Irvine Shop’s Boss Is Widely Copied : Kenny the Printer Presses Harder
He is probably the most shameless self-promoter since Muhammad Ali. He gives more speeches than a politician and has generated a business that is moving faster than a hit record up the charts.
Kenny Fisher, better known as Kenny the Printer, operates what is apparently the world’s busiest quick-print shop, a bustling whirl of activity in Irvine’s Airport Business Park.
Just three years after he opened his doors for the first time, Fisher’s shop is an industry pacesetter and a model of customer service.
And Fisher isn’t reticent about either of these achievements.
There is for example, “The Best of Kenny, His Gold Album,” a medley of Fisher’s speeches to trade show groups around the nation.
Like Elvis, Fisher routinely drops his last name, introducing himself simply as “‘Kenny” and using “Kenny the Printer” for just about everything but his driver license.
“I’m an unpretentious guy,” he says, loading a foot onto his desk while speaking to an interviewer in a rare moment of calm--and revealing a sagging argyle sock in the process.
Does His Homework
His demeanor may be flaky, but few have done more homework than Kenny before entering a business.
It was early in 1980, after he had risen to the presidency of two companies, an electronics concern and a firm that produced industrial and training films, that the Villa Park native cast about for a business of his own--prompted by his father’s suggestion that Fisher was afraid to go into business for himself.
He flirted with an idea for a chain of dry-cleaning shops, but when his son came home one night complaining about poor service at a print shop he worked at, Fisher’s ears perked up.
He absorbed a copy of the “Encyclopedia of Quick Printing” and spent most of 1980 and 1981 prowling through 41 quick-print shops throughout California.
Fisher says that what he found in all this research was that most print shops were characterized by a “bad attitude” at the front counter and physical plants that were little more than “dusty, dog-eared dumps.”
He came away convinced that he could set up a top-notch shop.
By just about any measure, he has.
Although the average quick-print shop has annual sales of $300,000, according to the National Assn. of Quick Printers, Kenny roared past that mark before his shop had been open a year. He was grossing seven times the national average inside of three years. “I was almost crazy by that time and have stayed that way” ever since, he said.
His peers seem to hope that Fisher’s “craziness” is catching.
He averages several speeches a month to industry groups around the nation and counsels others in the business in a series of popular two-day coaching sessions--for which he charges $3,000.
Fisher the speechmaker is best described as a business evangelist, repeatedly punctuating his remarks with a drawn-out “be-e-e-lieve me” and exhorting his audience to “keep the grand-opening attitude, kill ‘em with kindness and surprise ‘em with quality.”
Thus far in 1986, he has given 13 speeches and earned tens of thousands of dollars with his two-day coaching blitzes. Fisher is running out of wall space for the framed letters of gratitude for the words of wisdom he has imparted to shop owners across the nation.
“I analyze the guy’s business from the nitty gritty and usually can figure out where they are blowing it,” he said. Normally, Fisher said, he is able to trace a shop’s aches and pains to lapses in fundamentals like accuracy, consistency and dependability.
“Business is like basic football,” he said. “It’s blocking and tackling.”
‘Amazed at Myself’
Chronicling his own shop’s growth from grand opening to $2 million in revenues, Fisher is overcome with his own enthusiasm. “I don’t want to sound like an egomaniac, but I’m amazed at myself,” he said.
If Fisher’s work and sleep patterns are adopted on any large scale, the likely results will include a considerable reduction in morning traffic congestion and the retirement of Johnny Carson.
That’s because the ebullient printer’s idea of a good work day is to start at 4 or 5 in the morning, when the office telephones are silent and interruptions are few, and then to put in a quick 11 hours. “A 55-hour week, that’s not a killer,” he asserted. Fisher is home by 4 p.m. most afternoons, except when he’s on the road, and is in bed by 10 p.m. He says that businessmen should reserve their evenings for family--which, in Fisher’s case, includes his wife Susan, five daughters and one son.
At work, Fisher is a perpetual motion machine, fielding telephone calls, counseling subordinates and darting in and out of his office--through one door and out to the front counter to deal with a customer, then back into the office and through another door that leads to the back office, where billing and accounting is done.
Keeps in Touch
Kenny-the-Printer likes to keep in touch.
On the wall across from his desk is a television screen linked to closed-circuit cameras which constantly scan the front counter and several other locations in his 48,000-square-foot labyrinth of offices, production rooms and storage areas.
He also likes to talk and can effortlessly weave his views on topics ranging from stockpiles of nuclear weapons to television comedies into the same fast-spoken paragraph.
Fisher said he likes to hire senior citizens and assign them to work with younger employees in “a mixture of the TV generation and the Depression generation.” Older workers typically have strong work values that they can pass along to younger workers, he believes. He said he also prefers to hire women, asserting that they are “more accurate, loyal and ethical” than men.
On a recent day, a staff member interrupted to consult with the boss on an applicant for a counter service position. Kenny zipped out to the counter to introduce himself and give the new hire some reading material, including an article from Quick Printing magazine. The piece was headlined “The Greatest Success Story Ever Told!”
It was a profile of Kenny the Printer.
