Copy Centers Become Offices -- Kinko's Others Are Turning Into Places Where People Can Go To Do Business

On a recent Friday morning, Mary Jo Gordon and Martin Shreeves share a desktop computer at Kinko's Copy Center on Capitol Hill.

The two home-based marketing consultants - laid off by the same Redmond-based medical-devices company within the last year - are examining a flier they are producing for their client, the Red Cross.

For Gordon and Shreeves, Kinko's and other copy centers are their virtual office.

Copy centers, with their vast range of services, have been one of the keys to the consultants' quick and successful rebound from the harsh realities of corporate America, they say.

"It (Kinko's) makes us bigger than we really are," said Gordon, 40, a veteran marketing executive who offers a broad range of marketing services from a one-woman office inside her Carnation home. She is now in the enviable position of turning business away.

"The advantage we have is that we can pass on the savings to the client, and that makes a huge difference," she said. "It makes us competitive."

Not only are copy centers a place to copy huge blueprints, produce color proofs or use powerful desktop computers, they also have become places to network, hold business meetings and make sales calls.

"It's kind of a switching station," Gordon said. "If it weren't for Federal Express, Kinko's and the Internet, we couldn't do this business."

Gordon often meets Shreeves at a Kinko's to approve final projects, discuss business or toil past midnight on a fast-track assignment.

Often the meetings are short, just enough time to discuss important details or examine a color proof. Time is at a premium in the nanosecond '90s.

"Speed and skill are what gets me jobs," said Shreeves, 28, who produces computer-generated graphics for Gordon. "What keeps clients is the rapid turnaround and cost-effective budgeting."

Copy centers, open 24 hours, support these critical functions, he said.

"I'll do most of my work at home," Shreeves said. "If my computer system fails, Kinko's serves as a backup. And it lets me output color proofs on laser printers at a very high quality."

The cost of that proof, about $1.95, is much cheaper than the $30 that a traditional printing shop would charge, he said.

The rise of the virtual office coincides with large numbers of unemployed white-collar professionals - the most recent victims of Wall Street's appetite for downsizing. The first three months of 1996 saw 169,000 layoffs, the most in any quarter for two years, according to the U.S. Department of Labor.

That trend is expected to continue as companies look to reduce overhead costs through layoffs and by using outside vendors.

International Data predicts that corporations worldwide will spend $121 billion with outside vendors by 2000, up from $76 billion in 1995, a compounded annual growth rate of nearly 10 percent through the end of the century.

Kinko's officials seized on the downsizing trend as it started to gain momentum in the late 1980s. They began changing the focus of their stores from providing custom publishing near colleges to offering corporate office services.

Others have jumped into the market, offering similar services. They include Copy Max, Sudden Printing, LaserQuick, Pip, Sir Speedy and Alpha Graphics.

But Kinko's was one of the first to target the growing number of out-of-work professionals attempting to turn their expertise into money-making consulting businesses.

Kinko's completed the transformation in 1992, when it launched a national advertising campaign called "your branch office."

Typically, the branch-office concept offers a range of copying and printing services, from laser typesetting and making oversize copies to printing business cards and forms.

Customers can rent powerful desktop computers and purchase office supplies. Also available is an array of binding, collating, cutting and folding services that add a professional polish on projects.

"The advertising was instrumental in positioning Kinko's as a business-service resource for home-based and small businesses," said Laura McCormick, a spokeswoman for the Ventura, Calif.-based company.

The privately held company, which operates 850 stores worldwide, now offers videoconferencing at selected sites and electronic document distribution. That service allows customers to send documents electronically to one or multiple locations.

For civil engineer Keith Litchfield, 40, of Everett, Kinko's metamorphosis has boosted his efforts to begin his own consulting business. Laid off by an Everett engineering company more than a year ago, Litchfield now works out of his home as a self-employed civil engineer.

He depends on the Everett Kinko's for copying big blueprints, scanning documents and for other needs.

"They've got counter space," he said, "and I go up there and set up shop."

It also has become a place to network for potential business. He has started several conversations with other consultants, developers, attorneys and contractors.

Once, he noticed a developer standing over a table covered with construction blueprints. The developer had some technical questions that Litchfield could answer.

So, they started talking.

"He was picking my brain about the water system," Litchfield remembered. "And I was interested in his project and networking for his business."

Regular customers have noticed the transformation.

"Maybe six years ago, people would come in to do their resumes," said Marilyn Hurley Bimstein, director of the Institute for Motivating Reading and a longtime Kinko's customer on Capitol Hill.

" I see independent businesspeople and consultants use it as their office. They have the capacity to make a gorgeous finished project."

Perhaps, most important, they have the capacity to create new opportunities in the age of corporate downsizing.

"We've created new jobs that didn't exist before," Shreeves said. "I never expected that to happen."