Remembering Paul Panitz, Founder of Copy General in Europe

REMEMBERING PAUL PANITZ, FOUNDER OF COPY GENERAL IN EUROPE. (Paul passed away in 2008.) THE ARTICLE BELOW WAS PUBLISHED IN THE NEW YORK TIMES IN January 1994. “East's Copy King Duplicates U.S. Success: A Forint-Pincher Thrives” By Henry Copeland, International Herald Tribune Jan. 3, 1994 Asked about his black Converse All Stars, Paul Panitz, a 46-year-old millionaire, volunteers that they cost $19 five years ago. Later, he recalls buying an office chair for $50 at a 1981 auction. And on a given afternoon, he may be found in a copy shop not far from the Danube River, reminding employees that a copy machine uses six times less toner when operated with its lid closed. "Sometimes Paul is too cheap, but if he weren't cheap we wouldn't be getting ready to open our fourth store in Budapest," says Erno Duda, Mr. Panitz's 25- year-old protégé and co-owner of Copy General Hungary. In a business where margins are paper thin, Paul Panitz's frugality has made him the king of copying of Eastern Europe. Since his first store opened in Budapest in June of 1991, Mr. Panitz has opened three more Copy General shops in Hungary, two shops in Prague and one in Warsaw. In the process, he has surpassed in size the six-store Washington D.C. chain from which he borrowed Copy General's name and initial expertise. Soon, new Copy General shops will open in Budapest, Prague and Plzen. Copy machines - once kept under lock and key to prevent them from spawning samizdat, or underground publishing - are humming in Eastern Europe. Demand has been so great that all but one of the Copy Generals here have broken even in operating results after four months, compared with an industry average of nine months in the United States, according to Mr. Panitz. Copy General's Budapest flagship now spins through eight kilometers (five miles) of paper every month, and one of the Prague shops recently completed an order of 2 million pages for a corporate training manual. But oddly, while Copy General has multitudes of small competitors - almost every stationery store here sports a desktop copier - its enterprises constitute the only chain of full-service copy shops in Eastern Europe. Copy General's uncontested position in its category is a measure not only of Mr. Panitz's business acumen, but his willingness to persevere through tribulations that have thwarted others. Steve Haas, 32, who helped launch Copy General in Poland and the Czech Republic, notes that in the United States "you can pick up a telephone, call an attorney and get incorporated in 24 hours, then have office space leased and furniture brought in another 24 hours." In contrast, says Mr. Haas, "these things we spent months trying to achieve here." Still unable to secure a telephone line for one Budapest store, Copy General will soon install CB radios. Mr. Panitz came to Budapest in September 1990, looking for something exciting to do with himself and some of the $1.7 million he had earned from selling Unicorn Graphics, a printing business he started in Washington D.C. in 1971. After an unsuccessful two-month search for a site for the copy shop he hoped to open, Mr. Panitz tried to negotiate a joint venture with a Hungarian copy firm. This too failed. In another attempt to locate premises for a business, he resorted to walking the streets and putting notes on the windows of vacant stores. Nearly seven months after his arrival, Mr. Panitz finally found a basement on the southern fringe of the business district. The location was not great and the landlord wanted five years rent, up front, but Mr. Panitz had little choice. In addition to the advance rent, Mr. Panitz had to pay cash for his first copy machines, bringing his total outlay for the first store to $380,000. Revenues were $121,000 for that store's first six months of operations. Now, monthly revenues for all operations have swelled to $340,000 as customers have lined up to take advantage of the company's long hours and attention to detail. Copy General shops have been so profitable that, with the exception of one $100,000 loan, each successive store has been financed by established stores.