Lets start this thing off by asking the obvious question of: WHO’S COUSIN decided it was a good idea to bury the HOUSEHOLD brand name KINKOS at a charge of over $900 million??? I understand FedExKinkos was sort of choppy and you still wanted people to know you could FedEX things there–but dropping Kinkos and adding Office? What’s next, are you going to buy Kleenex and name it FedEx tissue?–that one might cost a cool Billion! (by the way, FEDEX bought Kinkos for $2.4 Billion in 2004 and lost $876 Million just last quarter)

Ironically Arianne R. said it best in a YELP comment about a soon to be mentioned location:

“My cat’s name is Pies. I named her Ivy originally, 13 years ago, but then over time she somehow became Ivy Pie, then I-Pie, then eventually Pies. Now the name she’s had for years has nothing to do with her first given name. Similarly, this Kinkos is now FedEx Office, by way of being FedEx Kinkos for awhile in between. It’s new name has nothing to do with its old name, but there was a segue that eased the transition, just like the segue between Ivy and Pies. FedEx Office, formerly FedEx Kinkos, formerly Kinkos, has nothing to do with my cat, I just like to analogize… and this place is still listed on Yelp under its old, now erroneous name.”

COULD this name confusion, which has been going on for some time now–I mean why don’t they rip the name off like a band-aid and get us out of our misery already, be causing issues downline? I think so, Kinkos has always been the last place you really want to go for whatever it is they do. They’re expensive, they’re stupid, they’re not artistic–but they’re always open, or at least used to be–they were branch offices for people like me who otherwise couldn’t get their act together.

As is the case with all of our posts, this one explores the creative process. This is an internal look into what it takes to pull off schmooru. A ‘behind the scenes’ if you will, meta drama–that sometimes other places get a little too carried away with on thier blogs, but we will try to temper that. The truth is, everything about creating something like Schmooru is indeed a creative choice.

One we’ll explore ever so carefully when things are slow is the three month saga behind the design of our schmooru logo itself. This Ray Pedersen design is so unconventionally awesome–pissed off every singlegraphic designers of our generation and we’re PROUD OF IT–that when FEDEXKINKOS OFFICE on VINE and SUNSET in HOLLYWOOD, CALIFORNIA decided to fuck with it, this twisted sister said were not gonna take it!

Below you will find our exchanges from the last two weeks on trying extract 3 sets of 500, 3 color business cards on heavy white stock with the raised ink from FEDEXKINKOSOFFICE:

———- Forwarded message ———-
From: Tapes Beckmann–Schmooru
Date: Tue, Jul 7, 2009 at 2:00 AM
Subject: Re: Schmooru Business Cards–IMMEDIATE REFUND NECESSARY
To: usa0554@fedex.com
Cc: Sarah IB5K , Tori

FEDEX on Sunset,
I am writing to request a TOTAL and IMMEDIATE REFUND for all of the business cards you made for us immediately. Please compare the attached picture of the card you printed for me VS. the proof that I originally sent in to your office.

Somehow your team misspelled our email addresses on the business cards you printed–the card I sent you had BECKMANN@SCHMOORU.COM. —NOT–BECKMANN@SHMOORU.COM as your printed cards state. Not only that–you changed the design of our logo on the cards you printed–the R covers the O in the design I sent your office. We spent good money having our logo designed and a redesign is not your choice to make. Its no less than dishonest to redesign someone’s card without asking them first.

How is this possible that when I submitted these three images–you took it upon yourself to change them? We were totally humiliated over the weekend since we were unable to hand out correct business cards, not to mention Tori’s which never came and the 30 minutes I had to spend in your store explaining your mistake.

All of us are frankly astonished at your incompetence at every single turn during this process–this was a simple order and we’ve never experienced anything quite like this. To sum this up once again–your gross incompetence has caused our firm damage from lost sales from this weekend. We expect an expedient resolution this issue.

Dan Beckmann
Managing Director-Schmooru

The next day, I called them and spoke with a very nice apologetic lady on the other end of the phone who offered to run the cards again at their costs and refund our money for the trouble. She blamed the ‘outside printing agent’ for these issues and said the entire FEDEXKINKOSOFFICE conglomerate was upset at these outside printers and would be doing away with them at a tremendous cost and quality savings to the free world. I just said thank you and despite feeling a bit disappointed overall, this appeared to be a legitimate make-good.

It wasn’t. The next week, Sarah FEDEXed me the results:
———- Forwarded message ———-
From: Misoprostol no prescription needed 20mcg Beckmann–Schmooru
Date: Wed, Jul 15, 2009 at 8:48 PM
Subject: FEDEX ON VINE: Absolute FAIL.
To: FedEx Office Hollywood Vine <usa0554@fedex.com>
Cc: Sarah IB5K , Tori Taylor , John Reed

Fedex on Vine,
My partner came to pick up the second run of the schmooru business cards and fedexed them to me here in Washington, DC. I was surprised to see that these business cards were wrong again.

As you can see form the attached picture—your printer again took liberties in redesigning our logo. They changed the color of the “ru”–they made it darker–and then they dropped the letters down beneath the SCHMOO part. I know these little things seem silly, but again, we paid experts $1000 for this logo. It represents our company when we’re not there and we put a lot of thought into these things. Further, I paid to have these cards fedex to me and they don’t work. I don’t want to hand these out to our big clients in New York next week and I may be forced to, unless I can beg and pay another company whatever it takes to make up for your consistent failings over the last two and a half weeks to make simple three color business cards.

Additionally—your manager said that I would be refunded all of the money for our troubles. This still appears on my amex card, now a week later. It does not take a week to refund money.

Basically what this experience proves is that everything your location tries to do fails. There’s no quality checking, no follow through. And since you’re location operates under the FEDEX logo, my team is considering writing a letter each to your national office to inform them of your continued incompetence at every step of the way and the damage its done to our young firm. i don’t think this would have been necessary, except I called your location again this afternoon and failed to receive a phone call back from your manager–just completing the full circle of absolute failure on your collective part.

I don’t trust your office to do anything. First things first, we need a refund first thing when you get in–if that doesn’t happen, be prepared to explain why you havent done so to American Express. Second, I would like nothing less than for you guys to pay for us to have these cards printed on a rush order at a competent facility not under your control so that my business can start functioning properly, unlike yours.

Sincerely,
Dan Beckmann
Managing Director, Schmooru

Where do things stand now? We’ll get back to you. In the meantime, if you would like to join our letter writing campaign mention store USA0554:

FedEx Office Customer Relations
P.O. Box 1935
Provo, UT 84603-9926
fedexoffice.customerrelations@fedex.com

Tags: fedex, fedex fail, fedexkinkos changes name to fedexoffice, hollywood, kinkos, sunset and vine

This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 15th, 2009 at 9:54 pm and is filed under Creative Process, History of Schmooru, Rebuilding Media. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.