ACP Has Scaled Mountains of Competition to Establish Itself as the Premier Office Technology Provider in the Denver Market.
presented by Sharp, RISO and Continuum
Above: Brad Knepper (left) and Troy Baranek in the Lincoln Park section of Denver, site of the company’s new headquarters scheduled to open summer 2019.
A man walks into a bar in the college town of Iowa City, Iowa, and buys it. Then, he discovers no matter how hard he works, whenever a hot new trendy bar opens nearby, there go his clients. So, he takes a job selling copiers, enjoys it, and discovers the harder he works, the greater his rewards. Eventually, he moves to Denver and starts selling copiers for IKON. When that doesn’t work out, he buys a copier dealership, which he proceeds to grow into the largest copier dealership in Colorado over the next 19 years.
And this, readers, pretty much describes the story of Brad Knepper, president of ACP, formerly known as All Copy Products, which was the first stop of two during the Colorado leg of the CR Live: 2018 Dealer Tour. In line with his consistent pursuit of excellence, Knepper’s story continues as he explores opportunities, works hard, and reaps the rewards. As we learned when we visited him during the July-August leg of our dealer tour, Knepper’s ACP story doesn’t end there.
We were originally scheduled to visit Knepper and his executive team in Denver on Tuesday morning, however, when Knepper learned we were arriving in Denver on Monday afternoon, he invited us to drop by ACP’s main office Monday afternoon for a brief chat and tour of the building before joining him and his employees at 3:30 at one of ACP’s favorite local watering holes for a new employee Happy Hour.
We graciously accepted, marveling at a Happy Hour, especially one for new employees, at 3:30 on a Monday afternoon. Apparently, this happens about four times a year and coincides with new employee training sessions that take place at the dealership’s headquarters. From our perspective, it’s an excellent opportunity for ACP executives and other team members to mix and mingle with new employees in a social setting.
A rooftop bar not far from Coors Field was an ideal location to sample ACP’s culture, and get a feel for what it must be like for a new employee to join the ranks of one of the industry’s most vibrant dealerships. As we took in the event, we noted a few things. This is a young company (Knepper is in his late forties, as is most of his executive team), and everyone seemed to enjoy socializing with each other, even if most conversations centered around the business. By the time CJ and I left with Brad and Troy Baranek, ACP vice president of sales, for dinner around 7 p.m., the event was winding down and the only ones left were seasoned ACP employees.
As luck would have it, this was a particularly opportune time to visit ACP. In addition to the training and new employee Happy Hour, the company was launching its rebranded iteration from All Copy Products to ACP on Wednesday, August 1. As we would see during our meeting on Tuesday morning at another location, the dealership is also building a new headquarters next door to that location which will consolidate ACP’s two Denver locations into one by summer 2019.
In this industry, you know there’s never a dull moment. We conducted our meeting in the middle of a construction site, surrounded by the sounds of construction vehicles, workers climbing a ladder outside the window and the unsettling sounds of large objects falling on the roof above our heads.
It was thrilling to see this successful dealership in the throes of literally expanding its company headquarters. Being afraid of heights, I was glad we weren’t there the next day to see Knepper sitting with his feet dangling off the edge of what will be the company’s new third floor offices while filming a video about the new building.
However, this image of Knepper sitting on the edge of a budding opportunity perfectly captures his personality. He thrives by living on the edge, rocks and rolls with the best of them, and although he can sometimes be soft spoken, his success speaks loudly about his astute mind for business.
A Tech Company
ACP may have started small with seven employees when Knepper acquired it in 1999, but today it employs 400 across its eight locations in four states (Colorado, Arizona, Kansas, and Wyoming) and has enjoyed an overall organic growth rate of 65%. Then, there are the acquisitions. Knepper made his first purchase in 1999, shortly after he acquired the company. Overall, he’s made 20, mostly companies in the $1 million to $5 million revenue range, and he is currently working on a few more. That aggressive acquisition strategy has enabled ACP to completely dominate the Denver market. As he told us during our Monday meeting, there’s not much competition left in Denver, other than a small dealer or two, as well as some OEM direct branches and a Global branch.
From Knepper’s vantage point, ACP is first and foremost a technology company. Since the days of having “copier” in a dealership’s name have almost become anachronistic, ACP’s rebranding from All Copy Products to ACP was a strategic move, as was the development of ACP’s new logo, which no longer looks like the “start” button of a copier. The company’s new tagline captures this more accurate portrayal of its business: “Complete Office Technology Solutions.”
Sixty percent of ACP’s revenues still come from traditional imaging technology, while the remaining 40% comprises services and other product segments. ACP represents Canon, Konica Minolta, and Sharp, and casts a wide net with the many products and services it offers customers. ACP delivers a broad array of services including, office technology, MPS, MNS, label printers, scanning services, facilities management, and phone systems. ACP also owns a toner manufacturing company, which allows the dealership to be more aggressive and competitive when bidding on MPS contracts.
As ACP has seen transactional sales become more challenging, it has added non-tech transactional items to the mix such as coffee and water.
“I look at office coffee a lot like the way we sold toner cartridges 15 years ago,” said Ty Bartels, division manager, document management software and data conversion solutions. “You have the ability to gain some margin. People spend a decent amount of money on their coffee, and it’s important to a lot of them.”
And there’s more to come for ACP and its customers, including shredding services, a potentially lucrative opportunity as more businesses go digital and need to dispose of sensitive documents that have been digitized. Physical and IT security also represent potential new areas of opportunity. However, the big challenge, said Knepper, is figuring out a recurring revenue model around the security offerings.
Knepper and team seem to have the Midas touch for virtually any business they enter, although he acknowledged there are some areas, such as production print, where they could be better.
“We do okay, but don’t do enough for as big as we are,” he conceded.
According to Bartels, the challenge is identifying scalable opportunities, while pointing out the biggest growth sectors for the company are facilities management and IT, the latter offered through ACP’s Verticomm Technologies subsidiary, a managed services and cloud provider acquired in October 2015.
The company will soon be beta-testing Sharp’s Smart Office Suite, which should add another new technology and services offering. Because ACP is a Konica Minolta dealer, we couldn’t resist asking Knepper about the much-heralded Workplace Hub. (He was in Berlin, Germany, for the rollout two years ago.) He readily admitted he still doesn’t fully understand the product yet, a sentiment echoed by some other Konica Minolta dealers we’ve interviewed.
Pull Quote: The biggest growth sectors for the company are facilities management and IT, the latter offered through ACP’s Verticomm Technologies subsidiary, a managed services and cloud provider acquired in October 2015.
Staying on Top
As the largest dealer in Colorado and the dominant player in most of the markets it serves, we asked Knepper and his team how they avoid becoming complacent when they’ve already achieved market dominance.
“It’s challenging because when we were small, every deal we had was a new business opportunity and we were able to chew into everybody’s space,” he responded. “Now, we have a lot of market share so there’s a lot of risk. We think it’s effective, it’s working. We now have pricing and programs specifically for new business opportunities. We have to take steps to maintain our current base.”
An example of one of the steps ACP is taking to maintain the current base is with telemarketers employed by the company who are tasked with finding additional cross-selling opportunities.
“We’re making sure we’re adding three or four touches to each of our current clients,” noted Knepper.
For Bartels, continued success is driven by adding new services, products, and expertise.
“We have a big client base, but if we keep adding all these new services and all the other things we do and our expertise and technology, that’s going to help us,” he said.
Bartels also emphasized how effectively everyone at ACP works in concert with each other, sharing ideas and leads. That shouldn’t come as much of a surprise as Knepper and some of his team have a long history together, stretching back well before the establishment of ACP. That culture was very much evident during our meeting as the 10 participants all complemented each other in responding to our questions.
As we wrapped up our visit with the ACP executive team amidst the din of the construction activity, we had a much clearer vision of how ACP has grown to become the premier office technology provider in the Denver market. This youthful, tenured staff has a bright future ahead of them and a market position that’s the envy of competitors. And with a rebranding of the company and a new building in the works, there doesn’t seem to be any mountain that this dealership can’t scale.
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