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Former Rapid Refill Franchise Becomes Full-On Printing Facility
Kingwood’s Local Print Solutions to celebrate 10th anniversary
By Jennifer Summer.
Evolving from a business just focused on ink and toner cartridges to a full-on printing business offering a variety of services such as copying, shredding and computer services; these past 10 years have been an adventure for Local Print Solutions Owner/Operator Ken Beard.
Beard first opened a Rapid Refill Solutions franchise location in the Kingwood Town Center area Sept. 12, 2006, just a few doors away from where he is currently located.
“I worked for a previous company for 20 years when I became unemployed,” Beard said. “After searching for a year, I knew it was time to branch out into something else and began to look at franchise options when I found Rapid Refill Ink which met all of my requirements such as environmentally friendly and focused on giving back to the community. We started as a small business focused on refilling ink and toner cartridges at a fair price.”
During that time, customers would inquire if they could fax so they began to fax items for customers and then, customers began to ask if they could copy as well eventually leading to them purchasing a copy machine that could fax.
Three years ago, Rapid Refill Ink transformed into the franchise, Local Print Solutions, which is more indicative of all of the services they provide.
As a way to give back to the community, Beard also began to offer discounted prices to nonprofit organizations and student groups such as national Honor Society and the theater departments.
“Through this, we found that we were able to substantially save these particular groups more money than we could, writing a check for their organization,” Beard said. “Our discounts to nonprofit organizations last year was well over $100,000. We work to save all of our various nonprofits and organizations as well as our customers money. We are very customer-based, in that, if we don’t know an answer to our customer’s question, we will find out the answer.”
Beard connected with the owner of Buzzingo computer repair services who inquired about leasing space in the business and their partnership began.
“Anything that has to do with printing or computers, we can do it,” Beard said. “If we didn’t expand our services beyond refilling and recycling the toner and ink cartridges, we would not have survived. We still offer a recycling program for cartridges and focus on giving our customers more than what they ask for and give our customers special treat bags; it is our believe you should get more than what you expect.”
Local Print Solutions recently adopted the nonprofit organization, Humble Area Assistance Ministries, to provide printing services and supplies.
Additionally, they have a SpinArt machine to loan out to nonprofit organization customers to use for their future fundraising events.
Local Print Solutions will officially celebrate their 10th anniversary Sept. 12, 2016, and plan to offer a few deals for customers as well such as 10 percent off of their order if they mention the ad displayed on their Facebook page.
In the future, Beard hopes to local into 3-D printing options and hopes to learn and partner with students from the Humble Independent School District’s Career and Technical Education classes who have the printer before.
http://www.yourhoustonnews.com/humble/news/kingwood-s-local-print-solutions-to-celebrate-th-anniversary/article_cb9fdb46-ecb1-5a75-9d16-96e5c049c6cc.html
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