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<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\nAt $50 million in revenue, DOCUmation is the largest privately owned dealership in the state of Texas, which boasts more than its share of high-powered performers. Truth be known, however, the company\u2014founded by Lou Scantland in 1990\u2014teetered on the brink of collapse in 2017. This left the Woolfolk brothers (Hunter was 30, Preston 29) unwittingly in charge of the fortunes of 112 or so employees and the business of clients who had been with the organization for decades.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It was a confluence of events that left DOCUmation in peril. Scantland and his partner split the company, with the partner selling his interests to a private equity firm. Around the same time, the 79-year-old Scantland suffered a fall that caused a brain injury, and he was in a coma for several months. Many of the managers at DOCUmation left to join the other company or retired\u2014the latter was the case with then-president Scott Woolfolk\u2014creating a leadership void. At that point, Preston led the company\u2019s managed IT division and Hunter was in charge of sales, but they quickly decided to share duties as co-presidents in an effort to keep DOCUmation afloat.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWe walked into the office one day, and everything had changed,\u201d Hunter Woolfolk said. \u201cWe were thinking about our next jobs and what we were going to do.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWe had about 112 employees, and we thought about their families, kids, livelihoods\u2026you either sink or swim,\u201d Preston Woolfolk added. \u201cWe thought about how to take care of these people, keep the business going and provide for them. We had to figure it out.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Scantland returned to the office, fully recovered, about seven months later. It was then that he realized his grandsons knew how to swim.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWe\u2019re very purpose-driven,\u201d Hunter noted. \u201cWe feel blessed to have had these opportunities at such a young age. We carry a strong burden of being purpose-driven, to bless these families and our communities. We\u2019ve been able to grow together. It creates a culture that\u2019s mission-focused, and there\u2019s a bigger picture than just doing our jobs and getting paid.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Deep Roots<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Scantland\u2019s industry journey dates back to 1950s Detroit, when he and a partner opened one of the nation\u2019s first copier dealerships with a cost-per-copy model. He later moved to Arizona and started a new company, Unicopy, that was later sold to IKON Office Solutions. Scantland then pivoted to open a new dealership in 1990, which was rechristened DOCUmation in 1997.<\/p>\n\n\n\n DOCUmation has thrived in the state\u2019s top markets\u2014San Antonio, Austin, Dallas\/Fort Worth, Houston and West Texas\u2014maintaining much of the Unicopy clientele. The state and its population of about 30 million is the sole business focus of the dealer, which carries the Ricoh, Kyocera, Konica Minolta, Lexmark and Canon lines. But it isn\u2019t MFPs alone driving the dealer\u2019s plans to open new branches in the near term; it provides a litany of products and services, from managed print and IT to production print\/wide-format, facilities management, process automation, unified communications, document management and various other software solutions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n With other technology solutions on tap to join the roster of 13 non-MFP categories, a primary challenge will be withstanding the demands that accompany prolific growth. \u201cThat 30% growth represented the biggest in company history,\u201d Hunter noted. \u201cAdministratively and operationally, we\u2019re making sure we can keep up with this growth internally to support the entirety of the company.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Prior to the pandemic, typical year-over-year growth ranged from 12% to 15%. In all, DOCUmation has grown 37% over its pre-pandemic performance. The reason behind the 2022 outlier was the damage COVID had inflicted on DOCUmation\u2019s competitors. Layoffs and furloughs hit other dealers\u2019 customer and technical service realms particularly hard, according to Preston. Dissatisfied end-users turned to DOCUmation as a result.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWe didn\u2019t make any cuts; the goal during COVID was to maintain full service quality to our customers,\u201d he said. \u201cWhen 2021 and 2022 rolled around, all that disruption within our competitors cost them their business; their knowledge and product quality control started impacting their client relationships pretty significantly. It\u2019s difficult to operate when a company is running too lean.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Market Excellence<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n DOCUmation has grown across the board, reeling in down-the-street business, mid-markets and major accounts. Having critical subject-matter experts in the fields of production print and facilities management, to name two, has led to high growth in those disciplines. The Woolfolks have onboarded a strong core of new sales reps to help expand their base.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWe have core reps who are specialists in health care, legal and automotive, and they scale around the state,\u201d Hunter noted. \u201cFor example, our legal experts have quite a client base; they understand the inner workings and the vocabulary of how legal works. They travel around the state and help all the branches close deals in their marketplaces. It\u2019s great to have all the branches working as one.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Having such a diverse product and service offering was vital to growing throughout the height of the supply chain shortage, but there was a bit of serendipity at work. The primary MFP lines, Ricoh and Kyocera, never synched when it came to product shortages. Even when A4 faced severe limitations, DOCUmation was able to pivot between the OEMs and their respective stocks (which the dealer adeptly kept on hand). The A4 situation stabilized by Q4 2022, and good communication with the providers enabled DOCUmation to set client expectations in advance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cOur people did a good job of pivoting, too,\u201d Hunter said. \u201cWhat makes us successful, as business climates change, is having those 13 different services and technologies, so it\u2019s not all printers and copiers that affect us.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI think the challenge that the industry\u2019s had is many dealers didn\u2019t go all in on these other services when they rolled them out,\u201d he added. \u201cThey\u2019re really a copier company that kind of has IT or kind of does phones. It\u2019s brutal. It\u2019s a kick in the tail to have to learn an entire new industry and become exceptional at it. We\u2019ve given it all we have, and we\u2019ve truly changed that DNA to being a technology company.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n While the brothers wouldn\u2019t rule out growth by acquisition, it\u2019s not a focal point. The last deal DOCUmation made was more than four years ago when it obtained documentWORKS. If the company was struggling with organic growth, Preston notes that acquisitions might be a greater consideration. DOCUmation evaluates between five and ten businesses per year, but hasn\u2019t found one that has compelled it to go down the M&A path.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It can be tough to find a prospect whose market strategy aligns with DOCUmation, and Preston sees a danger in taking on a client base that doesn\u2019t mesh. This is particularly true when it comes to managed IT.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cOur vision is to provide exceptional service to customers who value it, and we use that as our North Star as to whether we would make an acquisition,\u201d Preston said. \u201cIf those clients don\u2019t value exceptional service, that means they align with low-cost providers. Those are really not our clients. If you acquire that low-cost client base and it expects X, Y and Z, but their technology stack isn\u2019t in a place where we need it to be, they can hurt your service delivery for everybody else. If we found [a managed IT company] that had a good client base that matched our technology stack, it could be an option for us. But those are few and far between.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Great Expectations<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Even with 13 non-MFP products and services in the company arsenal, the Woolfolk brothers aren\u2019t ruling out future additions such as security systems and electric vehicle (EV) chargers. It would need to be a competence that DOCUmation can deliver on completely in order to meet or exceed the standards of other catalog elements. Preston believes that robotics could be an ideal fit in the long term; he continues to study and monitor its progress and knows that the service component would be the key to having success in this realm.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It\u2019s difficult to raise the bar when one\u2019s company is fresh off a 30% revenue surge over the previous year. Hunter believes that has set the tone for the future of DOCUmation; if it\u2019s capable of doing it once, then an encore isn\u2019t out of the question.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cToo much growth is challenging, but it\u2019s coming, and we seem to not be able to slow it down,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s like a snowball getting bigger, which is really cool. I\u2019d love to keep providing exceptional service delivery and take over the state of Texas, every county, every bit of it. So there\u2019s a lot of room to grow.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Preston isn\u2019t too worried about the out-of-state competition\u2014which continues to grow\u2014knocking on Texas\u2019 (and DOCUmation\u2019s) door. \u201cThere are a lot of outsiders trying to play in our state, and we welcome it,\u201d he said. \u201cThe thing about Texans, they like to say, \u2018You\u2019re not from around here, are you?\u2019 It\u2019s a pride thing. So they can try to play in our state if they like, but we\u2019ll see how that works out for them in the long run.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Clean(ing) Start Set Woolfolk Brothers on Success Path Prosperity has visited San Antonio-based DOCUmation in a big way. At a time when many dealers across the nation are only now reaching or exceeding their pre-pandemic revenue and profit levels, this multi-line dealership\u2014quarterbacked by brothers (and co-presidents) Preston and Hunter Woolfolk\u2014is fresh off a 2022 campaign that saw it reap 30% year-over-year growth. More impressively, if the first quarter of 2023 is any indication, DOCUmation will post an even higher growth rate when all the receipts have been counted at year\u2019s end. At $50 million in revenue, DOCUmation is the largest privately owned dealership in the state of Texas, which boasts more than its share of high-powered performers. Truth be known, however, the company\u2014founded by Lou Scantland in 1990\u2014teetered on the brink of collapse in 2017. This left the Woolfolk brothers (Hunter was 30, Preston 29) unwittingly in charge of the fortunes of 112 or so employees and the business of clients who had been with the organization for decades. It was a confluence of events that left DOCUmation in peril. Scantland and his partner split the company, with the partner selling his interests to a private equity firm. Around the same time, the 79-year-old Scantland suffered a fall that caused a brain injury, and he was in a coma for several months. Many of the managers at DOCUmation left to join the other company or retired\u2014the latter was the case with then-president Scott Woolfolk\u2014creating a leadership void. At that point, Preston led the company\u2019s managed IT division and Hunter was in charge of sales, but they quickly decided to share duties as co-presidents in an effort to keep DOCUmation afloat. \u201cWe walked into the office one day, and everything had changed,\u201d Hunter Woolfolk said. \u201cWe were thinking about our next jobs and what we were going to do.\u201d \u201cWe had about 112 employees, and we thought about their families, kids, livelihoods\u2026you either sink or swim,\u201d Preston Woolfolk added. \u201cWe thought about how to take care of these people, keep the business going and provide for them. We had to figure it out.\u201d Scantland returned to the office, fully recovered, about seven months later. It was then that he realized his grandsons knew how to swim. \u201cWe\u2019re very purpose-driven,\u201d Hunter noted. \u201cWe feel blessed to have had these opportunities at such a young age. We carry a strong burden of being purpose-driven, to bless these families and our communities. We\u2019ve been able to grow together. It creates a culture that\u2019s mission-focused, and there\u2019s a bigger picture than just doing our jobs and getting paid.\u201d Deep Roots Scantland\u2019s industry journey dates back to 1950s Detroit, when he and a partner opened one of the nation\u2019s first copier dealerships with a cost-per-copy model. He later moved to Arizona and started a new company, Unicopy, that was later sold to IKON Office Solutions. Scantland then pivoted to open a new dealership in 1990, which was rechristened DOCUmation in 1997. DOCUmation has thrived in the state\u2019s top markets\u2014San Antonio, Austin, Dallas\/Fort Worth, Houston and West Texas\u2014maintaining much of the Unicopy clientele. The state and its population of about 30 million is the sole business focus of the dealer, which carries the Ricoh, Kyocera, Konica Minolta, Lexmark and Canon lines. But it isn\u2019t MFPs alone driving the dealer\u2019s plans to open new branches in the near term; it provides a litany of products and services, from managed print and IT to production print\/wide-format, facilities management, process automation, unified communications, document management and various other software solutions. With other technology solutions on tap to join the roster of 13 non-MFP categories, a primary challenge will be withstanding the demands that accompany prolific growth. \u201cThat 30% growth represented the biggest in company history,\u201d Hunter noted. \u201cAdministratively and operationally, we\u2019re making sure we can keep up with this growth internally to support the entirety of the company.\u201d Prior to the pandemic, typical year-over-year growth ranged from 12% to 15%. In all, DOCUmation has grown 37% over its pre-pandemic performance. The reason behind the 2022 outlier was the damage COVID had inflicted on DOCUmation\u2019s competitors. Layoffs and furloughs hit other dealers\u2019 customer and technical service realms particularly hard, according to Preston. Dissatisfied end-users turned to DOCUmation as a result. \u201cWe didn\u2019t make any cuts; the goal during COVID was to maintain full service quality to our customers,\u201d he said. \u201cWhen 2021 and 2022 rolled around, all that disruption within our competitors cost them their business; their knowledge and product quality control started impacting their client relationships pretty significantly. It\u2019s difficult to operate when a company is running too lean.\u201d Market Excellence DOCUmation has grown across the board, reeling in down-the-street business, mid-markets and major accounts. Having critical subject-matter experts in the fields of production print and facilities management, to name two, has led to high growth in those disciplines. The Woolfolks have onboarded a strong core of new sales reps to help expand their base. \u201cWe have core reps who are specialists in health care, legal and automotive, and they scale around the state,\u201d Hunter noted. \u201cFor example, our legal experts have quite a client base; they understand the inner workings and the vocabulary of how legal works. They travel around the state and help all the branches close deals in their marketplaces. It\u2019s great to have all the branches working as one.\u201d Having such a diverse product and service offering was vital to growing throughout the height of the supply chain shortage, but there was a bit of serendipity at work. The primary MFP lines, Ricoh and Kyocera, never synched when it came to product shortages. Even when A4 faced severe limitations, DOCUmation was able to pivot between the OEMs and their respective stocks (which the dealer adeptly kept on hand). The A4 situation stabilized by Q4 2022, and good communication with the providers enabled DOCUmation to set client expectations in advance. \u201cOur people did a good job of pivoting, too,\u201d Hunter said. \u201cWhat makes us successful, as business climates change, is having those 13 different services […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":166,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1643],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.enxmag.com\/twii\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55283"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.enxmag.com\/twii\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.enxmag.com\/twii\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.enxmag.com\/twii\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/166"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.enxmag.com\/twii\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=55283"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/www.enxmag.com\/twii\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55283\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":55451,"href":"https:\/\/www.enxmag.com\/twii\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55283\/revisions\/55451"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.enxmag.com\/twii\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=55283"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.enxmag.com\/twii\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=55283"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.enxmag.com\/twii\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=55283"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"http:\/\/www.enxmag.com\/twii\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/05\/DOCU-X-ENX-7.jpg\")
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<\/strong>
Generational ownership of a business conjures the image of a golden baton being passed from the old guard to the young turks. However, being groomed for greatness isn\u2019t always as advertised, and silver spoons are often really broom or mop handles.
Take the case of Hunter and Preston Woolfolk, co-presidents of DOCUmation in San Antonio. Their foray into the business world wasn\u2019t quite glamorous, and certainly not suit-and-tie material. Their father, Scott, owned a business in New Mexico called Alternative Business Systems. Every summer, starting at the age of 12, the brothers would trudge into the warehouse after church on Sunday, armed with mops, and clean the floors and toilets. Since the family business was a small one and couldn\u2019t afford to hire a third-party cleaner, the Woolfolk boys were the unofficial janitorial service.
Eventually, they traded in their mops for more advanced duties. \u201cWe loved it; we worked every summer from that point on in the warehouse and logistics,\u201d Hunter related. \u201cBy the time we reached college, our father had joined DOCUmation and we were doing sales internships.\u201d
After weeks of knocking on doors and cold-calling businesses during Texas\u2019 summer swelter\u2014all while wearing a full suit and tie\u2014the Woolfolks may have wished they were still manning the mops. \u201cThank god for the millennials. They convinced us to dress more casually,\u201d Hunter added.
Hunter came aboard as a rep just as the Great Recession hit, and Preston joined him in 2010. Preston gravitated toward managed IT and Hunter found his calling as the head of the sales department. Little did they know the challenges that awaited them during the next 10 years. And they couldn\u2019t have guessed they would end up promoting themselves to co-presidents after their grandfather, Lou Scantland, suffered a serious fall in the aftermath of an ownership split.
Toss in a pandemic\/supply chain saga and it\u2019s your run-of-the-mill business chaos. At this point, Preston is ready to embrace the uneventful.
\u201cI think 2023 seems to be the first normal year, knock on wood,\u201d he said. \u201cCan we just have a nice, simple, normal year?\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"