If you are a regular reader of The Cannata Report, you know Frank G. Cannata’s feelings about production and industrial print. If you are not familiar, let me sum it up succinctly, he loves it.
Our 36th Annual Dealer Survey, presented in our October and November issues, will reveal the percentage of dealers currently selling production print. It’s a sizable percentage, but you’ll have to wait until October to find out the specifics. An equally sizable percentage of dealers do not sell production and/or industrial print. The reality is that no matter how many times Frank touts the category, and how much money the OEMs invest in this technology, there will always be a large segment of the dealer channel that won’t or can’t make that investment. We understand, and the OEMs understand, which explains my Seinfeld-inspired headline of “No Production and Industrial Print for You!”
Not that there’s anything wrong with that. It’s okay and often prudent to recognize that certain product segments are not for you and that you’d be better off staying in your lane. For those who would rather not or can’t sell production and industrial print, there are other ways to diversify. The OEMs recognize this as well.
Look at our cover story about Konica Minolta’s Client Experience Center in Ramsey, New Jersey. The company did not build the center to woo and wow its smaller dealers. Indeed, some of the dealers visiting it in 2021 have been flying in on their own planes. The point being, there is a certain exclusivity to selling production and industrial print because it requires significant financial resources and specialists that don’t come cheap.
Circling back to Frank’s devotion to production and industrial print, does it represent the future of the independent dealer channel? I believe it will be part of that future, but not as pervasive in the channel as A3 and A4 are now, or even MPS and managed IT. But it will be important to dealers of a certain size, and more likely, these dealers will be aligned with Canon, Konica Minolta, or Ricoh. Not all these companies are committed to supplying their dealer channel with the full breadth of their offerings. Readers of The Cannata Report are familiar with Frank’s laments in his “Frankly Speaking” columns or “Fridays with Frank” videos that some OEMs have little interest in selling their higher-end production and industrial print devices through their dealers. That said, each has broad enough product lines to provide dealers with the building blocks to create a viable production and industrial print business.
Don’t feel bad if there’s no production or industrial print for you. But if you have the resources, the desire, and the commitment, Frank is correct. The opportunity to offset the decline in office print and grow in these higher-end segments is profound.
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