Drizzt
Member
Yes, the gun connection is just a brief blurb towards the end of the story, but I still thought it was neat...
Monk e-business
BY JULIO OJEDA-ZAPATA
Pioneer Press
SPARTA, Wis. — Phone calls to LaserMonks' rural headquarters are sometimes tinged with caution or outright suspicion.
Those are awfully good prices for generic inkjet or laser-printer cartridges, a caller might remark after checking the offerings at www.lasermonks.com.
What's the catch?
And, c'mon, you aren't really monks, are you?
A recent caller lost seven years of savings to an online scam artist after trying to book a cruise for herself and her daughters. She vowed never to buy anything else on the Internet.
But with three printers churning out student papers in her Pennsylvania home, she couldn't ignore discounts of up to 90 percent over name-brand cartridges. Look, she told LaserMonks, she had trust issues. She needed the firm to set her mind at ease.
LaserMonks' response helps explain why the two-year-old e-commerce venture based at the Cistercian Abbey of Our Lady of Spring Bank — yes, with actual Catholic monks — appears to be on a stratospheric business trajectory.
At a time when online printer-cartridge vendors can trigger mistrust because of some questionable offers clogging inboxes, LaserMonks has seen its gross revenue soar from about $2,000 in 2002 to about $500,000 in 2003. Projected 2004 sales are three to four times higher still.
To pull off this e-tailing feat, LaserMonks has had to win over disbelievers with high-quality products and top-flight customer service along with rock-bottom prices, not to mention small but meaningful gestures its clients don't expect.
The skeptical Pennsylvania mother, for instance, got four cartridges on speculation. Try 'em out, LaserMonks said. If you like them, consider sending us a few bucks. No hurry, take a few months to think it over.
The company soon got paid in full for the shipment, along with a second order for four cartridges.
ORA ET LABORA
The 75-year-old abbey, which has been at its current location about 130 miles southeast of St. Paul for 19 years, isn't the sort of place that screams "e-commerce hotbed."
Perched on a wooded hill, just up an unpaved road and through a decorative gateway, the low-slung composite-stone structure seems bereft of life — until Gregorian chanting tips off a visitor that white-and-black-robed inhabitants are somewhere about.
Inside a small chapel, a few Cistercian priests melodiously remind themselves of the Latin dictum ora et labora — prayer and work, always in that order.
Only then does the 36-year-old Rev. Bernard McCoy trod through a carpeted hallway to his modest office — the LaserMonks nerve center. From there, he oversees a nationwide network of people and facilities in his practical role as the abbey's "steward of temporal affairs."
McCoy's key role: generating cash to support the abbey along with its complex array of charitable causes around the world. That also means overseeing a modest portfolio of real-estate holdings. One recent day, he haggled good-naturedly with the local tax assessor over one property's perceived value.
Before LaserMonks came about, McCoy obsessed over other ideas for turning his perennially cash-strapped monastery into a money machine. Until last year, he sold spiritual books and other religious items on the Web. For a while, he oversaw a program to move and renovate homes due for demolition. He has considered cultivating shiitake mushrooms, building a golf resort and breeding Christmas trees.
This is a common issue for monasteries, convents and other such communities, which typically must support themselves.
Trappistine nuns in Dubuque, Iowa, make candy. Nearby Trappist monks build caskets. Oregon Trappists warehouse wine. Massachusetts Trappists make jams and jellies. Belgian Trappists brew beer. Filipino monks and nuns make fruit concoctions dubbed Food for the Soul. Greek Orthodox monks in Resaca, Ga., sell hand-dipped beeswax candles and extra-virgin olive oil cold-pressed by their counterparts on the Greek island of Crete.
Those with a craving for fruitcake can get it from the Holy Cross Abbey in Berryville, Va.; the New Camaldoli Hermitage in Big Sur, Calif.; Assumption Abbey in the Missouri Ozarks; the Trappist, Ky., Abbey of Gethsemani, which soaks its spicy creations in fine Kentucky bourbon; and the Conyers, Ga., Monastery of the Holy Spirit, which also sells bonsai-cultivation supplies.
LASERMONKS' BIRTH
McCoy says he stumbled on the idea of selling imaging supplies when he tried buying laser-printer toner cartridges on the Internet and blanched at their high cost.
"The markup for black dust was just overwhelming," he said. Poking around on the Web, he realized "there were all kinds of possibilities" for selling inkjet and laser-printer cartridges along with copier supplies at dramatically lower prices.
So the monks came up with the snazzy "LaserMonks" moniker in a brainstorming session after discarding blander options along the lines of "Monastic Imaging Supplies."
McCoy and his main monk helper, Brother Matthew Ludick, dabbled in a bit of in-house manufacturing before realizing they couldn't keep up with demand nor guarantee top-flight work.
McCoy then negotiated with a number of contract manufacturers to outsource orders, which are shipped to customers from warehouses around the country (only a few are sent directly from the abbey).
LaserMonks achieves its bargain pricing partly through canny negotiations with the manufacturers, which sell cartridges to the monks below wholesale, but largely because of the artificially high retail prices for cartridges elsewhere.
"We have all kinds of room" for discounts without losing money, McCoy said.
In a stroke of good luck, McCoy also made the acquaintance of two Colorado entrepreneurs who wanted out of the imaging-supplies rat race and had put up their client roster for sale. Sarah Caniglia and Cindy Griffith were so taken with the monks that they sold the list for a pittance and even relocated temporarily to help LaserMonks.
Now, when someone calls the company's toll-free number, either Caniglia or Griffith picks up in their offices and living quarters on abbey grounds, which are a discreet distance from the main building where the monks pray, work, eat and sleep. The women call themselves "monk helper angels."
And so, almost by accident, McCoy fashioned a novel enterprise consisting of distinct but interlocking pieces: The nonprofit monastery, which owns LaserMonks; the two monk/employees at the for-profit firm, which is kept separate from the abbey for tax reasons; a Monk Helper Marketing subsidiary, owned and operated by the two women, for taking customer calls and managing the LaserMonks Web site; and the sprawling subcontractor network.
This is McCoy's dream setup, because it frees him for prayer eight times a day along with the painstaking business of lining up sales contracts with companies and nonprofit entities such as schools and hospitals.
McCoy said none of LaserMonks' income has been plowed back into the monastery so far, which is why the facility continues to cut back on heating fuel and other necessities.
Cash infusions should begin later this year, initially to cover everyday expenses, and eventually to help pay for the construction of a traditional monastic quadrangle. The existing building would be part of a square-shaped complex's sides, with a still hypothetical church as one of the other sides.
CHARITABLE WORKS
Beyond basic subsistence and dreams of abbey expansion, the Cistercian monks say they exist to help others.
The monastery's charitable projects have a random quality so far. The priests have sent cash to help create a new convent in Hungary, for computer training at a school for orphans and other poor people in the Vietnamese city of Hue, and to set up a sound system at a rural Catholic congregation in India.
Closer to home, beneficiaries have included local food shelves, poor students needing scholarships, a fire department that received a defibrillator and a hospital that got a weight bed.
LaserMonks' success will likely impel the priests to recast their charity work out of practical necessity. More money will mean more potential to help the needy, but also will mean more administrative work requiring a more formal foundation-like structure, McCoy said.
But McCoy's own life and the lives of his fellow monks should scarcely change. When the monks aren't praying or working, they amuse themselves by shooting skeet during the summer, working on a gigantic model-train layout in their basement over the winter, and playing with their dogs Luxor, an Egyptian Pharaoh hound, and Ludwig, a Doberman pinscher.
McCoy, a licensed pilot, periodically heads aloft in a 1954 Piper Tri-Pacer recently donated to the abbey and maintained by private donations. He took the plane up for four hours on the recent 100th anniversary of the first Kitty Hawk flight, and he will use it for travel to business meetings as LaserMonks continues to grow.
McCoy, like his brethren, is allowed no possessions other than a few mementos with deep meaning. Among them: a scale model of the first Wright brothers flier; a tiny chip from the skeleton of his patron, St. Bernard; and an Australian tea towel inscribed with the ora et labora motto, just to remind him of his priorities.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
http://www.twincities.com/mld/twincities/business/technology/7673890.htm
Monk e-business
BY JULIO OJEDA-ZAPATA
Pioneer Press
SPARTA, Wis. — Phone calls to LaserMonks' rural headquarters are sometimes tinged with caution or outright suspicion.
Those are awfully good prices for generic inkjet or laser-printer cartridges, a caller might remark after checking the offerings at www.lasermonks.com.
What's the catch?
And, c'mon, you aren't really monks, are you?
A recent caller lost seven years of savings to an online scam artist after trying to book a cruise for herself and her daughters. She vowed never to buy anything else on the Internet.
But with three printers churning out student papers in her Pennsylvania home, she couldn't ignore discounts of up to 90 percent over name-brand cartridges. Look, she told LaserMonks, she had trust issues. She needed the firm to set her mind at ease.
LaserMonks' response helps explain why the two-year-old e-commerce venture based at the Cistercian Abbey of Our Lady of Spring Bank — yes, with actual Catholic monks — appears to be on a stratospheric business trajectory.
At a time when online printer-cartridge vendors can trigger mistrust because of some questionable offers clogging inboxes, LaserMonks has seen its gross revenue soar from about $2,000 in 2002 to about $500,000 in 2003. Projected 2004 sales are three to four times higher still.
To pull off this e-tailing feat, LaserMonks has had to win over disbelievers with high-quality products and top-flight customer service along with rock-bottom prices, not to mention small but meaningful gestures its clients don't expect.
The skeptical Pennsylvania mother, for instance, got four cartridges on speculation. Try 'em out, LaserMonks said. If you like them, consider sending us a few bucks. No hurry, take a few months to think it over.
The company soon got paid in full for the shipment, along with a second order for four cartridges.
ORA ET LABORA
The 75-year-old abbey, which has been at its current location about 130 miles southeast of St. Paul for 19 years, isn't the sort of place that screams "e-commerce hotbed."
Perched on a wooded hill, just up an unpaved road and through a decorative gateway, the low-slung composite-stone structure seems bereft of life — until Gregorian chanting tips off a visitor that white-and-black-robed inhabitants are somewhere about.
Inside a small chapel, a few Cistercian priests melodiously remind themselves of the Latin dictum ora et labora — prayer and work, always in that order.
Only then does the 36-year-old Rev. Bernard McCoy trod through a carpeted hallway to his modest office — the LaserMonks nerve center. From there, he oversees a nationwide network of people and facilities in his practical role as the abbey's "steward of temporal affairs."
McCoy's key role: generating cash to support the abbey along with its complex array of charitable causes around the world. That also means overseeing a modest portfolio of real-estate holdings. One recent day, he haggled good-naturedly with the local tax assessor over one property's perceived value.
Before LaserMonks came about, McCoy obsessed over other ideas for turning his perennially cash-strapped monastery into a money machine. Until last year, he sold spiritual books and other religious items on the Web. For a while, he oversaw a program to move and renovate homes due for demolition. He has considered cultivating shiitake mushrooms, building a golf resort and breeding Christmas trees.
This is a common issue for monasteries, convents and other such communities, which typically must support themselves.
Trappistine nuns in Dubuque, Iowa, make candy. Nearby Trappist monks build caskets. Oregon Trappists warehouse wine. Massachusetts Trappists make jams and jellies. Belgian Trappists brew beer. Filipino monks and nuns make fruit concoctions dubbed Food for the Soul. Greek Orthodox monks in Resaca, Ga., sell hand-dipped beeswax candles and extra-virgin olive oil cold-pressed by their counterparts on the Greek island of Crete.
Those with a craving for fruitcake can get it from the Holy Cross Abbey in Berryville, Va.; the New Camaldoli Hermitage in Big Sur, Calif.; Assumption Abbey in the Missouri Ozarks; the Trappist, Ky., Abbey of Gethsemani, which soaks its spicy creations in fine Kentucky bourbon; and the Conyers, Ga., Monastery of the Holy Spirit, which also sells bonsai-cultivation supplies.
LASERMONKS' BIRTH
McCoy says he stumbled on the idea of selling imaging supplies when he tried buying laser-printer toner cartridges on the Internet and blanched at their high cost.
"The markup for black dust was just overwhelming," he said. Poking around on the Web, he realized "there were all kinds of possibilities" for selling inkjet and laser-printer cartridges along with copier supplies at dramatically lower prices.
So the monks came up with the snazzy "LaserMonks" moniker in a brainstorming session after discarding blander options along the lines of "Monastic Imaging Supplies."
McCoy and his main monk helper, Brother Matthew Ludick, dabbled in a bit of in-house manufacturing before realizing they couldn't keep up with demand nor guarantee top-flight work.
McCoy then negotiated with a number of contract manufacturers to outsource orders, which are shipped to customers from warehouses around the country (only a few are sent directly from the abbey).
LaserMonks achieves its bargain pricing partly through canny negotiations with the manufacturers, which sell cartridges to the monks below wholesale, but largely because of the artificially high retail prices for cartridges elsewhere.
"We have all kinds of room" for discounts without losing money, McCoy said.
In a stroke of good luck, McCoy also made the acquaintance of two Colorado entrepreneurs who wanted out of the imaging-supplies rat race and had put up their client roster for sale. Sarah Caniglia and Cindy Griffith were so taken with the monks that they sold the list for a pittance and even relocated temporarily to help LaserMonks.
Now, when someone calls the company's toll-free number, either Caniglia or Griffith picks up in their offices and living quarters on abbey grounds, which are a discreet distance from the main building where the monks pray, work, eat and sleep. The women call themselves "monk helper angels."
And so, almost by accident, McCoy fashioned a novel enterprise consisting of distinct but interlocking pieces: The nonprofit monastery, which owns LaserMonks; the two monk/employees at the for-profit firm, which is kept separate from the abbey for tax reasons; a Monk Helper Marketing subsidiary, owned and operated by the two women, for taking customer calls and managing the LaserMonks Web site; and the sprawling subcontractor network.
This is McCoy's dream setup, because it frees him for prayer eight times a day along with the painstaking business of lining up sales contracts with companies and nonprofit entities such as schools and hospitals.
McCoy said none of LaserMonks' income has been plowed back into the monastery so far, which is why the facility continues to cut back on heating fuel and other necessities.
Cash infusions should begin later this year, initially to cover everyday expenses, and eventually to help pay for the construction of a traditional monastic quadrangle. The existing building would be part of a square-shaped complex's sides, with a still hypothetical church as one of the other sides.
CHARITABLE WORKS
Beyond basic subsistence and dreams of abbey expansion, the Cistercian monks say they exist to help others.
The monastery's charitable projects have a random quality so far. The priests have sent cash to help create a new convent in Hungary, for computer training at a school for orphans and other poor people in the Vietnamese city of Hue, and to set up a sound system at a rural Catholic congregation in India.
Closer to home, beneficiaries have included local food shelves, poor students needing scholarships, a fire department that received a defibrillator and a hospital that got a weight bed.
LaserMonks' success will likely impel the priests to recast their charity work out of practical necessity. More money will mean more potential to help the needy, but also will mean more administrative work requiring a more formal foundation-like structure, McCoy said.
But McCoy's own life and the lives of his fellow monks should scarcely change. When the monks aren't praying or working, they amuse themselves by shooting skeet during the summer, working on a gigantic model-train layout in their basement over the winter, and playing with their dogs Luxor, an Egyptian Pharaoh hound, and Ludwig, a Doberman pinscher.
McCoy, a licensed pilot, periodically heads aloft in a 1954 Piper Tri-Pacer recently donated to the abbey and maintained by private donations. He took the plane up for four hours on the recent 100th anniversary of the first Kitty Hawk flight, and he will use it for travel to business meetings as LaserMonks continues to grow.
McCoy, like his brethren, is allowed no possessions other than a few mementos with deep meaning. Among them: a scale model of the first Wright brothers flier; a tiny chip from the skeleton of his patron, St. Bernard; and an Australian tea towel inscribed with the ora et labora motto, just to remind him of his priorities.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
http://www.twincities.com/mld/twincities/business/technology/7673890.htm
