Kinko’s to test ‘Net services in Las Vegas

Grace Leong

Friday, Aug. 25, 2000 | 11:33 a.m.

Printing personalized documents for same-day and overnight shipment from a home desktop computer is now available locally.

Las Vegas is one of five cities chosen for the test launch of Kinko's Inc.'s latest clicks-to-bricks service on the Internet.

Called Print to Kinko's, the service is an online order-taking system that allows customers to upload digital documents to Kinko's new Internet site, kinkos.com, specify how they want them printed and bound, view and proof the documents and have them delivered by courier to 20 cities where the same-day service is now offered, or overnight nationwide by Federal Express.

By year end, this same-day delivery service via local couriers will be offered in 55 markets or 80 percent of the country. Online orders are being taken at two Las Vegas Kinko's offices at 4750 W. Sahara Ave. and 395 Hughes Center Drive.

First launched on July 13 in Las Vegas; Boston; Austin, Texas; Atlanta and San Francisco, the company will begin aggressive marketing of Print to Kinko's in magazines and on ABC's Monday Night Football starting Sept. 4.

Kinkos.com and FedEx have teamed to provide customers with e-commerce services that allow more time to produce documents and get them distributed faster. Print to Kinko's is accessible at the Kinkos.com website and will be available via links at www.fedex.com by October.

"In about 30-60 days time, the FedEx component will come online and customers can then access the virtual drop box by logging in to the fedex.com website and extend the delivery window," said Charlie Morrison, Kinko's vice president of products marketing. "On the West Coast, the latest drop-off time for FedEx deliveries is between 4-5 p.m. But with the Print to Kinko's service, the delivery window can be extended to 6 p.m."

"Our customers have expressed a strong desire for Print to Kinko's," he said. "Our web order service has existed for some time, which allows customers to facilitate transmission of their electronic documents to their Kinko's of choice. But that service didn't provide online proofing of the document or online payments. Print to Kinko's offers these two services."

"Business travellers are huge customers. What they want is just-in-time delivery service," said Mark Ferrara, Kinko's regional operations manager. "A lot of technically savvy convention customers like Comdex also use this service. For the MAGIC (Men's Apparel Guild in California) convention next week in Las Vegas, we already have several digital documents sent to our two branches there."