Cartridge World

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Cartridge World is a store that refills ink and toner cartridges for less, in most cases, than it costs to buy new ones. Their North America headquarters are in Emeryville, California and international headquarters are in South Australia.

The company was originally called Australian Cartridge Co and was started by Bryan Stokes in 1991. He was joined several years later by Paul Wheeler who helped the company grow. In 1999 the company's name was changed to Cartridge World. In 2004, they were growing at roughly one store in the US per day. They currently have over 1,000 stores worldwide and sales of over $300 million. HP has threatened litigation against Cartridge World and stores with similar business models.

Cartridge World operates on a franchise system and doesn't require store operators to have any prior technical skills. Cartridge World is a private company and as such does not release sales figures for individual stores so it is hard to know if it is a good business proposition or not for people seeking a franchise. Cartridge World claims however that refillers now have 18% of the printer cartridge market, and with that market being roughly $30 billion dollars a year that is quite a sizable chunk.

Cartridge World envisions market growth; however, some disagree with Cartridge World's optimism. It does appear that OEM manufacturers are making life more difficult for cartridge refillers in general, such as installing "reset" computer chips into the cartridges.

In the UK, Cartridge World has the largest percentage of the refilling industry.

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