Kwik Kopy Tullamarine will shut its doors on Friday after the ‘disappointed’ owner confirmed that his family business will go into liquidation after a ‘disastrous’ last three months. Glenn Sykes took sole ownership of the 26-year-old business 18 months ago after buying out a partner that he bought the business with a couple of years ago.
Sykes says, “The business needed a change of direction and I took over the business to take it further, I wanted to expand our services into digital and was looking to get into the corporate sector. “But the staff did not like the changes, and did not want to be retrained, so I lost 80 years worth of experience when two of my long term staff members decided to retire. “I kept going thinking the business would climb up again, but the changes – staff retiring, training new staff with the economic downturn – did not work, and all of sudden it was just me doing everything,” he says. “To make matters worse a lot of the equipment failed, which I could not afford to fix or replace, which forced me to send jobs out hurting the business further.” He says print is a ‘tough business as it is’, but with the economic downturn and declining volumes, last year was worse than 2013 – when he took over the business from his partner. “It was worse than the GFC, and when a business spirals down, it spirals pretty quickly. The last three months were disastrous. So the best thing was to seek administration before I acquired more debt,” Sykes says. Kwik Kopy Tullamarine operated with four staff members, including Sykes, when he took over and currently has one staff member, who has been employed by another Kwik Kopy. “I told our staff member that we were shutting down and he should apply for a job with another Kwik Kopy, so he was not left with nothing,” Sykes says. He says it was the ‘right thing to do’ to let the business go and now he sees himself spending more time with his young family. “I don’t know where I will go next. I am already a dinosaur to get retrained in the printing industry, so for now I want to spend some time with my kids and regroup before I get out there again,” Sykes says. “My wife is upset. She is disappointed to not make a go of it [the business]; it was our dream to make it a family business, now we walk away with no house and no business – with nothing.”
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