What was Kinko's before FedEx bought it?
Paul Orfalea opened the first Kinko's in 1970 in Isla Vista, California, a few steps from the University of California, Santa Barbara. He had a $5,000 bank loan his family cosigned, a rented Xerox copier, and a small space next to a hamburger stand to put it in.
Copies cost four cents a page. When the room filled up, he wheeled the copier out onto the sidewalk and worked from there.
The name came from his hair. Friends called Orfalea "Kinko" because of his curls, and that is what went on the sign.
What grew out of that shop was strange for a national chain. Into the 1990s Kinko's was not one company but a federation of separate partnerships, each with its own owners and its own way of running a store. The New York private equity firm Clayton, Dubilier & Rice bought into the business in a restructuring at the end of 1996, and the partnerships were rolled into a single corporation with central management.
That tidying up is what made Kinko's sellable. The head office left the California coast for Dallas in 2002, and by the time FedEx came calling, Clayton, Dubilier & Rice controlled the chain and ran it from Texas.
Why did FedEx pay $2.4 billion for a copy chain?
FedEx announced the purchase on December 30, 2003: $2.4 billion in cash for about 1,200 Kinko's locations worldwide, a business whose own estimate of annual revenue for the year ending December 31, 2003 was about $2 billion.
The number that mattered was smaller. More than 400 of those 1,200 stores were open 24 hours a day, seven days a week. FedEx had drop boxes and a fleet. It did not have 400 staffed rooms with the lights on at 2 a.m., and it could not build them quickly.
Retail shelf space was also the one thing FedEx's rival already had. United Parcel Service had converted a franchise chain into The UPS Store, which put a staffed counter in strip malls across the country. Kinko's was the equivalent answer, and it was for sale.
"The FedEx and Kinko's combination will substantially increase our retail presence worldwide," Frederick W. Smith, then chairman, president and chief executive officer of FedEx, said in the December 30, 2003 announcement. More than 110 of the stores were in international markets where FedEx had little or no retail presence.
The sale closed in February 2004, and the chain went in as an operating company of its own inside FedEx rather than as a bolt-on to the delivery business.
When did the Kinko's name come off the stores?
In stages, and then all at once. For the first four years FedEx put its own name first and kept the old one in second place, so the stores traded as FedEx Kinko's.
On June 2, 2008, FedEx announced that FedEx Kinko's would become FedEx Office and that the retail locations would be rebranded over the following several years. The same announcement carried the bill: a charge of about $891 million in the fiscal fourth quarter that ended May 31, 2008, made up of $515 million against the Kinko's trade name, $367 million against the goodwill from the acquisition, and $9 million in other items.
Brian D. Philips, who had been named president and chief executive officer of FedEx Office the month before, gave the reasoning in the release: "Kinko's was primarily a copy and print-service provider when it was acquired in 2004." The new name, he said, "more accurately represents our broader role of providing superior information and services through our company-owned, digitally connected locations around the world."
FedEx tied the goodwill write-down to weaker results and a decision to slow expansion, cutting planned openings from about 300 locations in fiscal 2008 to 70 in fiscal 2009. Put the two announcements side by side and the arithmetic is blunt. FedEx paid $2.4 billion in 2004 for a business whose best-known asset was a word, and in 2008 it wrote down close to a billion dollars in part for the right to stop saying it.
Who owns Kinko's today?
In the United States, nobody uses the name. The rebranding that began in 2008 took it off American storefronts, and FedEx Office is what stands there instead. FedEx's fiscal 2026 annual report puts the size of it plainly: "As of May 31, 2026, FedEx Office, which is based in Plano, Texas, operated approximately 2,000 customer-facing stores and had approximately 12,000 employees." FedEx's own company page lists more than 2,050 locations, so the count sits either side of 2,000 depending on what gets counted as a store.
The name survived somewhere else. Kinko's had a Japanese arm, and in May 2012 Konica Minolta announced an agreement to buy all of FedEx Kinko's Japan, which it called the largest business convenience store provider in Japan, with "49 stores which include 6 print production centers in metropolitan areas." A FedEx spokesman put the network at 61 printing centers in comments to Transport Topics at the time. The business became Kinko's Japan Co., Ltd. in June 2012 and kept the Kinko's name on its doors and its online services.
So the answer comes in two parts. The company that was Kinko's is FedEx Office, owned by FedEx and no longer using the word. The only business still trading as Kinko's is Kinko's Japan, owned by Konica Minolta.
That is an unusual exit for a retail name. When Woolworth disappeared from American main streets, the company survived by leaning on a different brand it already owned. Kinko's went the other way: the buyer kept every store and threw away the word on the sign.
What replaced the all-night copy shop?
Kinko's did not lose to a competitor. It lost to the job going away.
In 1995, a 40-page proposal that had to be in a client's hands in another city on Tuesday meant a physical original, a copier and a counter. Three things removed all of that. Email attachments and the PDF made duplication unnecessary. Cheap home laser and inkjet printers put a machine on every desk. And when a file was too fat to email, people carried it, which is how the era's other dead technologies got involved: Zip disks and blank CD-Rs did the courier work for a few years before broadband made even that pointless.
The round-the-clock hours went with it. Most Kinko's stores were open 24 hours before the sale, and FedEx cut hours at many locations afterward. What is left at the counter is the errand FedEx wanted in the first place: FedEx Office still prints signs, banners and business documents, but the queue is mostly people handing over boxes and printing shipping labels.
It is the same slow squeeze that emptied out RadioShack: a store built around a task the internet quietly took over, still standing after the reason for the visit was gone.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is Kinko's still around in 2026?
Not in the United States. Kinko's, founded in 1970 in Isla Vista, California, was bought by FedEx in a $2.4 billion deal announced on December 30, 2003, and FedEx announced on June 2, 2008 that the stores would be renamed FedEx Office. The only business still trading under the Kinko's name in 2026 is Kinko's Japan, which Konica Minolta agreed to buy from FedEx in May 2012.
Who owns Kinko's now?
Two companies own the pieces. FedEx owns the former Kinko's chain, which trades as FedEx Office and ran about 2,000 customer-facing stores in the United States as of May 31, 2026 from a headquarters in Plano, Texas. Konica Minolta owns Kinko's Japan, the only business still using the Kinko's name, after buying it from FedEx in 2012.
Did Kinko's become FedEx Office?
Yes. The Kinko's chain FedEx acquired in February 2004 traded as FedEx Kinko's until June 2, 2008, when FedEx announced it was renaming the business FedEx Office and taking a charge of about $891 million, most of it a non-cash write-down of the Kinko's trade name and the goodwill from the purchase. The rebranding of the stores ran over the next several years.