Читать книгу Wake Up and Sell the Coffee! - Martyn Dawes - Страница 8

At the time I subscribed to a magazine called Business Age. It was part entrepreneur, part management. During the summer I read a small article about an American photocopier business called TRM, listed on the NASDAQ stock market. It had 30,000 photocopiers located in small retailers across America and the UK, and it was now expanding into France.

What caught my eye about the article was the way this business operated. It bought used photocopiers, refurbished them and then located them in newsagents and drugstores completely free of charge to the retailer. TRM supplied all the consumables and maintained the machines. A rep would visit each store and take a reading from the machines to see how many copies had been made. The revenue (we’re talking 4p a page here) was then split between the shopkeeper and TRM. The more the photocopier was used the greater the percentage of takings kept by the retailer.

It was a simple revenue-share model and somehow it attracted me. It occurred to me as being a win-win model – the retailer would benefit by offering an additional service to their customers and apart from keeping it switched on and full of paper they didn’t have to worry about anything else. The shopkeeper didn’t have the financial outlay for the machine or even the toner and ink cartridges; they were supplied by TRM.

What I also liked was the idea that these machines were working away generating revenue day in, day out. I wondered if I could find another product that would fit this model and then take it to Britain’s small shopkeepers.