Kinko's Goes Office

How many of us have ever called Kinko’s our second office?  Spent many late nights at our local office doing last minute printing for a big presentation or mass mailing?

How many started out using a Kinko’s fax number as our own? Many of you are probably shaking your heads “Yup, that’s me.”

For some of a certain age, Kinko’s is where we were introduced to that funny little program called Microsoft and learned how to make our first word document.  Or this is where we first tried our hand at logging onto that awesome little invention called the internet!!  Oh the memories.

Don’t worry; this is not an obituary for that wonderful business idea started in 1970 by a kinky haired kid who was more of a square peg in a round holed world.   Nope, this is just an obituary to the name as FedEx makes the last push to rid itself of that name and rebrand the 1200 or so locations to “FedEx Office.”

Maybe it’s my marketing side kicking in, but I am not impressed with the new name.  I understand their reasons… they own the company and want to let the world know it.  They want to remove the old name that worked so well for all these years.  After all, they are a world wide company, thus they know what’s best for its customers.  And in some ways it does reflect what the business really is.

To my way of thinking, the brand served them well for all these years, why mess with a winning name?  How many other companies can be so well loved, so well known and use just one short word?  Kind of like FedEx!

It may also have a little ego behind it.  After all, they are still trying to catch up with that brown company who beat them to the punch and bought those mail boxes that everyone first thought was a silly idea.  They changed the name almost immediately to the corporate name.  Ok, but I still like the original name.