A new generation of color inkjet devices is placing increased pressure on toner-based technology.
It is said that all good things must come to an end. Or maybe things change. That’s certainly the story when it comes to the shift from toner to inkjet printing taking place right in front of us. And like many things, it comes down to money.
All those printers residing in offices and hallways across America have a voracious appetite for toner and feeding them is not inexpensive. The cost extends to a host of parts that must work in a certain way to deliver printed pages to the output tray that looks just as their creator expected. (Hello, service costs!) Making it more interesting is what a senior engineer of a major vendor of high-speed presses told me a few years ago: Some aspects of electrophotography remain black magic. The theory works, but some of the physics are elusive.
Are You Ready?
The universe is about to change, and as a dealer, you need to be ready for it. New sales and support opportunities are waiting, and you can take a leading position in your existing markets and take immediate action. Small, economical inkjet printers are putting money on the table for dealers and their customers.
You’ve doubtless heard about big full-color inkjet presses that churn out millions of pages a month and cost seven-figure sums (see sidebar, “Polar Bears, Toner, and Inkjet”). You may even have a desktop inkjet printer or two at home for the kids’ schoolwork or printing photos. In between these two poles, there’s a vast middle ground in businesses where inkjet printing brings fast, inexpensive, full-color pages to office workers. You can play here, add value, and make money.
Color Coordinated
In talking with people about this shift, I suggested that color printing had become the norm in businesses across the nation. I was quickly disabused of this notion.
“The first question buyers and IT managers ask when purchasing an MFP,” said Andre D’Urbano, director of dealer sales and corporate marketing at RISO, Inc., is ‘How can I control the use of color, and how can I keep my office staff from abusing the privilege of using color?’”
It turns out that more than a few IT managers still use software that limits the use of color to a chosen few employees. The rest have been informed that color is too expensive and that they should only use black toner.
This pushback is real because toner is pricey stuff. A five-million-page-per-month service bureau owner I know says her customers love color, but they don’t love it enough to pay four to five times the price of black-only. The economics are no different in a firm where the bookkeeper or CFO may get a little cranky when looking at the cost of color toner as a line item on a budget. Some are looking for alternatives and may come to you for answers. Be prepared!
The latest crop of inkjet printers and MFPs bridge the gap between monochrome and color printing while using no heat, having fewer breakdowns, and much lower power requirements. And there’s no black magic involved. This creates a path for expanded use of color printing in the office. Moreover, inkjet delivers the power and value of color for an inconsequential cost difference, while fostering the production of color documents that will increase reader attention and retention.
“As the market shifts toward inkjet, dealers have an opportunity to future-proof their businesses,” affirmed Joseph Contreras, commercial marketing executive, office solutions at Epson USA. “Working with a manufacturer partner that does not compete with dealers, but sends leads in their direction, will be critically important to their success.”
Sure, Contreras is spreading Epson gospel, but getting actionable leads is probably not a bad thing. Let’s just say it’s a little better than the history of some toner press vendors.
Adjusting Expectations
People with trained eyeballs—dealer principals, salespeople, technical managers, service techs, and industry analysts like me—notice the difference between toner and inkjet, especially on full-page images such as photographs. But the average user simply sees color and likes it a lot more than they do monochrome. And they want to use it.
“It’s time we stop projecting our beliefs and perceptions on ordinary customers and allow them to judge for themselves,” noted RISO’s D’Urbano. “The average office worker is so buried in deadlines, tasks, and projects that they either simply cannot see the difference or don’t care.”
They want what is generally termed, “pleasing color” or “business color.” In other words, the report or presentation with a half-life of 30 days does not have to look like a coffee table book.
RISO has long been educating both the dealer channel and end-users on the benefits of color in the office. Similarly, Epson provides dealers with training, collateral, and a dedicated field sales team to help educate their customers and prospects about the benefits of inkjet technology and change inaccurate perceptions.
To Market, to Market
For business owners, the added value of color shows up in customer and user reactions such as response, information retention, and ease of reading, as well as on a customer’s expense line. Ink costs for typical office documents are much lower than when using toner costs. Of course, there are always times when a full-page, full-color image is needed. This is generally not an ideal use of inkjet, even on the best quality inkjet papers. Companies that have already faced this challenge often keep a color toner device in the in-plant, marketing department or some executive offices for heavy-coverage output while other office staff uses inkjet for color prints.
For general use, though, inkjet OEMs and dealers are already finding a lucrative business in churches, school systems, non-profits, and some municipal offices. All are attracted by speed, full-color, and low cost-per-print. Word has caught on in larger school districts, colleges, universities, and government print centers: Penny-a-page color is a reality.
Still, schools, churches, non-profits, and the like are not necessarily representative of corporate offices, except for recognition of the TCP (total cost of printing). Addressing this, RISO is attending conferences and events for IT managers and some large volume print providers to educate business owners and IT people on the benefits of inkjet color. Speed, full-color, and low cost-per-print are at least as critical to printers that handle direct mail and transactional printing. These guys can lose a half-million-dollar contract for a quarter of a cent per page. To help stay competitive, such players have been shedding high-speed toner systems in favor of inkjet to control costs while still handling massive print volumes. Many are also buying smaller inkjet machines so they can easily accommodate short runs and quickly provide replacement copies that big inkjet systems can’t deliver. Their clients and recipients have come to expect both color and the small devices to help meet those expectations.
Is the Corporate Market Ready?
“We show them proof of what customers like them are doing with large print volumes and they quickly buy in,” said D’Urbano. “Still, inkjet is a well-kept secret to the office world, but it is gaining ground.”
Epson’s Contreras agreed: “We expect the adoption rate to be faster as end-users become educated on the reliability, cost, and productivity benefits over laser technology products.”
However—there’s always a however—despite the adoption of inkjet color in some segments, the transition in corporate America will be slower for two reasons. First, the industry bias of color being too expensive remains a challenge, and such perceptions are hard to overcome. But the transition will speed up as the reality of color at a penny-a-page seeps onto the desks of corporate bean counters and as end-users become more aware of an alternative to toner.
Second is the shift in thinking required by dealer principals and service managers. Both currently prefer to see a color MFP turning out prints at six cents-per-page, sold into an office over an inkjet device at one penny.
“Who can blame them,” acknowledged RISO’s D’Urbano. “It’s a question of math, so try to see a bigger picture.”
Don’t Be Complacent
Dealers hoping that inkjet never gets a foothold in the office should do so at their own risk. It works like this:
A dealer, desperately hoping to retain the revenue of color toner, tells customers inkjet isn’t ready for prime time and keeps delivering toner once a week. Meanwhile, a competitor is hitting the same accounts promoting inkjet color at one cent a page. One of those customers, not being a dummy, sees the value, does the math, and decides inkjet color is good enough for his needs and calls the toner dealer. “How come you never told me about this? I had to learn it from your competitor!”
If you’re on the receiving end of such a call, I hope you can dance fast.
“Sooner or later, and it’s probably sooner, someone is going to educate your customers about color for a penny a page, and dealers who are wedded to toner will find themselves playing defense. Smart dealers are getting out in front of this,” emphasized D’Urbano.
Are you one of them?
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Polar Bears, Toner, and Inkjet
Have you ever noticed how conference rooms in hotels are kept cold enough to make polar bears think about heading to Key West? This is because it takes significantly less energy to keep a room cold than to keep it warmer and then drop the temperature later. People, after all, can always put on a sweater.
And so it is with inkjet presses: It is far easier and less expensive in the long term to start big and scale down than it is to start small and scale up. This is why HP, Canon, Konica Minolta, Ricoh, and Xerox have rolled out big presses with seven-figure price tags, and largely leave the smaller, office-class machines to companies like Epson and RISO. They refine all the ink and printhead technologies, make sure the software works well, and keep tweaking the mega-dollar presses. Customers, more often than not, buy more. And if you think it’s interesting now, wait until some of these players move into the office segment.
Over the past decade, HP has led the way with high-volume machines that tap into the publishing space, while presses from Canon, Ricoh, Konica Minolta, and Xerox cover much of graphic arts. But the truth is that all the machines are used for just about any kind of production printing, from bills and statements to direct mail, to a host of publishing applications and even some types of labels and packaging. On the high-volume end, inkjet is steadily replacing toner and on the verge of making all but the highest volume offset printing a nearly obsolete technology.
What’s important to note here is that most of the big inkjet presses sold are replacing toner-based devices. And just as early adopters of inkjet in the office space are learning, it ultimately comes down to money. Inkjet is much cheaper than toner. This keeps customers happy and coming back, which is the goal.
Ink, despite the complex chemistry involved, is basically colored water, so it’s relatively cheap to produce. Toner, on the other hand, is primarily plastic powder that is quite complex, and there aren’t many ways to make it cheaper. Sure, you can buy third-party toner at a big discount over the brand name version, but a big part of this is that the seller is taking a slimmer margin and the product probably lacks the same quality control as the OEMs’ flavors.
The point here is that if the high-volume print shops are migrating to inkjet and leaving toner behind, there is no reason to think office printing will be any different. Toner and inkjet are likely to coexist for some time, but before very long, toner in the office will be yesterday’s technology.
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