RISO’s Andre D’Urbano believes inkjet technology deserves a closer look.
Andre D’Urbano, VP of marketing for RISO, is the document imaging industry’s foremost inkjet advocate. That’s why he’s the ideal subject for this, the first in our new series titled “Take Two,” where we offer a second look, sometimes from a new perspective, on an emerging or legacy technology, solution, or service.
During our conversation, D’Urbano, reflected on the state of traditional office printing, the promise of lower-end color inkjet production technology, and the inability of some dealers to grasp the opportunity.
“While printing in general has gone down over the past 20 years, and certainly been accelerated by COVID, especially in the office space, in the production print arena, it’s fairly stable,” he said. “If it has gone down, it’s maybe a percent or two.”
While print management solutions limiting color printing in the office proliferate, organizations acquiring color inkjet production devices do so because much of the content they print is in color. That’s a trend D’Urbano wants dealers to recognize.
Although many dealers have ignored the color inkjet opportunity, others have embraced this technology. Case in point, POA who has found success in this segment selling RISO and Kyocera color inkjet production devices. Meanwhile, RISO is engaged with some of the other major players at the forefront of the acquisitions trend about adding this technology to their portfolios. “They’re already late at this point coming to the party, but that’s okay because the market is still vibrant, and the profit margins are still healthy,” said D’Urbano.
With Ricoh rounding out its color production offerings with Kyocera’s inkjet production machine, and RISO partnering with another OEM that D’Urbano preferred not to identify, it’s clear there is a need in the market for affordably priced color inkjet production products.
Print shops are also driving awareness by asking sales reps calling on them for inkjet. Those requests are filtering back to the dealer principals and RISO. “Who would’ve thought that customers would be the ones asking the salespeople about inkjet?” said D’Urbano.
Color inkjet can be a point of differentiation for dealers, especially since it uses heat-free technology, enables faster speeds, and has lower overall running costs than toner-based devices. “Salespeople want to be able to tell an interesting story. They want something that’s fresh and new,” said D’Urbano. “All that stuff that as salespeople we were trained to talk about, productivity, reliability it’s all true with inkjet. And again, that’s not just a RISO thing, it’s for any inkjet device. Inkjet just brings a higher level of reliability, productivity, and affordability for color.”
Salespeople will also find a more educated buyer in print shops and in-plants. “Most have attended the print shows, they’ve read about it, and they’re seeing their competition buy it,” said D’Urbano. “There’s a sense that if I don’t get into this, I’m going to get steamrolled.”
He understands the hesitancy of dealers who find it sexier to sell color print at six cents a page with toner compared to one cent for inkjet, which is one reason inkjet has had a challenging time getting a footing at the office level. “Epson hasn’t been able to crack that wall,” said D’Urbano. “That’s not their fault, they may never especially now with offices being shut down or minimized. But at the production level, inkjet is rampant.”
Recently, D’Urbano visited a private equity-owned mega dealer whose CFO who told him, “We sell into the office; I have no idea where we would sell this type of technology.” He’s heard similar comments from other dealers who have been in the business for decades.
Still, he remains undaunted in spreading the word, buoyed by dealers that view affordably priced color inkjet production devices as “this bastion of opportunity of growth of meter clicks. And that’s what it’s all about, meter clicks. They’re just being printed elsewhere, and what dealers have done wrong is failed to follow the trail of those meter collects because they’ve migrated from the office to a print shop somewhere.”
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