The philosophy of a Ballarat born and bred business owner is simple: "Look after clients and they will look after you".
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Stewart Hynes has been a business owner for the past 25 years, firstly in the finance industry and currently in the printing industry.
He took over as the Ballarat centre owner of Kwik Kopy in June 2020 three months after the World Health Organisation declared COVID-19 a worldwide pandemic.
Mr Hynes is the third owner of the Ballarat centre, following on from the original owner Bruce Tweedale and second owner Wayne Edwards.
Kwik Kopy, a trailblazer in the printing industry since 1968, opened in Ballarat 30 years ago in Sturt Street.
"From what I know from previous experience is any business that survives 30 years is a fantastically solid secure business that has looked after their clients, their active clients and they have been able to grow over that time as well," Mr Hynes said.
"The previous two owners did a fantastic job of consolidating each of their ways of running a business and everyone does things differently. I sort of picked up where they left off even though I run it in a different manner."
The Peel Street franchise is thriving and just experienced its best financial year on record under Mr Hynes' ownership.
"We want to build the brand to be a commercial business, a B2B (business-to-business) service, and we have done a lot of work on that in the past 12 to 18 months," he said.
"The next little while is to consolidate what we know, keep doing what we're doing, look after our clients and they will look after us. Simple."
The centre delivers a wide range of design, printing and signage services for Ballarat individuals and businesses, including Kryal Castle.
There are five permanent and three casual staff, including a graphic designer, who are experts in the printing industry.
Kwik Kopy Ballarat faced challenges during the COVID-19 pandemic, but with 85 per cent of work received via email, it didn't complete suffer.
"We worked our a way to survive. We survived the 2020-2021 financial year in a positive manner. We had staff challenges like every other business has had and is probably still having in some respects," Mr Hynes said.
The Ballarat centre continues to honour its commitment to innovation and is a certified Sustainable Green Print centre.
"We have a certification with Sustainable Green Print so we're mindful of the environmentally friendly and sustainable way of doing things. A lot of that comes from the paper we are supplied with and use as well," Mr Hynes said.
On achieving 30 years, Mr Hynes was thrilled and grateful.
"With our team dedicated to making anything possible, we look forward to continuing to offer our customers the best in design, print and signage," he said.
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