Jack Boulware

The best deal in online office supplies just happens to come from a band of Cistercian monks.

The Cistercian Abbey of Our Lady of Spring Bank sits on 500 acres of forest and rolling hills in rural western Wisconsin. Each morning at 4:30 am, monks arise to a ringing bell, don their traditional robes, and spend five hours in Gregorian chants and prayer. After another hour of prayer and private Bible study, it’s five to seven hours of labor and maintenance around the monastery.

Like their ancestral brethren, the Cistercians spend the days filled with simple contemplation, unaffected by the outside world. These are not your usual monks, however. They don’t support themselves by making beer, or baking bread. They sell office supplies. It sounds goofy, but this year the lasermonks.com website expects to do between $10-15 million worth of business.

“Eight monks,” says LaserMonks CEO Father Bernard McCoy wryly. “We lead a simple life.”

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In 2002 Father Bernard was sitting in his office, staring at a computer screen. An astrophysicist by training, he was now Steward of Temporal Affairs at the monastery. Which means he was in charge of raising funds. For centuries, abbeys have proudly been self-sufficient. But agricultural-based schemes like brewing beer or growing Shitake mushrooms were no longer that profitable. Developing a golf course, another idea once bandied about, would take too long. In the midst of his musing, he realized his HP printer was out of toner. The monk went online looking for a replacement cartridge, and was shocked at the 500% price markups.

“This is way too expensive for a bunch of black dust,” he said to himself. “There’s gotta be a better way to this whole thing.”

As it turned out, there were plenty of better ways. He kept looking, and discovered cheaper toner and ink cartridges were definitely available, from third-party brands to refurbished products. Father Bernard realized, if he was frustrated at the outrageous prices, a lot of other people might be also. He approached a few manufacturers and wholesalers, explained he was from a nonprofit monastery, and asked, what if he were able to sell these products to other nonprofits?

“Are you for real?” he was asked. “Are you really a monk?”

Most of us envision monks as a group of barefoot guys with bald spots, sitting in a gloomy castle, transcribing manuscripts by hand. “Shuffling around in dark cloisters, and eating gruel,” adds Father Bernard. “People don’t think of monks in modern society being high-tech. I’m constantly having to explain, monks have been in the imaging reproduction business for over 900 years. We’re just doing it a bit differently today.”

Following Father Bernard’s hunch about black dust, the monks connected with a small group of generic printing suppliers, and launched www.lasermonks.com, selling replacement cartridges at deeply discounted prices. They sold just $2,000 the first year, but the idea spread by word of mouth. A bunch of monks were selling cheap toner, with proceeds to charity? The following year, LaserMonks grossed $150,000, and in 2004 did $2.4 million in sales. The black dust had become black gold.

But such innovation brought longer hours. The monks could no longer run the business themselves. Fortunately, two women from Colorado showed up at the Abbey, offering to help with adminstration and order fulfillment. Sarah Caniglia and Cindy Griffith had been running their own website selling inkjet cartridges, and were intrigued with the abbey’s operation. The women planned to volunteer for just three months, and have stayed ever since. Since the Abbey is nonprofit, the monks started a separate corporation to hire them.

While the monks are engaged in their daily monk-esque activites, Caniglia and Griffith work in a separate building of the Abbey, processing over 200TK orders a day. The business has expanded to include pens, calendars, labels, folders, pretty much every kind of office product. In the near future they will add electronics, printers, and PDAs. Orders are shipped from 42 warehouses around the country.

The major draw for new customers are the toners and inks, because the world depends on paperwork. Everybody needs to print documents, especially large companies. And thus, everybody needs lots of printer cartridges.

A Google search for “inkjet cartridges” yields over 3 million hits. Cartridges are intentionally priced through the roof, nearly half the price of the printer that uses them. Some stores will even give printers away with computer purchases, because the money is made in selling cartridges. My own Epson 740i printer cartridge sells for between $25 and $30, an eternally annoying expense that feels like a carjacking. LaserMonks offers a replacement for $4.50, and it works perfectly.

Besides the prices, the LaserMonks website offers plenty of features unusual to the typical online store. People can click a button and send in a prayer request, which is then printed out and read by the monks. Randomly selected callers are asked to help choose the charity which receives a donation in their name. Links connect visitors to other abbeys who sell fruitcake, fudge, jellies, and caskets. An online cartoon series drawn by the Abbey Superior, Father Robert Keffer, features the cloister’s dogs, Luxor and Ludwig.

“It makes buying paper clips a bit more interesting,” says Father Bernard. “We are taking our tradition of monastic hospitality, and converting it into commerce hospitality. We’re creating a feel-good experience from a mundane transaction. Office Depot does not offer this.”

Taking on big-box retail chains like Office Depot or OfficeMax may seem like a David and Goliath proposition, but the monks don’t see it that way. They envision their mission to become a social entrepreneurism model for other nonprofit companies. Father Bernard is even writing a book that instructs how other nonprofits can do the same.

“In the next ten years, this will be a major force in the business economy,” he says. “It’s a way that schools, nonprofits, churches, can support themselves more, instead of begging. What we’re saying is, Why not be real Americans and have people buy from you?”

LaserMonks is extremely lucky in that success has come with very little advertising. Most of their customers come through referrals. Because order fulfillment is outsourced, there’s no need to keep a warehouse stocked. Capital overhead is zero. The company takes no profit, and after expenses, all income is earmarked for charity. The abbey donates to several programs in the U.S., and also supports a school in Vietnam that provides computer training for orphans and street kids.

While most abbeys are still toiling away at older business models, selling beer and fruitcakes, LaserMonks has shot into the stratosphere of what’s possible in the monastic world. What do other monasteries think? Are they jealous?

“Some are still, ‘I don’t know about all this internet stuff,’” says Father Bernard. “But most are extremely intrigued. We’re starting to get calls: ‘Gosh, Father, can you help us come up with a modern business?’”

Another benefit of such a Cinderella business story is the desire for others to join up. The average age of a church community member is 60 or 70 years old. The LaserMonks’ median age is 40. They’ve attracted four members in the last two years, effectively doubling the size of the abbey.

Lest we think the LaserMonk life is all about praying and sweeping floors and selling inkjet cartridges, there is time for recreation. According to Father Bernard, monks actually do have fun.

“For instance, Father Robert has an enormous HO train set in the basement,” he enthuses. “We have horses as well. I’m also a pilot. Someone donated a single-engine Beechcraft plane a few years ago. We use it for LaserMonks, and we also take up disadvantaged youth in the area.”

With all the trains and horses and plane rides, plus the office supplies empire, it might seem like too much information for a monk’s head to process. They must still clock in several hours of prayer, and budget time to shovel snow off the porch. How does a monk multi-task all of this?

“There’s a saying in Latin: Ora et labora pax. ‘Prayer and work bring about peace,’” says Father Bernard. “We spread our prayer throughout the day. As long as you’re focusing on those things, all of the other things fall into place. We have a structure that’s been working for 900 years, that makes sure you don’t get out of balance, out of whack. The bell rings, it’s time to pray. Time to eat.”

The story of LaserMonks’ rise from humble beginnings to business respectability is a uniquely American story. Which begs the question, do they celebrate their good fortune in the uniquely American way? What kind of car does a LaserMonk drive?

“Some people think we have a Ferrari in the barn,” admits Father Bernard. “I drive a 1998 Jeep with 162,000 miles. I plow the snow with it in the winter. And I’ve hit two deer with it.”

(A version of this story first appeared in Southwest Spirit magazine)