Scott Vonderharr is the owner of Midwest Imaging Solutions, a printer repair service that provides comprehensive solutions for businesses.
For Scott, getting into printing wasn’t preordained.
“It was actually a mistake,” he says, noting how his father had sold his previous business but wasn’t quite ready to spend the rest of his days sipping margaritas on the beach.
“After my dad sold his company, he got bored, and he was searching for something to do,” Scott recalls.
At the time, recycling was not prevalent in American culture, but there was a growing trend of refilling printer cartridges.
“But in order to refill them, you had to have empty ones,” Scott notes.
For reference, Scott’s dad’s previous company sold office supplies all around the country, so he already had relationships with vendors who could immediately benefit from his new offering.
“So, my dad set up recycling programs at the stores where you could bring in your empty toner when you wanted to buy a new one,” Scott says.
Over time, recycling became cool, the masses became convinced that recycling would save the earth from premature extinction, and getting them hooked on recycling ink cartridges was easy.
Consequently, the value of those empty cartridges plummeted, but at a meeting with their mutual insurance agent, Scott and his dad were asked that if they could make money collecting empty cartridges, then why not sell full ones?
Suddenly inspired, Scott and his dad began calling the same clients who were already working with them.
“We actually sold our first toner cartridge to our insurance agent,” Scott says, and that one agent quickly connected them to 1,500 new accounts.
Since 2008, Midwest Imaging Solutions has thrived in the niches of printing and copying, typically picking up where big box stores leave off.
For context, Midwest Imaging Solutions focuses on servicing businesses because individuals tend to gravitate toward big box stores for their initial needs.
That being said, the popularization of home offices has created new revenue pathways that weren’t as prevalent prior to COVID.
“Putting a $15,000 copier into your home office wasn’t really a thing years ago,” Scott says.
At the same time, where Scott and Midwest Imaging Solutions have branded themselves as industry experts is on the consulting end, assisting companies who at their inception may have gotten by using a $500 printer, but are now in need of a different printing strategy.
“A lot of what we do is right-size companies on both sides of the scale, whether they are growing or shrinking,” Scott says.
In other words, they are consulting and offering printing and copying solutions where business owners otherwise might not get them.
“As you know, Quentin, my passion is helping independent business owners, whether it’s with our products or referring them to people who can solve problems for them,” Scott says, his passion not solely in discussing the nuances of ink cartridges and printers.
Of note:
Scott has helped three of his clients sell their companies, leveraging his past experiences of acquiring seven different competitors to advise his customers on how to approach these types of transactions.
“Again, my passion is to help businesses become more successful than they already are,” Scott says.
In that sense, copiers, printers, and ink are merely vehicles that allow Scott to help his fellow man, and network with like-minded individuals.
“My wife tells me that toner cartridges are like socks,” Scott shares.
“Every company has to buy them, but no one wants to spend money on them.”
Adds Scott, with a laugh:
“But even socks are cooler than toner.”
Self-deprecation aside, the reality is that businesses need effective printing solutions, because even though talking about printing may be on par with doing taxes, it’s a necessary aspect of running a business that, if done correctly, can inject more revenue back into a company’s cashflow.
“Customers usually want to know more about what the initial product cost is,” Scott says, before detailing exactly how they consult their clients.
“Often, we are showing people the math for why they should spend twice as much on a product. At the same time, if people don’t understand or believe that, they could feel like they got oversold.”
Saving money is in the lexicon of every business owner, but in a fast-paced world, thoroughly analyzing printing and copying needs frequently is shelved for more pressing matters, but this lack of monitoring printing costs has its downfalls.
“I will see companies that will stay with a vendor forever, and incremental price increases occur until their accountant tells them to go and talk to another company to get a quote,” says Scott, not critically, but analytically.
“That’s when companies will find out they’re paying twice the market rate for something because they just kept auto-renewing leases for 15 years, versus exploring alternative options to find more competitive pricing.”
Scott then readily acknowledges that not every company is amenable to what Midwest Imaging Solutions offers, which in many ways is how it should be.
“Part of me being a more mature business owner is being okay with the fact that we are not for everyone,” he admits.
“If someone doesn’t appreciate what we do, that’s okay.”
This level of confidence is often exhibited by business owners who have been around for many years, who fully understand that business will find them more often than them having to hunt for it on a daily basis.
“The challenge is, when everyone is your potential customer, how do you target?” Scott rhetorically asks, then noting how his book of business includes government regulated companies, CPAs, attorneys, financial advisors, and once upon a time, pawn shops, who regularly went through 100,000 pages per month.
“Those poor trees,” I quip, channeling my inner Karen, but Scott informs me that Midwest Imaging Solutions has partnered with Print Relief, which offers Scott’s environmentally conscious clients the option to track how many pages they print, and then plant a commensurate number of trees.
“It costs about 1/10 of 1 cent per page,” Scott says.
“We bill a customer for that, and then Print Relief takes care of planting the trees.”
Looking ahead, Scott would like to see Midwest Imaging Solutions double in size in the next five years.
“That will then be the end of our growth,” he states.
“That will also put us in a niche spot where we can be profitable, have great employees, and not be so large that we have to hire people we don’t want.” QS
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