Oki & Ricoh "My Top Choices for Print Shop in a Box"

The print4pay market, some will say it is one of the hardest accounts to break into and others will say they are the easiest to breakdown the walls and establish long term relationships.

As B2C color improves, along with improved thick stock media ability, there are a few color printers that I'll refer to as a "Print Shop in Box". You might ask what's a print shop in a box, I got this saying from a printer in New Jersey that referred to his color printer as a "Print Shop in a Box" and the term has stuck with me. That printer was referring to the quality of color, the ability to handle many different types of media (envelopes too), and the ruggedness to run 60K, 70K or more worth of prints per month!

When I look at some color laser printers that would fit the mold of the "Print Shop in a Box", the Oki PRO920WT, Oki pro511DW and the Ricoh C831DN have what it takes.  I'm thinking we'll see many additional "niche" type printers as the demand for office printed page declines.

We'll take a brief look at the Oki pro511DW. Imagine this a color A3 LED printer that will print full color labels with variable data from a roll of media (3 inch core) ! I love the concept, have never seen one, but wish I was able to sell some of  these.

Here's a quick run down with specs:

Top Five Short Notes for MFP & Copier Industry

Sometimes you'll have the ability to rattle off 500 to 600 words with a blog and sometimes you're just left with a  little bit of this and a little bit of that.  Thus this brings to me my Top Five Short Notes for the week or the last two weeks.  If it's popular I'll try and continue for everyone. 

1.  Seems traffic at Graph Expo in Chicago was excellent for Monday and Tuesday of this week, however Sunday was no where near as good with 9/11, and the Bears game.

2.  Ricoh seems to have a definite hit on their hands with the new Ricoh C651 series print production color system!  Traffic was awesome and reviews were just as good.  I for one am chomping at the bit waiting for us to get our first system in the door.  More to come on this unit very soon!

3. Even though I run the Print4Pay Hotel forums, and I'm still out on the street selling, I still find the time to make the forums work for my customers.  I had an issue with postscript printing of booklets, and internally I had no one to turn to that could help me.  With the recent downturn of support and this goes for all manufacturers, I turned to the P4P forums and found a workaround that a fellow P4P'er had posted a few months ago.  I turned the customer onto the workaround, it worked and all was good for the account.  As one P4P'er stated a few years ago, "The service you have and are providing is INVALUABLE. Any RFG consultant/rep worth their salt should be utilizing your site. I would highly recommend you charge a reasonable fee for these services, as the information you provide from around the world cannot be packaged adequately by the manufacturers. Other associations from other industries charge for memberships; this is a very small investment that provides tremendous "edown-in-the-trenches" resources to the members."  BTW, the Print4Pay Hotel has a FREE basic membership.

4. I just read an article about Kodak and about how they are reinventing themselves as a digital player for print production and printers.  I'm thinking this was a recycled article and I'm thinking they've been trying to do this for years.  About a year ago Kodak was high on my list to sell their print production business, however with Ricoh still struggling with IKON, Canon still trying to join two different cultures with themselves and OCE, Xerox, ACS and Global still buying dealerships, KonicaMinolta???  Anyway you slice it, seems like no one may have the cash to pull off something big.

5. When will it start,  meaning it's not a matter of if it's going to happen, however when and by whom.  I see Auxilio as a prime target to be bought by like the likes of Ricoh, Canon, Xerox, or KonicaMinolta, hey maybe even Lexmark or Okidata.  To me the writing is on the wall. With the BIG 4 focusing on health care, government and law, Auxilio is fruit that's ripening on the vine and ready to be picked!

Well that's for those thoughts that have been pounding around in my head for the last few days, enjoy, comment if you wish but above all good selling to everyone!!

-=Good Selling=-

Riso ComColor Review

To tell you the truth, I was always skeptical about the Riso's new ComColor devices. The engine technology is ink, it's simple and the new ComColor's from Riso seem to be a hit and not a bust like the HP's Edgeline.

There are acutally six different models, the 3010 and the 3050 are 90 ppm full color devices that will copy, print and scan letter and legal only. The 7010 and 7050 are 120 ppm full color devices that will copy, print and scan letter, legal and ledger. Then there's the flagship models of the 9010 and the 9050 capable of 150 ppm color that will also copy, print and scan letter, legal and ledger.

Today, I had the chance to print various documents to the 7050, to say the least, I WAS IMPRESSED. This was my first "hands on" for the equipment. I printed a 12 page full color 11x17 booklet (saddle stitched) in about 15 seconds and a 32 page booklet (saddle stitched) in about 30 seconds. Not only was I impressed with the speed, but these speeds where acheived with the highest quality settings. I used 300x600, line smoothing and error diffusion , the quality of the color was exceptional! Since the ComColor uses ink, of course it won't give laser output, but it will give you knock your socks off color at a great price of three and a half cents per page and don't forget about the speed!

I also took notice that with the standard printer driver you also had the capability of using a 70 line screen and a 100 line screen. I tested these two screens on the booklets and again the output impressed me.

To me the ComColor's mantra should be "Print Shop in Box", it's a little limited with very heavy stock, however I was able to run 90lb index two sided with out a hitch. I also test pressure seal paper which fed very well and also produced very good quality.

The unit I tested had an MSRP of about $65,000. The system is designed to run 500,000 pages per month.

Where do I see this system making a big splash? Direct Mail and in house CRD's. Direct Mail has an awesome application with pressure seal paper. For just pennies, you can produce full color direct mail pieces that can include the outbound postal indicia and the return "reply card" postal indicia. The entire piece can be printed two sided with the variable data. No more boring direct mail letters in monochrome, combined with the pressure seal paper and color, this is an awesome solution for all Direct Mail Companies.

It's late, I think the ComColor is a winner, and give it a ten! Can't wait to see the next generation of these models. Maybe they'll get the price down to make them affordable for the SMB market.

-=Good Selling=-

BTW, if RISO is reading this, thanx for helping

Okidata 3641 Color MFP "Print Shop in A Box"

Can't be, Naw one system can't be everything to a Print Shop right? Well, the Okidata 3641 foots the bill and it's a "Print Shop in A Box"!

I recently had this system on a demonstration with the Oki3641 at a local P4P (Print4Pay) Account in New Jersey. The customer has an older Ricoh 6513 (fiery) and a Canon 3220 (fiery). Our customer was actually using both of these units for color output the 3220 for speed and the 6513 for thick stock and high quality. Well, the oki3641 performed awesome! From thick stock (170lb index) to gloss stock and a stock I've never seen before, the stock was very thick and is stock that artist use to paint watercolors. The quality of color was awesome on all stocks.

Color was consistent from page one to five hundred, feeding different stocks was not and issue. A couple of outstanding features is that the iko will take 13x19 paper through the by-pass, plus it has a pull down exit tray that allows thick stock to come out flat and not curl (just what the doctor order).

The end is that the customer can eliminate the Ricoh and the Canon and just rely on the Oki3641 for all of his color requirements! Listed below is a few bullet points about the Oki3641.

• Has a high duty cycle, rated at 150,000 per month. Although I have it in applications that run 50,000 color prints per month with out issue.
• All toners, drums and maintenance kits can be changed by the end user. This leads to less down time.
• The color output is spectacular. Rivals anything on the market under $50K. The retail on this unit is $19,000.
• Uses micro-fine spherical toner to get high quality output.
• Can handle 12/18 out of each of the 4 draws. Up to 110lb index in the draws.
• The Multi-purpose tray can handle up to 170lb index and 12.9” x 48” paper for banners.
• Have seen some applications where a book binder is doing 5,000 sheet runs of cloth sheets thru the multipurpose tray. This does lead to premature wear of drums and fuser, however the output looks great.
• Since the 3641 is versatile, dealers usually place it in accounts that there main copier line is giving them trouble. Most of the time the 3641 is able to solve the issue and save the account.
• Some dealers are attaching a 1,000 sheet envelope feeder to the 3641 and marketing it with variable data software for envelope printing. This is an untapped market, where there is a lot of interest in print for pay.
• Comes standard with Fiery. Uses the latest OS from Fiery system 8, which allows the end user to customize properties screen in the print application.
• The Oki 3641 Fiery comes standard with Spot-on, Hot Folders, Auto trapping, Variable data printing.
• Has Send-me built in. This is Fiery’s version of e-copy. Send me is the front end of a document management system.
• You can add an OCR connector to Send-Me and it will allow you to do OCR at the machine. This saves on licensing fees. In addition it gives you search able PDF documents and a hidden text layer.
• It also copies. Although it does not have program keys, and First Copy Out Time is about 9 sec. It can be used in walk up copy environments.

-=Good Selling=-