Adobe Brings Kinko's To The Desktop

Adobe and FedExKinko’s have col­lab­o­rat­ed to save a step for users of the most recent Acrobat and Reader whose work­flow includes their local FedExKinko’s shop.

As of the update 8.1 to Acrobat and Reader, users will find a new item in the File drop­down: “Send File To FedExKinko’s”, as well as a but­ton on the tool­bar. This con­nects Adobe’s apps via the Internet to FedExKinko’s new online print­ing ser­vice, which will allow any­one in the US with net con­nec­tiv­i­ty to send up their files for print­ing at any US FedExKinko’s print center. 

This ser­vice promis­es many flex­i­ble capa­bil­i­ties, as the press release touts:

With the appli­ca­tion, cus­tomers may con­ve­nient­ly upload and com­bine mul­ti­ple files, cus­tomize jobs with tabs and inserts, pre­view orders, track job sta­tus, choose to ship their orders or pick up at a local cen­ter, and pay online.

A vari­ety of deliv­ery options are avail­able, includ­ing FedEx Express and FedEx Ground ser­vices. Registered users are able to store con­tact and billing infor­ma­tion, reprint pre­vi­ous orders, review order his­to­ry, receive dis­counts and spe­cial offers, and set up pref­er­ences for a favorite cen­ter loca­tion and default recip­i­ent information.

Regardless of one’s indi­vid­ual needs, it’s hard to debate that this offers inter­est­ing new pos­si­blil­ties for print­ing on demand.

7 thoughts on “Adobe Brings Kinko's To The Desktop”

  1. hunter

    Wonder how much Kinko’s had to pay for that priv­i­lege? Really smart mar­ket­ing on their part. Maybe they even sold Adobe on the idea as being such a huge ben­e­fit for Acrobat users that they wound up pay­ing noth­ing. If so, pure genius.

    We stopped using them a few years ago though due to hav­ing to tight­ly baby-sit jobs because of one screwup after anoth­er. Each new account rep that came out here would express dis­may and say we should give them anoth­er shot. It’s been a while but I believe we tried dif­fer­ent loca­tions. I final­ly got tired of it.

  2. Mark Kenny

    I’ve tried Kinkos and they don’t know ICC colour pro­files from wrap­ping paper! And being in the Netherlands, I’m not sure I’d even give it a try.

  3. Dan

    A lot of print shops are up in arms over Adobe’s alliance with FedEx/Kinkos. A lot of com­pa­nies are threat­en­ing boy­cotts of Adobe until this rela­tion­ship is ter­mi­nat­ed. I don’t real­ly blame them. Would you want what is essen­tial­ly an ad for your com­pe­ti­tion in front of your cus­tomers’ faces every time they log on to the soft­ware they use to send you files?

    Another arti­cle on the sub­ject and numer­ous angry com­ments from indus­try pro­fes­sion­als can be found here.

    http://​print​ceoblog​.com/​2​0​0​7​/​0​6​/​a​d​o​b​e​-​f​e​d​e​x​-​k​i​n​k​o​-deal/

  4. Jan Eskildsen

    “We under­stand the need to make the work­flow process as effi­cient as pos­si­ble, but Adobe’s deci­sion to give up its neu­tral­i­ty and try to align its busi­ness with one print­er is unacceptable.”
    Adobe’s actions effec­tive­ly place FedEx Kinko as the default com­mer­cial print­er for all jobs dis­tilled to by Acrobat to PDF, rad­i­cal­ly alter­ing its tra­di­tion­al­ly neu­tral stance on print pro­duc­tion. The new ver­sion of Acrobat and Acrobat Reader with the FedEx link will be released in Australia, if Adobe does not rescind its agree­ment with FedEx Kinko. Although there are cur­rent­ly only 11 FedEx Kinkos stores in Australia; sev­en in Sydney and four in Melbourne, the move by Adobe has seen Printing Industries respond strong­ly on behalf of the feel­ings of its mem­bers, with CEO Philip Andersen fir­ing off a let­ter to Bruce Chizen, Adobe‘s CEO in the US.Andersen said he was sur­prised and dis­ap­point­ed with Adobe’s align­ment with one inter­na­tion­al print provider at the expense of tens of thou­sands of print com­pa­nies glob­al­ly who, togeth­er with their cus­tomers, use Acrobat as a defac­to indus­try stan­dard. He said, “Adobe’s announce­ment seems to focus more on new pro­duc­tion flow capa­bil­i­ty of its soft­ware with­out recog­nis­ing the neg­a­tive impact such a nar­row col­lab­o­ra­tion could have on its inter­na­tion­al print­ing indus­try cus­tomer base who use Adobe prod­ucts and are com­peti­tors to FedEx Kinko’s either in the USA or elsewhere.

    = Quote from Australian Printer. I think it’s strange there’s no more let­ters about this here.

  5. Ian

    Whilst I can under­stand some of the anger and dis­may towards Adobe here and elswhere, the send to Kinko’s but­ton is not installed by default dur­ing the Acrobat 8.1 update. It’s easy to turn on or off, at least on my PC.

    One issue. And a mighty one it is too. I tried as an exper­i­ment to send an A4 sized file I’m work­ing on. As I’m in Gt. Britain, the com­mon sizes are A6, A5, A4, A3, and so on.

    The send to Kinko ser­vice sup­ports Letter, Legal and Tabloid ONLY! No good if you work in met­ric! As a result, I can­not see this catch­ing on here or any­where else in Europe.

  6. Mjenius

    There’s no way I’m print­ing with Kinko’s. That but­ton is dead to me.

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