Too Broke to Go Bust

Growing the Business

Money-losing enterprises often don’t have funds for re-investment, and Campus Printing was no exception. But stemming the tide of red ink let Campus Printing focus on its other issues—and there were plenty of them.

At the beginning of fiscal year 2007, Campus Printing was a well-run black-and-white copy shop, a business model that might have worked in 1997 but wouldn’t cut it in 2007. It was still operating two old ABDicks and an Itek platemaker. Its Xerox DocuTech 135 was 11 years old and breaking down weekly. The only color machine the shop had was a 20-ppm office copier. There were two cutters, but both were so old that the manufacturer no longer made parts for them. The only software on the computers was Microsoft Office and Adobe Reader—indeed, there was even a policy of “no typesetting or design.”