by Trish Muyco-Tobin

GFI Digital, a local startup that’s propelled itself into a multi-million company in just 10 years, is changing the way people print, copy, fax and scan at work. Company president Bruce Gibbs and vice president Mark Kehoe left a powerhouse imaging technology firm to start GFI in 1999. Between the two of them, they have 50 years of industry experience.

The company, which provides multi-functional office machines, has a reputation for being an industry leader when it comes to emergency response time, client savings and employee loyalty. To date, it has sold more than 14,800 machines. It is headquartered in St. Louis and has five other locations in Missouri and Illinois.

“We already knew the business and what customers expected,” Gibbs says. “So when we had the opportunity to become a Sharp electronics dealer—selling a great name and a great product—it was enough to make us jump off the corporate bandwagon and do our own thing.” With the help of some seed money from his siblings (GFI stands for Gibbs Family Investment), Gibbs says the company hit the ground running. “Mark and I, along with an employee, John Hauck, had long histories in the business, and we just started pounding the pavement.”

GFI boasts a customer list with some of the biggest names in local business, including Coldwell Banker Gundaker, Schnucks, Peabody, St. Louis Blues and the Missouri National Guard, but its main clientele is comprised of smaller companies like law firms, accounting agencies and independent businesses. “Our bread and butter is helping a business with one product and showing them how to save on their output costs,” notes Gibbs. “They’re just not copying these days, they’re also trying to eliminate wasteful printing. So a total solution would be to help them figure out what they want to do with the documents before they print.”

Gibbs says GFI has been able to grow successfully by consistently delivering quality Sharp and Ricoh products and backing them up with great service. “We don’t worry about what the competition is doing,” he says. “We just focus on making great buys from the manufacturer, pricing them right, establishing a good relationship with our customers and training our salespeople and technicians to be better than anyone else.”

Before long, GFI expanded its employee base to keep up with the company’s growth. “During our second year, our top competitor laid off more than 200 workers,” Gibbs says. “That, in turn, allowed us to hire pros with more than 15 and 20 years of customer service experience.” He says as a rule, the company continues to recruit some of the most experienced and knowledgeable staff around. “We have industry benchmarks that we hit on a daily, monthly and yearly basis,” he explains. Among them is an emergency response time of 2.6 hours (versus the 4-hour industry standard).

The result, Gibbs says, is satisfied customers. “Our client retention is at 90 percent,” he says. “When you have great products and great people, you have happy customers.”  

St. Louis-based GFI Digital delivers and services multifunctional Sharp and Ricoh products, offering a five-step process to determine, implement and maintain a custom solution for each customer. Its six locations in Missouri and Illinois offer an experienced staff of technicians and customer service representatives. Pictured on the cover, clockwise from bottom right: vice president Mark Kehoe, president Bruce Gibbs, Matt Schuler, Kevin Simmons, Patti Crocker, John Hauck, Jeff Cook and Elliot Fritsche. For more information, call 997-6300 or visit www.gfidigital.com.