Copy Shop increases advertising

By Susan Hooper
Advertiser Staff Writer

Copy Shop Inc.

Brian Zinn, president and owner

• Type of business: business stationery design and production; copy services; computer rentals
• Location: Hawai'i Kai
• Started: 1992
• How business changed after 9/11: Reduced electric bill; increased advertising; cut some prices

Brian Zinn and his four-member staff at the Copy Shop didn't worry that business was slow on Sept. 11 because they were glued to the Internet, trying to find out what was happening on the East Coast.

Copy Shop Inc. owner Brian Zinn has tried to lower his electric bill and has cut back the store's hours since Sept. 11. He hopes a new advertising campaign will help attract more business. Deborah Booker • The Honolulu Advertiser

"We probably started looking at what to do from Sept. 18th or 19th on," said Zinn, 49, who opened his business nine years ago in a 500-square-foot space in the 'Aina Haina Shopping Center. Copy Shop is now a 2,000-square-foot enterprise in the Hawaii Kai Towne Center Corporate Plaza, with 350 steady customers ranging from big businesses to entrepreneurs working from home.

Cutting electricity costs was a major part of the post-Sept. 11 effort. Zinn and his team did everything from replacing all 96 fluorescent 40-watt overhead bulbs with 34-watt bulbs to putting the coffee pot and outside sign on timers so they would be shut off most of the night. The penny-pinching helped reduce the shop's monthly electricity bill from $500 to $450, he said.

Copy Shop also trimmed its hours of operation and cut back on the number of employees working at any one time, Zinn said. As a result, layoffs for the tight-knit team have not been necessary.

Reducing spending, however, was only half of the recovery plan. To attract business, Copy Shop launched a radio advertising campaign and doubled the size of its advertising in the Hawaii Kai Towne Center's newspaper inserts. Zinn also cut prices on some Christmas products such as photo calendars and mouse pads, and tied them into coupons running with the print ads.

Zinn is cautiously optimistic about the results of his recovery campaign. Revenues in September were down 25 percent from August's total and off 14 percent from September 2000, he said. But in October the revenue decline from the year before was only 7 percent.

The outlook for this month is still unclear, Zinn said, but — partly because November of last year was "not that great" — he is hoping to be off by only about 3 percent from November 2000.

"Then hopefully we will slowly get ourselves back on track," he said, "although I don't know if that's long-term possible or what 'back on track' will mean, because of the ripple effect. A lot of it depends on outside things."

Zinn is sure of one thing: He and his staff will have to rethink some of the long-range goals they had set for the company prior to Sept. 11.

"I have a little folder here with my 2001 marketing and strategic plan, and it's out the window," Zinn said. "We're writing a whole new plan here and we're kind of making it up as we go along, because of the fact that things are different."

At the same time, however, one of Zinn's key goals seems unchanged: to be, as he puts it, "a neighborhood business center for East O'ahu."

"For the most part, our thing is to just go forward and to keep doing what we do," he said. "Provide good service at good prices, and keep as many customers as we can."