Thirty-five years ago, Truman Cole took a chance

Truman Cole's biggest obstacle in getting his new business up and running wasn't financing, finding qualified employees or even pinpointing a prime location.

Believe it or not, it was carbon paper.

"They'd say 'What do I need a copy machine for? I have carbon paper,'" said Cole, the 82-year-old president of Copi-Rite, one of the city's first copy machine dealers. "But I turned them from doubting Thomases into buyers."

One of Cole's numerous talents has always been selling, and that's what helped keep his business thriving from the day he opened it in 1967 in spite of widespread skepticism that this expensive machine would never replace the much cheaper carbon paper.

'Like a child to me'

This year, Cole is celebrating 35 years of running a business that expanded quickly from one location in Cape Girardeau to 13 stores in several states and then later -- when he realized he was working himself to death -- back down to one.

"I guess I've stayed in it so long because it's been pretty good financially and from the standpoint of self-satisfaction," Cole said. "I've considered closing it up a number of times, in part because of my age. But it's become like a child to me and I've stayed with it."

But it's been a long and interesting journey for Cole, who truly can be considered a local pioneer who had to sell a "strange new contraption" to people who today consider it a necessary tool for doing business.

Cole came to Cape Girardeau in 1965, looking for a change from his home town in Pemiscot County, where he had been a farmer, who raised alfalfa, cotton, corn, soybean and cattle. He knew no one in Cape Girardeau, but soon landed a job selling life insurance.

He achieved some degree of success doing that and in fact at one point was honored as the top agent in the country. He learned some of his sales technique from Luther Hahs at Northwestern Mutual. Today, Cole still maintains that Hah's was the "best salesman I ever met."

'Thing was magic'

But he met a man who told him of a "strange gadget" called a copy machine, a large box-shaped device that supposedly made copies of pages from one original in just a few seconds. The person who held the franchise of this particular copy machine was broke and when Cole helped him pay for his copy machine shipments, an agent with a national dealer called SCM noticed his name on the check and asked him if he wanted to take over the franchise.

"I have to admit I was intrigued by this machine," he said. "That doggone thing was magic. It sounds strange now, but back then it was something. People were in awe of this machine. And when they met me, they believed I had the attitude to sell them."

Cole opened his first Copi-Rite in Cape Girardeau at the United Oil Building on Kingshighway and ordered the "unimaginable number of four" copy machines, he said. "I thought I'd have to eat them if I didn't sell them," Cole joked.

That wasn't necessary as the response was immediate.

"I had a field day selling these things," he said. "Everybody in the office would gather around to see it. The response was incredible. The biggest question I got was could I copy money."

In those days, people mainly used carbon paper to make copies, a monotonous, often-messy process that involved sticking blue and black carbon paper between pages and then sticking the paper in the type-writer. Conventional wisdom held that copy machines would never replace the much cheaper carbon paper.

Price was also a big turnoff -- the top model cost almost $1,500, a huge amount in the 1960s.

"They'd run backward from that," Cole admitted.

For all of those reasons, they'd say they didn't need a copy machine -- until they saw it work, that is. His biggest boosters were secretaries who saw the potential time savings, accuracy and efficiency.

"I sold a machine a day," Cole said. "And if I missed a day, I'd sell two the next day."

Firm grew too quickly

Soon, drug stores, doctors, office workers of all kind were buying copy machines. Soon, Cole absorbed a copy machine store in Paducah, Ky. Then he opened a store in Little Rock, Ark. Then Longview, Texas. Then Lafayette, La. Within a year and a half, there were 13 locations and 150 employees.

"Believe me, that's a lot of growth," said Cole, who oversaw all of the locations, a process made easier by the fact that he was a pilot with his own plane.

By his own admission, the company grew "too wide, too fast and too far." He came to realize this as he was flying his airplane at 2 a.m. from Longview, Texas, to Evansville, Ind.

"I was going to get a few hours of sleep before the office opened at 8," he said. "But then I thought: 'This is pretty stupid. I have 150 employees and I'm the only one working at 2 a.m.'"

Cole said the company had gotten too big.

"Working that much was just eating me alive," he said. "I truly wasn't sleeping. It didn't overwhelm me. It overworked me. It was going to kill me."

The next morning, he started selling the stores outside of Cape Girardeau. The "gold mines" were easy to unload and within six months, he was back to owning only the Cape Girardeau store. But Cole immediately saw an improvement in his life.

"I didn't handle as much money," Cole said. "But what I did handle was a lot more comfortable."

A few years later, Cole moved Copi-Rite to its current location on Independence.

Loyal employees

Cole credits the company's success to its fiercely loyal employees, especially Brad Welker, a service technician who started working at Copi-Rite in 1971. Welker has since become vice president of operations.

Closing all but one location also didn't stop the company from growing its local customer base. Today, some of its larger customers are Drury Industries, Gilster-Mary Lee, Pemiscot County Hospital and Belgrade State Bank in St. Francois County. They also recently moved into the St. Louis market. They now serve a 150-mile radius.

Talk the last few years has turned to who would take over the company.

"It was me," he said. "I didn't want to run it, but I didn't want to shut it down."

In 1999, Cole's son -- a St. Louis lawyer -- put him in touch with a copy machine salesman who lived up there who was looking to run a dealership in a small town. The man's name was Jeff Roosman, who was working at Data Max. A meeting was arranged at a Cardinals game in St. Louis.

The actual interview took less than five minutes.

"I liked his energy, his excitement," Cole said. "He obviously had success in the highly-competitive St. Louis marketplace, plus he's a Farmington boy, so I knew he understands smaller markets."

Besides, Cole said, by this time Cole had recognized his limitations. "Such as staying awake," he joked. "But I feel like the company will be in good hands. He'll bring a long-term commitment to the company, which is something I wanted."

Now Roosman, who has been hired as sales manager, says he has been offered a unique opportunity to work with Cole before taking over the company, which he expects to do in about a year.

"It didn't take long to know he'd done something right," Roosman said. "What a great company he's built. I'm just glad I'm getting the opportunity to learn from him."

Cole said he's not going anywhere, even after the transition is complete.

"I guess I'll be around here as long as I can breathe," he said. "'Cause I'd be real hard to copy."

smoyers@semissourian.com

335-6611, extension 137