Business Spotlight: Copy That

Josh Moore has a competitive nature 100 yards long.

The two-year, walk-on wide receiver at the University of Missouri is now president and CEO of Office Concepts of Missouri Inc., where he uses that fiery trait to drive his office equipment company. Moore says he uses values he learned on the football field – competition, sportsmanship and teamwork – every day to lead his workers.

The 29-year-old executive says giving back to the community is emphasized in his 1723 W. Sunshine St. business.

“I’m not a large Fortune 500 company out of a huge metropolitan area, but I’m here, my family is here, my employees and their families are here. It’s very important to us that our community is strong,” Moore says.

Office Concepts contributes around $50,000 annually to 24 area charities and maintains membership in six chambers of commerce, he says. The company participated in a multimillion-dollar round of giving by area businesses in 2007 to Missouri State University. Office Concepts sponsored the guest services area at JQH Arena.

“I’m in a position to help people with time, with money, with volunteers,” Moore says.

Passing the baton
Moore took over the family business for his father, Steven W. Moore Sr., in 2007.

The elder Moore founded the company in 1990 and remains the owner. Josh Moore says his father is still active in sales and support, though he is slowing down to prepare for retirement.

The company currently has 3,500 clients, a new high, but its highest revenue year came in 2006, $3.2 million.

A bump in the road arrived in 2002, when Office Concepts filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. At the time, Steven Moore and attorneys said the company and its assets were dragged into a four-year-old divorce proceeding between Moore and former wife Martha.
The company emerged successfully from the reorganization the next year.

Josh Moore says his father backs his decisions and doesn’t second-guess how he runs the company. But the younger Moore is quick to add that he often seeks his father’s input.

“I’d be a fool to not use his experience. I’m only 29,” he says. “It is very exciting to me to be in a family-owned operation and continue what my father started 20 years ago.”

Led by copier service, which provides 49 percent of revenue, this company’s 2009 revenue topped $2.2 million, down from $2.3 million in 2008. Moore says the figure was in line with expectations considering the recession.

Other revenue streams include copier sales, 40 percent; and computer service and sales, 10 percent.

This year’s revenues through August reflect an uptick; year-to-date revenue is $1.5 million, up 3 percent from the same time last year.

Final 2010 revenue is expected to top $2.8 million.

Moore partially attributes the increase to managed print services, offered for the last six months. Using the MPS concept, a business pays on a per-copy basis, about 1 cent, and receives use of Office Concepts’ service department for their printers. Clients can purchase or rent Office Concepts copiers or use their own equipment, and there is no base fee to cover service calls, Moore says.

“MPS is a growing trend, very definitely, in the office equipment industry and in the business community in general,” says Erik Crane, president of Copy Products Inc., which has offered MPS for more than a year and has more than 300 accounts under contract for the service.
“Companies are looking to the one-throat-to-choke kind of scenario. If one of my printers or copiers is not working, I have one place to call.”

So far, MPS is proving popular – Moore says more than 60 large-volume accounts have signed up for the program. While generating immediate revenue, the long-term goal, Moore says, is for customers to buy Kyocera copiers, the brand that Office Concepts deals exclusively.

Turning technology into opportunity
One challenge Moore faces also represents an opportunity.

Technology to scan items that once would have been printed allows for the bypass of Office Concepts’ business.

“When you’re e-mailing things, you’re not printing them. You’re basically bypassing the hardware side of what I do,” Moore says. “To supplement that, we have aligned ourselves wonderfully in the IT world. We started three years ago an IT department that manages computers and servers.”

Moore points to a pair of recent hires – Devin West as information technology manager and Eric Meruelo as sales manager – that he believes will allow the business to keep pace with market trends.

Part of West’s role is to help the company provide computer and network server maintenance. As well as being the company’s sales manager, Meruelo is bilingual, which both he and Moore say will help him cultivate sales among a growing segment of Hispanic business owners.[[In-content Ad]]