Monday, September 10, 2007

Can SeriPrinters Revitalize Digital Duplicators?


Hear yee, Here yee, "duplicators are dead". With cpc's eroding lower and lower, and the onset of hi-speed cheap ink printers will digital duplicators go the way of the horse and buggy?
Mike Scott (Business Development and Marketing Executive) of DRYPrint http://www.dryprint.com/ tends to think that SeriPrinters may move Digital Duplicators to a niche market for production printing!

Recently, I had the chance to speak to Mike in reference to SeriPrinters, the serprinter actually attaches to the end of a digital duplicator and performs a basic function that drys the ink from a digital duplicator (using UV light) . The Seri also requires dedicated ink, or Seri UV ink, nice thing about the dedicated ink is that it can only be purchased from DRYPrint, therefor Seri Dealers have a captive ink market and a great revenue stream for years and years. But, the key to the Seri is that it will let a duplicator print onto virtually any stock! I've personally sold two units where the client needed to print lot numbers onto a gloss stock that had a varnish. They tried many laser printers and all failed, the printers could not handle the stock and the varnish caused premature failure of the fuser units. In came the Seri, and a Ricoh Duplicator and all of the problems were solved, the system was laying down black lot numbers on 120lb stock on top of a varnish finish! The customer was happy and that made me happy.

Mike states that there are many vertical markets for the Seri such as Associations, Colleges, Universities, Non-Profit Groups, Pharmacuetical, Print Shops along with Production Print Houses (in Plant Print Shops).

So, what else is Seri up to, well another model is the Seri25VDP, the VDP is for Variable Data Printing. Connecting is a snap with the built in Ethernet. Seri incorporated an ink print engine to lay down the variable data once at the end of the print cycle. The process runs smooth and adding VDP at 120 pages a minute is exactly what Associations, College and Universities need. Not only can you add a text but you can also print and image along with multiple lines of text and in different colors. As of right now Seri offers Black, Red, Reflex Blue and Green. Plus, get this the Seri even print postage prepaid on envelopes!

As Mike and I were talking, it seemed to me that reps who take on the product need to sell the Features, Advantages and Benefits of the SeriPrinter, there is no need to talk about the Duplicator, sell the SERI and the Duplicator will follow. Cool, similar to Solution Sales, sell the solution and the hardware will follow.

With the eroding GP's and lower Gross Margins, Solution Guru and Print Gurus should give the SeriPrinter serious consideration in their solution selling process. No competition, great margins and a protected ink revenue stream that will last many years.
So, when you think about the next solution think about where a Seri may fit in, think about the solution and think about the locking out the competition. Take a trip to http://www.dryprint.com/ and see what they've got going on!

No comments: