LASERMONKS COMBINES BUSINESS WITH FAITH

[Anonymous]

Lasermonks combines business with faith
Monastery’s
quest for self-sufficiency leads to majormarket successOutside the
realm of organized religion, and the sophisticated management practices
that drive today’s mega-churches, one rarely has the opportunity to see
God and the entrepreneur toil in tandem within the fields of commerce.
But
recently I encountered an intriguing success story in Father Bernard
McCoy, a Cistercian monk who has turned a pressing economic need into a
growing business empire under the name of Lasermonks.com.
question:What was the genesis of the idea behind Lasermonks?
Father McCoy: Contrary to popular belief, monasteries are required to be self-supporting.
We had moved to a new location and were just in the process of looking for a new income source to support ourselves.
In
the middle of all this, I needed a toner cartridge for my printer. It
just struck me how incredibly expensive a bunch of black dust was.
I
said to myself, “This is way too expensive. There has to be a better
way.” I started poking around and discovered a better way and thought,
“If I can save this kind of money for a small monastery like ours, just
think how much I could save nonprofits, schools, etc.
question: Just toner cartridges?
Father
McCoy: In the beginning it was just toner. These cartridges for ink jet
printers are so expensive, with mark-ups ranging from 500 percent to
3,000 percent. I approached the nonbrand-name vendors, those who make
the remanufactured cartridges, and told them who I was and what I was
thinking.
They said, “Oh, Father, you’ve got something here, and you
can’t stop with just the nonprofit sector. You’ve got to offer this to
everybody! You could have major market share if you play your cards
right.”
We started out marketing ink jet and toner cartridges in the fall of 2002.
We
expanded the next year to include brand name imaging products,
everything from printers to fax machines, and people started asking us
if we had paper clips, pens, etc.
That developed last year into
offering a full line of office products, 40,000 items, everything you
could get at any of the major office supply retailers.

[Author]

February 8, 2006 at 9:19 AM