Don Davis has achieved virtually all of his goals during an illustrious career in the office-equipment business.

Yet, there’s one goal the farm boy from Surrey, B.C., has missed by a country mile.

That was Davis’s retirement party, which has already been delayed eight years due to his weakness for promotions.

Davis, whose leadership has been instrumental in revenue growth in excess of 500 per cent in the past decade at Minolta Business Equipment (Canada), was promoted out of retirement in 1995 when the company appointed him president.

Dave Olecko photo, Business Edge
Consistent success at Minolta Business Equipment (Canada) made Don Davis the logical choice to take the helm following the recent merger with Konica.

“My plan was to retire at 55,” deadpans the amiable Davis, who was recently promoted again – to president of Konica Minolta Business Solutions (Canada), the company created as a result of the merger of his company with Konica. “It (retirement) never happened. They came along and offered me this job.

“When you’re a kid, you look up at the manager and say: ‘Boy, maybe I can be a manager some day,’ ” explains Davis, a 63-year-old executive with a sprightly spring in his step. “Then, when you’re a manager, you look up and say: ‘It’d be nice to be a regional manager.’ Then, when you’re a vice-president, you say: ‘It’d be nice to be a president . . . ’ ”

Now, when Davis looks up, there are no rungs left in the ladder. That would explain the contented grin on his face as he reflects on a remarkable 43 years in the office equipment business.

As for the rocking chair, it will remain in limbo. 1. How did a farm boy from Surrey wind up in the office equipment business?

“Early on, when I was about 20, a little Irishman named Al Donaghey hired me in the technical department with Gestetner Canada. He was the regional manager of B.C. with Gestetner. I was a farm boy at heart and was used to that freedom, but Al taught me the discipline of putting in a hard day’s work and treating customers right. Under his tutelage, I followed his example to a T. I knew I had to get to work at 8 every morning, work hard all day and not goof off until 5 o’clock.”

2. Where did you get your education?

“I was a high-school dropout in Grade 10. At that time, growing up in the country, you were expected to get out and work and earn a little money, and I couldn’t do it in an area like Surrey unless I wanted to work on a feed truck or continue working on the farm.”

3. What appealed to you about the office equipment business?

“I think it was the idea that you could make as much money as you wanted to, if you worked hard enough. In other casual jobs that I had, you were basically tied down to a weekly or hourly income. With this business, I saw an opportunity in which the harder I worked, the more money I made.”

4. How did your sales experience – before you moved into management – help you progress in your career?

“I think the biggest thing you learn is the importance of listening to the customer. The whole sales business is about getting the customer what the customer wants, and I found at a very early stage in my career the importance of spending more time listening to the customer and finding out what he really wanted, then delivering it. It’s easy to sell people something they want.”

5. What led you to Minolta in 1976?

“At the time, I was general manager of a national photocopier company (Nashua) in Toronto, and Minolta had just introduced a new photocopier machine which I saw as revolutionary. I saw a great opportunity to get in on the initial launch of that product. So I left my job in Toronto and moved to Calgary to set up a Minolta dealership. I merged that dealership with a dealership owned by Barry McColl (currently a vice-president with Konica Minolta) and eventually our dealership became one of the largest in Western Canada.”

6. What was your initial reaction when you heard about the merger between the two international companies, Minolta and Konica?

“It was disappointment, I guess, to see that a company that I had a part in building in Canada was going to be merged, perhaps have a different name and lose that recognition, and maybe lose the structure that we had built.”

7. Was it an easy decision to remain with the company after the merger?

“I had my second thoughts and I think a lot of us in senior management did, because we didn’t know where we would be going. However, Canada (operations) had been very successful in the world scheme of things with both Minolta and Konica. Within about a month of the merger, I was advised that I would become president of the new merged company and that we would take the lead position in Canada in merging it. So it was an easy decision once I found out that we would have some say in how the company would be run in Canada. The rumour on the street was that Konica was buying Minolta out and we had to correct that rumour and let people know that it was a merger of equals, as we call it.”

8. What has your strategy been in making the integration of the two companies work?

“The key is to put it together and have both companies going forward. Whenever you’re dealing with a merger, there’s a company that takes the lead position and generally the other company suffers. They lose some people and lose the focus of where they’re going in the marketplace. My objective was to get together as soon as possible with the Konica people and say: ‘OK, now we’re putting this together, it’s going to work and we need all of you because our focus is to build this into a bigger, better company.’ Worldwide, they’ve called for a 10-per-cent reduction in employees, which is about 4,000 employees, but in Canada both Konica and Minolta have been on a campaign for a couple of years to tighten up the ship. We were in pretty good shape, so we will not have a reduction in staff (the merged company has 861 employees). All the senior management is intact.”

9. What are the benefits of this merger?

“From our standpoint, it’s the availability of new and better product. The merger has allowed the two research and development divisions to get together and reduce their costs while tripling the expenditure for R&D and bringing out new product faster. We’re fortunate because Minolta’s (Canadian) head office is in Mississauga and Konica’s is in Pickering, so we’re within an hour’s drive.”

10. How does the merger affect your role?

“My job basically is to make sure this merger goes together well and, at the end of the day, have a very organized company with one product name, Konica Minolta. I still report to the board of directors in the U.S. and I don’t anticipate a lot of interference in how we run the company in Canada, because we’ve been very successful.

“Although our head office is in Mississauga, I will remain at the Calgary office because this is home to me.”

11. What’s your vision for the new company?

“We have a specific goal to be a $200-million (revenue) company by 2005 with no debt (combined revenue for Canadian operations of Minolta and Konica was $165 million in 2002). To run a company this size with no debt would be quite an accomplishment and we feel we can do it. That’s the direction we’re going.”

12. What’s the key to reaching those goals?

“The key really in our business is product. We’ve been in the mid-range photocopier area and where we’re going is in the mid- to high-range photocopier area, or what is called production printing.

"The focus is on higher-volume equipment and we want to be big in colour. The objective of the company is to be No. 1 in the colour copying business by 2005.”

13. Has the economic downturn in recent years affected your company?

“Yes, it has been affected in a couple of major areas, particularly in Ontario. We’ve had to look for growth in other areas. Last year, for instance, the top branch in the country was Saskatchewan. That’s probably never happened before (in Minolta’s business). They’ve always been the poor cousins of the country. Total Alberta sales have done extremely well. It has been a little softer in Calgary. Edmonton has been the hotspot in Alberta and that’s probably because our equipment is geared more to mid-range companies and there are a lot of smaller service companies there.”

14. Do you lose sleep over what the competition is doing?

“No, not at all. I know them very well. When you’ve been in the industry as long as I have, you know the competition inside out. All the product coming out today is reasonably good. By the time it hits the Canadian market, any bad products are culled out. So where we have to do well is in the service end.”

15. What have you learned from working with the Japanese brass of Minolta over the years?

“It’s very difficult working with a foreign company, particularly a Japanese company, unless you understand their culture and their way of doing business. One thing I learned very quickly is that you must put together a good business plan and live by that business plan. You become very good at budgeting, very good at planning and very good at attaining the numbers they’re looking for. Having said that, if you’re doing the job, they don’t micro-manage a company. They oversee it, give you a target and your job is to make sure it happens. (Laughing) You also have to eat sushi, and I don’t mind the sushi. But the raw chicken got me a little bit. As long as it’s not moving and it doesn’t have feathers on it, I don’t mind.”

16. To what do you attribute your success?

“My attitude was always to make my own boss look good. If I had a sales manager, my job was to make him look good and when I became sales manager, my job was to make my branch manager look good and that was the way it was all the way up the line. It has been very satisfying to achieve what I once thought may be unachievable.”

17. How would you describe your management style?

“My style is definitely a hands-on management style. I came up through the ranks. I’ve worked in every area of the company. I understand the technical, the financial, the accounting and the sales. I think what I’ve developed over the last few years is the ability to delegate and allow people to do their jobs. You give them a target and say, ‘Here’s where you have to go.’ And, if they’re doing it, leave them alone. I work with people and talk to everyone. I know the shipper and the newest-guy-on-the-totem-pole sort of thing. Having worked in the shop and warehouse, I understand what they’re going through. I understand the hardship the truck driver goes through to deliver a machine to downtown Calgary when it’s 30 below and snowing.”

18. Can you do your job in 40 hours a week?

“I probably don’t do more than a 40-hour week. Somebody told me a few years ago that if it takes you longer than 40 hours a week to do your job, you’re not doing a very good job. Family is very important, so I don’t want to sacrifice my family for a job.”

19. Who’s the entrepreneur you most admire?

“Well, it has to be our little friend Jimmy Pattison (CEO of the Jim Pattison Group). Pattison has had a discipline that ranks way above everyone else. To this day, he still has a hands-on approach to every one of his businesses. He visits every one of his businesses on a regular basis and he knows his employees by their first names. He came from basically being a car salesman in Vancouver to being one of the wealthiest men in Canada.”

20. When will you retire?

“My commitment to the company is that I’ll see the merger completed and stick around long enough to make sure that everybody is in the right place and we’re on our way to hitting our 2005 objective. I’m not sure whether I’ll still be around here in 2005, but I’ll know when I leave that that’s where we’re going. Probably, when I retire, I’ll do some charity work and some travelling.”

IN PROFILE: Don Davis
* Born/raised/age: Surrey, B.C.; 63.
* Title: President/CEO, Konica Minolta Business Solutions (Canada).
* Residence: Calgary.
* Education: Grade 10.
* Family: Wife Pat, two children.
* Career: Davis has spent 43 years in the Canadian office equipment sector in sales, service and senior management. Prior to being appointed president and CEO of Konica Minolta in September, Davis was president of Minolta Business Equipment (Canada) since 1995. He joined Minolta Business Equipment as vice-president in 1983. Prior to that, he was a partner in a Calgary-based Minolta dealership and he has worked as a distributor for Nashua photofax equipment and as a branch manager for Gestetner Canada.
* Passions: Gardening, fishing, running.

THE COMPANY: Konica Minolta Business Solutions (Canada)
* Brass: Don Davis, president/CEO; Ken Umida, Ken Schyrer, executive vice-presidents; Barry McColl, Luc Filion, Jacques Abenaim, regional VPs.
* Profile: Konica Minolta is a provider of digital solutions for document creation, distribution and production that was formed from the July merger of the Canadian operations of Konica and Minolta. The company is the Canadian division of the newly formed Konica Minolta Technologies Corporation, a business unit of Konica Minolta Holdings of Japan.
* Products: Konica Minolta Business Solutions offers a full range of copiers, digital multi-functional copiers, printers, micro systems, facsimiles and related supplies.
* Big Deal: The company recently swung a deal to supply Hewlett-Packard with digital multi-function
copier engines. Konica Minolta estimates first-year sales from this deal will generate $119 million.
* Head Office: 369 Britannia Road E., Mississauga, Ont. L4Z 2H5; Phone/Fax: 905-890-6600, 890-8997.
n Calgary Office: 1315-73 Ave. S.E., T2H 2X4; Phone/Fax: 403-253-6485, 403-255-5992, 877-986-9898
* Web site: www.konicaminolta.net