Paul Orfalea

Paul Orfalea (Arabic: بول أورفلي‎‎) (born November 28, 1947), nicknamed "Kinko" because of his curly red hair, founded the copy-chain Kinko's.

Orfalea was born in Los Angeles, California to parents of Lebanese Eastern Orthodox Christian descent. Orfalea and his wife are practicing Roman Catholics.

He is currently a philanthropist and a visiting professor in the Global and International Studies Department of the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB), at the Lloyd Greif Center for Entrepreneurial Studies at the University of Southern California (USC) Marshall School of Business and at the Fred Kiesner Center for Entrepreneurship for the College of Business Administration at Loyola Marymount University. He is a brother of the Pi Kappa Alpha fraternity.

Orfalea's father and grandmother ran clothing stores in Los Angeles. According to Orfalea, he was a woodshop major in high school, and his typical report card was "two C's, three D's, and a F." Due to his dyslexia and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, Orfalea reportedly flunked two grades and was expelled from several schools. He later attended the University of Southern California. Despite being fired from a number of jobs, his family supported him in his determination to launch his own business. In later life he remarked on the subject of his handicaps, "I get bored easily, and that is a great motivator, I think everybody should have dyslexia and ADD."

Orfalea decided to start up his own business while he was attending USC. With a $5,000 bank loan co-signed by his parents, Orfalea founded Kinko's in 1970. His first store which he rented for $100 a month was a small single office space adjacent to a hamburger stand in the Isla Vista neighborhood where the majority of students from UC Santa Barbara resided.. Orfalea began selling notebooks, pens, pencils, and the services of a copying machine at 4 cents per copy. Within ten years, Kinko’s grew to a network of over 80 stores across the country. Rather than franchise, Orfalea formed partnerships with each individual store's local co-owners. Since the stores were located mostly near college campuses and staffed by part-time students, the business was initially driven by the needs of university students. The clientele soon expanded to include other high-end document users, such as job seekers printing resumes and business users generating professional documentation. Orfalea's open-for-24-hours policy increased the store's popularity and led to the spread of Kinko's across the United States and internationally, and ultimately to more than 1,200 locations and 23,000 employees in 10 different countries. Orfalea put a high value on employee satisfaction, he was known to thank his employees by having elaborate company parties where all were welcome. Kinko parties were very well known by Santa Barbarans and were held in various historic parks & recreation venues throughout Santa Barbara, Goleta and Isla Vista. eg;Childs Estate, now known as The Santa Barbara Zoo. He had many friends that were small business owners around town that he inspired with his hi-octane "get it done" attitude. Fortune Magazine named Kinko’s one of the best places in America to work for three years in a row. Kinko’s was acquired by Federal Express in 2004 and was renamed FedEx Kinkos, presently doing business under the name FedEx Office.

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