Sometimes being a small, nimble and responsive local business can be far more effective than being one of the big guys. Fewer layers of bureaucracy and a bit of local knowledge means work can be done quicker and cheaper than larger competitors. But if your local supplier is part of the Kwik Kopy family, they also have access to all the skills, products and knowledge that the bigger guys have too. And a bit of local knowledge lets you come up with a workaround when the job seems—at first glance—like it involves blocking off a busy road in one of Sydney’s busiest suburbs.
This was the challenge facing Emmanuel Constantinou of Kwik Kopy Bondi Junction when he was approached by the new owners of Baiboon Thai Massage in Bondi. The owner had just taken over the site, and invited Emmanuel and another, large signage firm to quote on printing signage for all the glass panels surrounding the busy corner site on Bondi Road.
“Once I went over to see him, he walked me through all the work, which was quite a lot of work that needed to be done,” Constantinou recalls. “It wasn’t just about the glass. It was also the awnings, the light box, and all the surrounding of the building. All the glass panelling had to be redone. It was also fortunate that, as a local business that was starting up, he needed the support from the local community to be able to give him that extra push to fire up a business that way. And I’m the president of the Chamber of Commerce of Bondi Districts, so could help him out that way too.”
Being a local and being so responsive, Constantinou had an advantage over the other tenderer—who still hadn’t responded to the business owner after five days. A week after the owner accepted Constantinou’s quotes, the Kwik Kopy team were ready to get on site and start the work.
The first challenge they faced was the age of the awning above the shop. “We had to try to make sure that the awnings were strong enough to hold us up there to do the instal,” Constantinou recalls. “We managed to get the job done with only having one person up there and the rest of us underneath supporting the awning.
“We got two scaffold poles, one on either side of where the installer was. As he was working, we were moving the scaffolds to work all the way around it, so the awning wasn’t going to drop or add extra load to it unnecessarily whilst we were putting up the graphics.”
The second challenge they faced was the location itself. The store was located on a busy corner of Bondi Road, beside a set of traffic lights. “We had to work between certain hours due to the amount of traffic congestion and then that corner traffic lights,” says Constantinou. “It was hard to be able to then do the awnings and everything because we couldn’t use the road space to be able to go up by ladder.”
As a result, installation was scheduled to take place on a Saturday, when there would be the least amount of traffic. Constantinou and his team were able to get the entire job finished within 24 hours. “The client was absolutely amazed by the way we did the job, and by the way the graphics looked,” Constantinou says. “The quality of the prints was sensational. So he was very, very pleased.”
