Early in his career as an owner of an office technology dealership, Jeff Cousins wanted to create and solidify his reputation among clients. By doing so, he hoped to parlay it into a positive reputation that would enable his company, Kraft Business Systems, to be viewed as a vendor of substance and a key player in the Western Michigan market.
What better way to kick start the initiative, Cousins thought, than to ask his first major account if he could use them as a reference? The client agreed and reached out to a prospect Kraft was trying to engage. Cousins circled back and asked the rep with his cornerstone account if he wouldn’t mind telling him what he said to the prospect. Imagine how crestfallen Cousins was when the client replied, “I told them you’re no different than anyone else.”
When Cousins replied that it wasn’t the type of referral he had in mind, the client quickly interjected, “Let me finish. I added ‘but they will always do the right thing.’”
The pride of Caledonia, Michigan, Kraft Business Systems has forged a reputation of a business driven by values and integrity. It’s not a perfect dealership. But five years of adhering to the Entrepreneurial Operating System (EOS) keeps the collective searching for their better selves, all the while espousing the value of a relentless commitment to the client experience. And the CEO and founder of Kraft has abided by the “do the right thing” motto for 30-plus years now.
The family-owned business has enjoyed a shoulder-to-shoulder buy-in of the philosophy. Cousins’ son, Brandon, has witnessed how it resonates throughout their organization.
“One thing that sets us apart is we’re willing to take chances, and we’ll always do the right thing in the client’s interest,” Brandon Cousins, the company president, observed. “We’re not opposed to sitting down with a client and being creative, and we take accountability if something doesn’t go right. Doing the right thing says a lot about the character of our employees and the foundation that our business was built on. Ever since I was a kid, dad has vowed to be a company of value. They’ve been the founding principles from day one.
“We’ll do anything for the client. More often than not, that’s not the case elsewhere.”
Michigan Roots
Located about a half-hour southeast of Grand Rapids, Kraft is a 60-member operation that primarily carries the Konica Minolta, Lexmark and Xerox lines. Founded in 1994, the company has blended organic and acquisition-fueled growth in the metro Detroit market to ascend to the $15–$20 annual revenue plateau. It’s also established a foothold in Traverse City, Grand Rapids and Lansing.
president of Kraft Business Systems
Managed IT (including phones and remote help desk) has continued to flourish at an impressive 60% growth clip for Kraft, with cybersecurity (BDR, vCIO, cyber incident response, etc.) continuing to command an increasingly larger share of the business. Copiers and printers remain a bread-and-butter offering, but wide-format and mailing equipment account for an increasing percentage as well. Health care is a significant customer segment for Kraft, representing about 60% of IT clients, with manufacturing, education and government also among its top customer verticals.
Jeff Cousins began his office tech career with a now-defunct dealer in suburban Detroit, where he worked for seven years. While he was a salesman by trade, ownership encouraged him to be engaged in nearly every facet of the business—a fantastic opportunity for a young team member not related to ownership. Cousins learned the nuances of vendor partners and insights into the financing realm. When the owner of a struggling supplies business in Grand Rapids sought an exit, Cousins saw the opportunity to hang his own shingle.
One of the most important lessons Cousins learned as an independent owner was the value of saying ‘yes.’ While opportunities sometimes took him out of a comfort zone, he finds it difficult to cite an example where he rolled the dice and the gamble didn’t pay off.
“We had the opportunity to land a 3,500-machine order for a health client located on the other side of the state, where we didn’t have any infrastructure or people.” Cousins recalled. “It would be a two-and-a-half hour drive to fix any problems. But I said yes, and it paid dividends. We had a lot of growing pains and frustration during that first year, but it wasn’t long before we began to understand what it takes to grow and scale a company.”
Securing a Target
Both 2024 and the front half of 2025 have been profitable as Kraft continues to enjoy success in non-copier segments. Cousins concedes he may have misread how great a hit the copier business would take coming out of the pandemic, leading to a bit of overconfidence. Still, even as clients dialed back on their box counts, Kraft is poised to register another record year for growth.
“We’ve had to take some unique approaches to sustain our growth,” he said. “We continue to invest in the AI and software sides. We’ve doubled down on what our hedgehog is, what we can be really good at. We identified the SMB base as the underserved part of the market, companies with between 10 and 150 employees. We’re providing the IT services they desperately need, particularly with cybersecurity and the risks involved with using AI.”
Kraft is also shining light on the fantastic possibilities AI can offer clients that are light on resources. Accounts payable is a great example; a job that once required a dedicated team member working a full day has been whittled down to one hour, enabling that person to address other areas of the operation. At the SMB level, where employees are already taxed with duties, it’s nothing short of revolutionary.
With all the great things AI has revealed, particularly in the past year, Cousins is quite concerned about the potential for “nefarious” uses. Kraft’s marketing department put together an AI-addled video clip that appears to show Cousins making a presentation at an event, only he never attended it or delivered a speech. Naturally, marketing’s intention was to illustrate what’s possible with AI. But he’s worried that individuals with deceptive intentions could do the same thing, only inserting Cousins in a situation and/or making remarks that could be devastating to him personally or as a business owner.
Cousins prefers to consider the more productive applications, such as the aforementioned AP boost and other menial and tedious tasks that have long begged for automation to free human assets up for more meaningful work. Kraft is not only showing SMB clients the myriad ways to bolster productivity, it’s using it in-house with invoicing. The heavy lifting is done, leaving the team member to check for errors in a fraction of the time previously required.
“Elon Musk said that we have to automate the office like we automated manufacturing and warehousing,” Cousins noted. “It’s necessary in order to compete today. Remember, if you don’t, your competitors will. And that’s a fact.”
Cybersecurity continues to touch every business segment and size, so Kraft recently hosted a panel about it during the week-long Tech Week Grand Rapids event. Sitting next to Cousins was a cyber insurance expert who outlined the pitfalls of MSP relationships, liability and the unsettling number of businesses that aren’t fully aware of their coverage levels. And that’s for clients with coverage; Cousins notes that nearly 50% of clients don’t recognize the need for some level of cyber insurance.
“The sad thing is, if you have a rider that’s just an add-on to your normal business insurance, it’s not enough,” he said. “It’s important to have stand-alone policies. Fortunately, more and more people are understanding the importance of having it.”
M&A Benefits
With the exception of a small office in the South Carolina market, Kraft’s businesses are all in Michigan. Cousins points out the goal is to continue developing and building around the current holdings, picking up more net-new SMB clients and successfully cross-selling the full range of the Kraft catalog. As to M&A’s role in the growth strategy, he feels the best path is to organically grow the managed IT arm and seek out acquisitions on the imaging end.
“We’ve been able to help a number of Michigan dealers who were looking to transition into their next stage in life, and in most cases that’s retirement,” he remarked. “We’d spend time building relationships with owners, getting to know them personally. That way, when the time was right for them to sell, they’d already be comfortable with us.”
The M&A targets are primarily in the sub-$3 million range, companies that don’t typically staff a large sales force. More often than not, they’re owner/operators with lifestyle businesses who have a 12–24 month exit plan to facilitate a smooth client integration. And while the client base is growing, the main thrust is to not compromise Kraft’s No. 1 value proposition, which is top-flight service. The dealer has a 97.2% customer retention rate for each of the past five years, so a challenge that accompanies M&A and organic growth is having sufficient personnel capital to continue delivering on that pledge.
Brandon Cousins points out that the new team members the company has secured, particularly in the administrative and service divisions, have been indispensable. “They’ve taught us unique ways to do things and identify issues so they can be addressed quickly,” he said. “As we’ve built our team, we’ve noticed that sometimes the best thing you can do is let great people do their job and stay out of their way. Our people are passionate about what they do and are strategic about their approach to the job.”
Kraft, which recently completed two deals within Michigan (Lasercomp of Dearborn in July 2024 and Print DDS of Milford in July of this year), views M&A as a strategic growth vehicle. The Cousins wouldn’t rule out additions in the near future. One of the many perks a deal can provide is the opportunity to onboard a new offering, particularly if the acquired business has a subject matter expert who can shorten the time to market for the entire Kraft organization. Both postal equipment and wide-format were ancillary products obtained through acquisitions. Wide-format has turned into a million-dollar category for Kraft. Cousins feels the complexity of the offering was underestimated, but the specialist who came over in the deal has helped flatten the learning curve.
Wide-format is an interesting study in customer markets. While Cousins anticipated most of the business coming from the more traditional sectors such as engineering and construction firms, there have been some pleasant surprises. Not only are art schools, universities and health systems prime segments, individual artists acquire them in order to output their works for immediate availability on the market.
Still, while Cousins is heartened to have viable product segments beyond the MFP base, he wonders if dealers should keep diversification in check. “The problem we have as an industry is how many shiny, new things can we latch on to and become really good at,” he said. “We’ve kind of created a little niche in Michigan and get a lot of business from the art industry, so that’s nice.”
Trust the Process
The EOS implementation has been “life-altering” for Kraft. According to Brandon Cousins, it’s facilitated better communication between father and son, and its enabled leadership to prioritize more effectively. It’s yielded a more open exchange of ideas and frank conversations—even difficult topics—and shown an effective path to resolving conflicts.
“We took EOS on at a point in our development that made it incredibly impactful,” he said. “As we’ve continued to grow, it’s made it easier on us. When we add new employees, they have a sit-down with me—we call it Boot Camp with Brandon—and they learn all about EOS, what it means to our company, why we follow it and the processes behind it.
“That’s also when they get their first look at our accountability chart, which is different from an organizational chart. It’s not necessarily broken down by department; it’s where you—as a team member—are positioned in the company. When they see how it’s laid out, you can see their eyes light up. It clicks in their brains. Those are the folks who you know are going to be with you for a long time.”
Jeff Cousins isn’t in for the long haul; the stage is set for Brandon (operations) and CRO Pat Morrissey (sales/revenue) to spearhead the next generation of leadership. The founder is focusing his efforts on continued M&A, which he sees as the fun aspect of business. Change is in the air at Kraft, and the Cousins find it highly rewarding.
“We need to continue to evolve if we’re going to be around in 25 years,” Jeff Cousins noted. “Brandon and Pat will be getting more involved over the next two years. I’ll concentrate on the deals and work with the owners of those companies to make it happen. Brandon, Pat and the rest of the team will do all the heavy lifting. We’re excited about 2026 and what the future holds.”
