Exhibits 2.20-2.25
Long ago and far away, OEM dealer meetings didn’t exist. For most dealers, the opportunities to rub elbows with other dealers and circulate among the various OEMs and other vendors were the NOMDA and later, the BTA shows. Many of our readers still remember these massive events, often scheduled during the blazing hot summer months in locations such as Las Vegas, New Orleans, or Atlanta. The rates to host a show in these locations at that time of the year must have been highly favorable.
Eventually, the OEMs reached the conclusion that these shows were too expensive to attend—it is costly to move all that equipment in and out—and it was more productive to host events for their authorized dealers and not have tire-kickers from the other OEMs, as well as competitive dealers, showing up in their booths.
That model still seems to be working. It’s an excellent forum for OEMs to update, educate, and create goodwill among their dealer partners and the OEMs continue to host these meetings on a yearly or 18-month cycle.
For the past three years, we have asked dealers to rate their primary A3 MFP suppliers’ meetings as “Excellent,” “Very Good,” “Good,” “Fair,” or “Poor.” If a dealer did not respond, we did not factor that response into our ratings because either they didn’t attend the meeting, or they declined to offer a valid opinion of that event. We then awarded five points for “Excellent,” four points for “Very Good,” three points for “Good,” two points for “Fair,” and one point for “Poor.” We then divided the total by the number of dealers participating from that manufacturer.
One thing we’ve noticed anecdotally over the years is that dealers are highly critical of these OEM meetings. We hear it while we’re at the meeting, we hear about it afterwards, and we see it in the results of our Survey. These strong feelings can be attributed to the time commitment dealers must make to attend these events. Depending on the location and the schedule, these meetings can run anywhere from three to four days. Those who attend don’t want to walk away feeling like they’ve wasted their time when they could be back at the home office running their businesses.
The OEMs have done a nice job of late, in our opinion, of making these events shorter (this year’s Konica Minolta meeting was only two days), eliminating many of the extracurricular activities that took place in the afternoons during the final day of the meeting, such as horseback rides, rafting tours, and jeep tours in the desert. Don’t get us wrong, those were fun and great bonding experiences, but time is tight.
In this year’s Survey, dealers were not as generous with their “Excellent” ratings as in the last two Surveys. Exhibits 2.20 to 2.25 illustrate the ratings for each of the Big Six OEMs. The ratings for Konica Minolta, Ricoh, Sharp, and Toshiba are mostly consistent with last year with anywhere from a 0.1 to a 0.2 increase or decline in the rating. The two OEMs that stand out are Canon, whose rating improved from 3.0 in 2018 to 3.8 this year, and Kyocera, whose rating declined from 4.1 in 2018 to 3.7 this year, the lowest of the Big Six.
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Here are three comments from Canon dealers that illustrate its improvement in the ratings:
- “Small regional meeting with a chance to visit with the Canon executives on a one-to-one basis.”
- “It was a smaller roundtable event that allowed dealers to voice their needs and concerns and obtain answers.”
- “Love the Canon dealer community and spending time with them. Content provided by Canon is more of an update on their performance.”
Here are three comments from Kyocera dealers that offer some insights into its rating:
- “Too few new product launches to receive “Excellent” rating.
- “Workshops were so-so, not much future vision to match the pre-meeting expectations with new leadership.”
- “A lot of change is happening. Doesn’t seem good. Are they merging with another manufacturer?”
In fairness to both OEMs, Canon received its share of negative comments, and Kyocera received plenty of positive comments from dealers who attended their meeting. However, these are still the only two OEMs among the Big Six whose ratings fell below 4.0, an indicator there is still work to be done in order to better engage their dealer community at these events.
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