Growth Opportunities for Wide Format & The PEiR Group

This week I had an interesting email from Joel Salus. Joel is the Author "Reprographics 101" blog ad over the years we've been able to trade some information here and there.  Joel's blog can now be located at the IRgA web site.  The email was so informative about wide format that I asked Joel if I could use him as our Guest Blogger for this month.  Enjoy!

Hi Art,

The last time I dropped you an e-mail, your son had just graduated from Infantry Boot Camp. I hope your son is doing well!

Today, I visited your blog and read a couple of articles you posted about the Photizo Group conference you attended in Scottsdale. I received a "complimentary" invitation to attend the conference, but, unfortunately, I couldn't make it because I've had a very heavy workload the past couple of months .... and that hasn't let up yet.

I wanted to take just a minute to drop you a note about one thing you said in one of your recent blog posts.

Below, I've copied a sentence form that recent post:

"There seems to be growth opportunities for wide format systems, and we also mentioned the potential explosive growth for 3D printers".

Art, you may recall,

from our first chat via e-mail, that I'm "from" the "Reprographics Industry", not from the Copier Industry. For the past 10 months I've been the "Managing Director" of the "International Reprographics Association" (the "IRgA"). I'm leaving that post the end of this month I'm continuing to publish my blog, "Reprographics 101", which, for the past 10 months, has been published on the IRgA web-site. (At the end of May, I will be relocating the Reprographics 101 Blog to another place on the Internet.)

Regarding the sentence I copied out of your post ... in particular, where it says "there seems to be growth opportunities for wide format"...... I want to bring to your attention, just in case you want to pass this information along to your P4P visitors, that their is a trade association, called "The PEiR Group" that offers, via membership, special programs for equipment resellers.

This trade association (The PEiR Group) has three different types of members:

a) Reprographers who are in the reprographics services business (i.e., "print for pay") and who only offer reprographics services.

b) Reprographers who are in the reprographics services business AND who also buy and re-sell imaging equipment (and, under MPS and FM programs, place equipment "on-site" at their customers' offices.

c) Re-sellers of imaging equipment (they are not in the print for pay business, but they do buy and resell equipment.)

This trade association offers three different types of benefits:

a) it acts like a buying co-op. The association has deals with quite a number of different manufacturers and distributors of equipment, whereby PEiR Group members are able to buy stuff at substantial discounts. Reprographers who belong to the PEiR Group ("PG") use the power of the buying co-op to reduce their costs for imaging equipment (for their shops and for resale) and to reduce their costs for media and supplies.

b) it offers technology software, software that's used at reprographics shops and software that's also used in MPS (FM) programs at customer sites. For example, the PG offers AbacusPCR, which is an "output tracking and reporting" software. Kind of like what Equitrac is/was, only AbacusPCR is much more powerful than Equitrac ever was; AbacusPCR tracks all kinds of output, small-format AND large-format and also offers device management. PG members get substantial discounts on technology products offered by the PEiR Group.

c) it offers dealer programs from wide-format equipment manufacturers - and there's been keen interest in this from equipment re-sellers who are, or have been, branching out into "large-format equipment." For example, the PG offers an entry-level membership program, referred to as the "PG Canon-Only" program. For $150 per month, an equipment re-seller can immediately become a Canon ImagePrograf "Platinum" Dealer. No quotas to meet. Least-cost way to acquire Canon wide-format printing equipment for re-sale. Maximum "instant" rebates on equipment. Substantial rebates on consumables sales. No territory restrictions, at all. Any reseller can join the PEiR Group. Aside from Canon, their are similar excellent benefits for those who want to re-sell KIP and HP and OCE wide-format gear. After all, the PEiR Group was established by a company that's primarily in the "reprographics" business..... that's why most of the deals are very appealing to reprographers .... and to companies who have not traditionally been players in the wide-format part of the industry.

For those of your friends and readers who are already in, or are interested in, the "wide-format equipment resale business", they should check out The PEiR Group.

And, for those of your friends and readers who are, already, in that business and who also offer MPS programs that include both small-format and large-format equipment, they should check out these two PEiR Group technology products (software products): MetaPrint and AbacusPCR. Both of those PG technology products offer huge benefits: MetaPrint is a productivity tool that allows maximum control over work-flow and output to large-format printers (OCE, KIP, HP, Canon, Epson) and AbacusPCR is an awesome "accounting, tracking, cost reporting" tool.) END.

Wow, this was all news to me and Joe's pointed out some awesome benefits of the PEiR Group.  For those of us that are entrenched with wide format for the AEC market and those of us Ricoh dealers that are going to sell the new color wide formats systems. The PEiR group can offer us additional insight and education opportunities for wide format.

-=Good Selling=-