What Do You Expect from Sharp but a Grunt

I changed up the title a bit, my Father-in Law has this saying "what do you expect from a pig but a grunt" that he uses when he is annoyed with someone or something.  I'm changing it up a bit to express my annoyance with Sharp.

The other day there was a thread on linkedin that stated something to the effect "look how many dealers have just signed on with Sharp in the past month because they have the best products", plus there were some 5 likes to the thread. 

To give you a little background, I had a call and an email from a marketing company or it might have been from someone at Sharp Marketing a few years ago.  But, I distinctly remember the gist of the call/email, the marketing person stated that they needed to do a better job at getting press releases out to social media.  Since then, I set an alert for Sharp and have posted every press release for Sharp that I came across. Not once in the past three years do I remember reading a press release about Sharp signing on a new dealer in the US.

What gets me, is that within a week or two after the report from Nikkei that Sharp may sell it's copier division, I read a press release from Sharp USA that they had signed on a new dealer.  I really didn't think that much about the release, then a week a later there was another press release stating Sharp had signed a new dealer, and then another and another.  I get it Sharp needs to pump up the volume for Sharp USA, in light of Sharp Corporations debt debacle.  What I don't get is why Sharp USA has waited until things were REALLY BAD to get the word out.  In my eyes Sharp USA with their meager market share should have been doing this years ago.  Why wait until the ship is sinking?  You can check it our on the Sharp USA site, no mention of new dealers before September 2012.

Sharp used to be the bomb of the industry,  when you thought about office copiers in the mid nineties, you thought SHARP! Starting in the mid nineties IKON started buying every Sharp dealer that was breathing in the US. I'm pretty sure IKON bought 97 dealers in or around 1996-1997.  Then one day the shoe dropped, IKON dropped Sharp and reign of dominance for Sharp copiers came to an end.

I've got nothing against Sharp, however Sharp USA should have never waited this long to tell the story of the new dealers they were signing, as a matter of fact when you visit the press release link that I posted Sharp USA never really posted many press releases related to MFP's and copiers.   

Last week press releases had Sharp now laying off 11,000 workers, and they really weren't specific about were the layoffs were.  Just today a report from Bloomberg states that it seems the deal between Hon Hai and Sharp could be dead.  Sharp's stock on the heels of the Sharp bailout from Japanese banks dropped an additional 3% and down to 196 yen.  Sharp borrowed 368 billion yen to stay afloat until June of 2013.

I'd like to see Sharp come out of it, however I think it's time they got out of the MFP and copier business and sell to Kyocera or Toshiba.

-=Good Selling=-