In 1999, after 11 years with Xerox Corp., Woodland Hills resident Dan Strull decided it was time to strike out on his own. So he set up Copier Headquarters, becoming an authorized dealer for the entire line of Xerox products. After just 10 months in business, Xerox executives made him an offer he simply couldn’t refuse: Drop some portions of the San Fernando Valley region from his territory and, in exchange, pick up all of Ventura and Santa Barbara counties. Strull welcomed the opportunity, and along with it, additional challenges. Today, those include the smaller, non-authorized (and sometimes non-ethical) dealers who misrepresent themselves as authorized Xerox dealers, cutting into his slice of the market and staining the Xerox brand. Strull, who has offices in Westlake Village and Carpenteria, spoke with Business Journal reporter Jacqueline Fox recently about those challenges and his strategy for overcoming them. “I started the company with only two employees and today I have 17, so that gives you an idea of how fast we grew. I wanted to take a chance and see if running my own business would be fun, and it is. “One of the biggest struggles today is trying to get people to look for us. Everyone knows that Xerox is out there, it sells itself pretty well. But just trying to get in the door is difficult because we are competing with many people who represent themselves as authorized Xerox agents. They don’t really care about selling Xerox once they get in the door and that gives the name a bad rap. “So, you are out there trying to promote your name and there’s others out there pretending to do the same, but have no right to. “(As an example) I was in Westlake Village recently where I talked to a guy about renewing his lease on his machine. He said he already got one. We walked back to look at his machine; it wasn’t a Xerox. The company that brought him his machine just put their sticker over the brand name so he never knew it wasn’t a Xerox machine. “He’s now looking to sue the company. There’s nothing we can do for him. I just move on to the next one. It’s frustrating. “Our strategy for dealing with that is such that we try to be the good guy. We are trying not to bad-mouth our competitors. We just try to be pleasant about it and prove ourselves through our loyalty and our service. We are trying to build a reputation up by our actions.”