Rapid Elite owner Matt Gaarder (Credit: Chris Roush/Daily Forum)
US-based Matt Gaarder was formerly a Rapid Refill franchisee, and has now created the Rapid Elite store in Maryville, Missouri.
Maryville Daily Forum interviewed Gaarder, who was previously a sports broadcaster in Missouri, and decided to get into cartridge retail franchising with Rapid Refill, before buying out his share of the franchise and creating a new store called Rapid Elite. Gaarder got into the industry after “looking online for refill equipment” and “stumble[ing] upon Rapid Refill […] I had always wanted to own a business. I just never knew what it was going to be”.
Cartridge stores were something “Maryville didn’t have”, and Gaarder “thought it would work well, and we were the smallest market of any of the Rapid Refills”. He opened his store in 2010 with his wife Sherry, and he noted that the “biggest obstacle in the remanufactured ink business is that there’s a lot of bad quality refills out there […] People had run into that, and the difference with us is that our suppliers are thoroughly tested on a constant basis to make sure their product is good quality. That was the biggest hurdle, people didn’t trust refilled ink cartridges and I understood that”.
The town of Maryville has a population of around 12,000 people, and Gaarder noted that “The idea of a refill ink cartridge business can sound a bit odd”, but opportunities “presented themselves” after the recession had hit, as he was able to save businesses “40 or 50 percent on something they spend money on”. In 2014, the Rapid Refill overall franchise asked franchisees about getting into printing services, but a competitor printing company would have made it hard to compete.
[adrotate banner=”248″]
However, Gaarder discovered that the owner was considering retirement, and he then chose to buy out from Rapid Refill, so “with the business now being completely independent” his ability to grow “was in reach”. He acquired the printing, copying and shipping operations of the other company, and changed his store’s name to Rapid Elite, and now offers shipping and sells boxes, tape and packaging materials alongside cartridges, printing and copying services.
He told the news outlet that “everyday, you’re always nervously excited about the day […] it’s a blast and I get to work with a lot more people, networking with business owners and customers that come into the store […] so the interaction with the customers is huge and I feel that sense of freedom (every) entrepreneur wants. It’s not easy, but it’s enjoyable.
“I’ve always told my sales people just get a cartridge in the printer. Let people see our cartridges are the same, they act the same. Once we were able to build that trust and people saw our product was different than what you order off the internet we gained people’s trust”.