005 3:38 AM

Killer Innovations: reblog said:

FedEx continues to find new ways to leverage its $2.4 billion acquisition of Kinko's. In 2004, FedEx primarily positioned the acquisition as a way to get into e-document printing and delivery and to develop more touch points with consumers....
# June 16, 2006 10:23 AM

fastworld said:

We at FAST WORLD EXPRESS DELIVERY London think that Fedex aquisition of kinkos is another giant stride move made by fedex , over the years Fedex services have been overwhelmings and efficients so they taken over kinkos makes them to be more tick and more delivery tentacles are been spread , At FAST WORLD EXPRESS DELIVERY we too are looking forward too to expand our business wings and to acquire other Courier just as Fedex has done.

More kudos to Fedex.

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