Late last Thursday, Konica Minolta Business Solutions issued a press release over the wires announcing that it was transferring select sales offices to its independent dealer channel.
The reason for making this move, according to the press release was to enable the company to focus on the four key growth areas within larger metropolitan markets. Those growth areas include: Enterprise and Global Enablement, Vertical Market Insights, Managed IT Services and Enterprise Content Management, and Commercial and Industrial Print.
Notice that traditional office printing is not one of those growth areas. Nor should it be considered a growth area. However, that doesn’t mean that business has no appeal to independent dealers. If Konica Minolta wants to offer those to select dealers, that will likely be an offer few will refuse.
While it is still too early to tell which independent dealers will be picking up some of this distribution, Pacific Office Automation (POA) reported in a blog on its website that it had acquired three new branches offices from Konica Minolta in Reno, Nevada; Salt Lake City, Utah; and Albuquerque, New Mexico. Reno represents a new market for POA and expands its reach into nine states. Considering POA’s aggressive growth initiatives as we reported earlier this year when covering its annual business meeting as part of our CR-CONNECT Virtual Dealer Tour, this opportunity was right in its wheelhouse.
This is still a developing story and we expect to hear of more dealers, more than likely with the financial footprint of a POA, picking up additional Konica Minolta branches.
Meanwhile, it will be interesting to see if there will be any fallout from Konica Minolta dealers who are not among the “select dealers,” as we saw when Ricoh USA sold off some of its branches a few years ago.
Editor’s note: Since this story first ran we learned that All Copy Products is also acquiring Konica Minolta branches.
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