Details, Details

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Finding little things and executing them well doesn't have to be complicated, or even expensive -- only ingenious. And it doesn't require a glamorous setting. I saw it pay off under quite ordinary circumstances at Original Copy Centers Inc., a local purveyor of bulk-copying services in Cleveland. Before Original's two irrepressible owners came along, quick printers were content to vend their wares from grungy storefronts staffed by clerks straight out of Dickens. But they've been left in the dust.

Of course, it takes someone totally devoted to a life of business to be able to start with only a single leased Xerox copier and a couple of overdrawn credit cards, and in a few years take a place on the INC. 500 fast-growth list twice -- without ever having left downtown Cleveland. Suffice it to summarize that Original was founded back in 1975 by one Nancy Vetrone, a divorcee with four kids. As fate shortly was to decree, one of her first clients was Robert E. Bieniek, an erstwhile communications teacher. Vetrone and Bieniek decided to become partners (she president and chief executive officer, he executive vice-president of marketing) and to get married. Out of the union came a succession of blessed little things so clever and effective that even their major supplier, Xerox, had to admire them -- and then go into direct competition.

Here are a few of the tactics, selected from the profusion that is conscientiously under flux at Original. "Fine-tuning," the owners call the never-ending process. I've rarely seen so much attention lavished on so many seemingly mundane details.

ITEM: For the holidays, Original gives five gallons of popcorn to each key contact. Because 15-inch-by-12-inch tins are not as easily squirreled away as travel clocks (the mementos the company used to send), recipients have little choice but to put out the tins -- emblazoned with Original's slogan -- for everyone to share.

PAYOFF: The buttered-up reminder impresses a variety of subordinates, any of whom -- if not now, then perhaps sometime in the future -- might be the one responsible for purchasing Original's services.

ITEM: Original's marketing department culls local papers for the names of newsmaking customers or prospects. In a few days, the newsmaker receives Original's Certificate of Originality -- but not in a mailing tube. The citation is framed and ready for hanging. "If you don't put it under glass for them," Bieniek suspects, "it will get stuffed in a drawer."

PAYOFF: "People keep telling us, 'Hey, I saw your award on the wall over at so-and-so's'."

ITEM: Original rents display space at just about every trade show that passes through town. The shows are open to the 60,000-odd businesses in northeast Ohio's Cuyahoga County, yet, Bieniek reflects, "sometimes only a couple hundred turn up. It blows my mind that 59,800 others don't bother to get off their duffs." Bieniek made the trade-show connection a few years back when he happened by the Great Lakes Industrial Show, which features manufacturing equipment. In one small booth, a company was peddling three-ring binders -- just the binders, not anything to put in them. "If this guy can sell binders, we sure can sell copying," Bieniek reasoned. But not by copying the booth next door. "We'll be near a company that might have 2,000 employees," marvels Bieniek, "and they'll have the same lone guy sitting around all day reading magazines." At Original's booth, it's impossible to sit around: the booth purposely has no chairs. Half a dozen stand-up employees work the crowd for a few hours, then are replaced by a fresh set.

PAYOFF: The Original presence is distinguished by its vigor -- a refreshing approach credited with landing several top customers.

ITEM: For years, Original relied on outside delivery people. But the hired hands were all thumbs; they would drop packages in the mud, misplace boxes, and trust the destinies of entire jobs to outdoor loading docks. So Original enlisted its own drivers. But they didn't have much get-up-and-go either until Bieniek happened to be met at an airport by a Rolls-Royce with a driver, in a silk suit. This driver wasn't a driver, his business associate bragged; someone of such status is a courier. Impressed, Bieniek bestowed on his then-ragtag deliverers the official title of couriers, and outfitted them in natty uniforms.

PAYOFF: Original pays obsessive attention to pickups and deliveries. "Spoiling customers sets us apart from the competition," says Bieniek of the drivers' painstaking round-trips. Original's home teamsters have compiled intricate maps of the innards of every commercial building in Cleveland and now execute nearly 300 missions per day. "Most delivery people view themselves as delivery people," notes Vetrone. "Ours view themselves as an image. They're young and attractive and have a zest for life. They like to talk to customers, and they know all the receptionists' names."

ITEM: What with flexible schedules and up to 20 overtime hours per week, production-line workers come and go irregularly. Yet there is no official time clock. Employees just pencil in their own cards.

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