7 Questions for Lisa At OES

From time to time I try to get my sponsors involved with the MFP Solutions blog.

Sometimes a banner ad does not tell you enough about the company nor the person behind the product.  Many months ago I had an email from Lisa Chiu introducing her self and asking for help in promoting the products and services that she sells.  Over the last three months my team was able to help Lisa with building her website, optimizing for SEO, and promoting her brand.  While you may not know Lisa like I do, I think when you're done reading what we've put together you'll have a better understanding that Lisa is committed to the channel and committed to offering quality products and service. 

Without further ado (keep in mind that your truly does not do many of these interviews and I'm just learning) please enjoy my interview with Lisa!!

How long have you been in the toner supply industry and what did you do prior to OES Tech?

I've been in the industry for almost 10 years. I started in this field by selling OEM parts and supplies in laser and copier to individual technician in 2004. Not knowing anything about this industry, I really mean it..... zero knowledge.  Two months after I started, I asked one of the technicians give me a lesson by taking apart our copy machine Toshiba BD 2860.  It was then that I realized where all the consumables were in the equipment along with the function for each part.  I made sure to store them all in my head as  world map and I'd be able to relate to any supplies when technician calling order, I was also learn the interchange able models in between brands. I thought this is FUN!!!!….....Before that I was  in the Shoe industry as a Office manager , Shipping Supervisor & sales assist for east coast contract sales… pretty much I ran the whole company , I love selling and trading and anything that turns into green as everyone else out there. (Lisa)

What's special and unique about your company?

Things got twisted by the poor economy condition.  Since 2007 start shifting left and right till rolling down the hill three years ago, luckily  we are in the field will never die out but compress in size which trigger lots of thinking to lots others and including myself.. thinking change to different supplier with lower cost or changing business field. Then I thought with the resources I have in Compatible Supplies will definitely help customers to save in cost . “ If it is the Same then Why Pay More” from that point on I was able to change my business strategy and only deal with OEM Equivalent Supplies (O E S) , it’s not easy to convince your OEM user to aftermarket but everyone is interesting to saving. By passing out samples as free trials,  they loved it and started ordering pallets and pallets to central America and US domestic reseller. Things start working well and I keep tell my customer "No feedback it’s always a good feedback”.

Is there any one sale/order that stands out from another?

 I ran into a presentation with a well known Original Equipment Manufacturer and presented our products to 10+ directors and supervisors from Head corporation and sub dealers (I were sweat like no  tomorrow, with my 4 inches  on my feet… what a killing!! ) and every word you said it counts as a promise and documented. … after 30 minutes of the meeting /presentation the head director of the aftermarket supplies chain department asked me “ Why makes you think you capable to do business with us ? What makes you think you are special compare to all other companies out there?”  … I sat back the chair a little and thinking … Quality? Price? … Service ? Oh no,  I cant think of any thing my brain went blank but in less than 10seconds  I reply------ “well, we do not alternate sourcing of our products and I can invite all of you for a manufacturer site inspection” … I had found my spirit in business as Dedication.

Do you attend any of the ITEX or BTA events?

We do not exhibit any conventions but we do attend shows as to social with some of our clients and obtain information of the market.

Where do your supplies ship from and do you offer special discounts to Print4Pay Hotel members?

All our products are FOB CA 91789 ( Walnut, CA) . Full Fill 95%, rest will fulfill with 1-business day.  Daily cutoff 4pm . order can be accept by email or you may obtain User ID and Password to browsing and place order on our site.  Normal Customer who order over $750 will get Free shipping . For P4P Hotel member you will get Free shipping when order over $500.00.

Do you guarantee your products?

We do pallet loads order all time , we guaranty 1year with 1:1 replacement.

Note from Art:  If you're a Print4Pay Hotel member and even  a dedicated reader of the MFP Solutions Blog, I can't do what I do without the help of companies like OES Tech and our sponsors. Please find the time visit Lisa's site www.oestech.com and to also call Lisa and ask us to tell us more about those 4 inch heels!!  Thank God I don't have to sell in those.

 

-=Good Selling=-

 

The Emergence of Utility Printers?

The though of utility printers has been on my mind for quite some time, especially with the recent release of the Memjet C6010 color printer that will print full color at 60 pages per minute with a retail price of about $1,200 or so.

Now, I'm not sure what the wholesale cost of that printer is, however I'm thinking $700-$800 or somewhere around there.  

With the cost being so low isn't now possible to give the printer away, especially since the ink/supplies is controlled by the dealer? You could build in the cost of the printer into the ink cost.  Better yet, if there was a way to have software that would enable a tiered billing system, the system could be placed out there with a cost per page billing.  

Of course the software for tiered billing is not available for this unit, but we're a creative bunch and I'm sure we could figure something out.  Years ago in NJ there was a Canon dealer that sold some of the early analog copier devices, they sold the end user a three pack of toner (toner kit) it also included maintenance, parts and on site service for as long as the toner kit lasted.  A very novel approach and one that was easy for the customer to understand and an absolute win win for the dealer!  As I think more about this toner kit it may have been the beginning of the cost per page agreement.  Of course their were many customers that tried to scam the process and bought toner from another dealer, but the concept was awesome and it worked well for many years.

Lately I heard of a few dealers that will be going to

Top 5 (#2) Solutions/Products at BTA East Grand Slam Event

As many of you know I attended the BTA (Business Technology Association) BTA Grand Slam Event last week in White Plains, NY.  One of the bigger vibes from the show was the Yankee game that was scheduled for the last night of the show.  The Yankees were playing the last game of the season and still chasing the American League East Pennant, my what a difference a week and a half makes right?

So, I'm in sitting in the restaurant in the Doral Arrowwood Resort for lunch, a few minutes later two guys sit down in the next table, and they were talking about the Yankees. Mind you I'm a Yankee hater, ever since they traded Roger Maris back inb the 60's.  But one of the guys wasn't sure what time the game was on Wednesday night, so I chimed in with the time and to my surprise it was Chris Polek (CE0) of Polek & Polek.  I had never met Chris before and it was a pleasure to meet one of my long time sponsors of the Print4Pay Hotel forums.

Polek & Polek is a supplier of generic toner for printers and copiers, I know first hand that they spend a lot of time to have the best quality aftermarket supplies in the business.  I used to do business with them when I had my own dealership back in the eighties, I never had a problem with any of the products that they sold. 

While at the BTA Event, after every speaker there was a 45 minute break that allowed dealers to go and meet the vendors (awesome), and after one of the breaks I went over to talk to Chris to catch up and to ask me to tell him more about the products he has available.  He mentioned staples, I said what? Staples... Polek & Polek carries aftermarket staples for all of the MFP manufactures, better yet they are manufactured by Swingline (who can ask for a better product manufacturer, right).  Chris explained the dealers can save up to 40-45% off th manufacturers wholesale price.  Chris told me that one of his largest dealers had told him that by just buying the staples from Polek & Polek that they had saved over $10K in one year! That's awesome.

Whether you're in need of aftermarket drums, toners, developers, staples and I'm sure a heck of a lot of other stuff maybe it's time to fatten your profits and give them a call and tell me the Print4Pay Hotel mentioned that they are one of the "go to" vendors in our industry!

BTW,  Polek & Polek is a sponsor of the Print4Pay Hotel forums and I'd like to thank them for their years of support.

-=Good Selling=-

Top 5 Trending MFP & Printer Solutions

Those of us in the know are always trying to catch on the latest and greatest MFP & Print solutions.  Here's my top 5 from the last year with a short overview on each. When was the last time you hugged your copier solutions rep, cause if they are bringing these solutions to the table then you owe it to them to reach out and hug them!

1) PretonSaver:  Need to get more bang for the buck out of your toner cartridges?  Take a gander at Preton Saver software, Pretonsaver will eliminate those pesky little extra pixels of toner and can offer toner savings of up to 25-45%!

Hey, maybe it's not a bad idea to go back to selling maintenance agreements, not include the toner, but do include licenses of PretonSaver.  Just think about the talk track to the end user.  You buy the toner, we'll do the service/maintenance but we'll also sell you "x" licenses of PretonSaver that can save you 25-45% of your toner costs for your MFP and your printer fleet!  Thus you would have the extremely low cost per page of service/maintenance coupled with an almost 50% savings on the toner.  Look at it this way, if manufacturer is stating 6% coverage for toner, and the toner cost is $32 for 8,000 pages that puts the retail toner cost at .0032, using PretonSaver you could lower that cost to .00144.  That's a savings of .00176, over the life of the MFP if you printed and copied 400,000 pages you would have a savings of $704 and that's only for one MFP! Can you image the savings on the fleet? 

2) Print Audit:  I've always been a fan of Print Audit, even before they became a Print4Pay Hotel sponsor.  Plain and simple their software works, day in day out, simple to use, simple to install and the ease of use is second to none.  Print Audit has a wide variety of print management software that is designed for the end user of the office equipment dealer.  I can't tell you how many calls I get from customers claiming "my color volume has gone through the roof", "this machine is costing me more than the payment on my car", and those customers are right. They have no way of controlling printing, whether it's color or black. It's not the dealers fault, nor is it the manufacturers fault, the end user needs to take some accountability and place limits on printing or re-direct printing to lower cost devices.  Print Audit 6 will do all of that plus more, and it's done behind the scenes, once you set the print rules it like "set it and forget it", Print Audit 6 will insure that limits are enforced and re-directing to lower cost devices is now the norm. Copier Dealers, there's never been a better time to become a Premier Print Audit partner, everyone is looking to reduce costs, prints and their Premier SaaS model allows you to sell software by the click, by the seat or just a flat monthly fee!

3) Doculex: Doculex has been a mainstay in the office equipment industry for many years. Doculex my first introduction into Document Management Software. If you had to ask me name the first document management company that comes to mind then it would be Doculex.  By no means am I document management guru,  however Doculex has roots in the MFP industry, long before other DMS companies were soliciting their wares to MFP dealers Doculex was already there with a very impressive channel of MFP Dealers.  "By becoming a DocuLex Reseller, you can provide your customers a complete document management solution, increasing your recurring revenue and customer retention. Attract new customers and add value to your existing customer base. DocuLex can provide direct support for you and your customer, and customers can get started with the DocuLex Archive Studio Content Management Software solution for as little as $ 40 per user per month."  Just and FYI Doculex is a sponsor for the Print4Pay Hotel and we'll have a guest blog posted for them soon along with webinars for our members.


4) Nuance:  In particular their ecopy paperworks, sometimes you just need simplicity right?  I just love showing ecopy paperworks to my existing customers and potential new accounts. eCopy paperworks is one of those rare software programs that you can fully understand all of the icons and master after 5 times.  With ease you can whiteout/blackout text, add lines with arrows (color lines too), highlight an area in different colors, add digital notes, add signatures, OCR a document (drop back into word or excel), .pdf a document, use the TWAIN scan feature, draw freehand notes, move pages, delete pages, cut, copy, paste and even add hyperlinks to a document.  I use ecopy every day and can't think what I would do if I did not have paperworks anymore.   Over the years I demo'd this product many times and I've never had someone tell me that they didn't like it. Take it from if you're in need of software that will convert documents to .pdf's and you need to do markups on documents the ecopy paperworks is the best I've seen in years!

5) UDOCX:  A couple of years ago before I even knew that web browsers could be used in MFPs, I had a thread posted on the Print4Pay Hotel forums from the marketing person for UDOCX. The thread pointed out that in Europe on Ricoh devices with enabled web browsers users could now scan2sharepoint, scan2MS365 without the need to have a software installed on a server. This was genius, the UDOCX is software as a service, users would pay a monthly fee and you were off and running with a powerful web based scanning solution (with no server hardware or software to maintain) from the MFP. Now, web enabled MFP browsers took a little longer here in the states, but at least with all of the new Ricoh MFP's you're good to go.  It's my understanding that you can also use the UDOCX service with Xerox, Sharp & Canon systems.  UDOCX will also support cloud printing and scan2fax.  Scan2fax, think about it, no MFP fax option to purchase, no telephone line charges, no call charges, no taxes and no FCC charges.

-=Good Selling=-

Top 7 Solutions @ Transform 2012 PretonSaver @ #2

Big isn't always better right?  While on the Exhibitor Floor I came across PretonSaver. PretonSaver is a SaaS software solution that offers an innovative way to lower your fixed toner costs with toner optimization. 

Here's a quote from the brochure I picked up "Pixel Optimization is Preton's patent-pending technology that optimizes toner consumption by identifying and deleting overlapping pixels. By intelligently removing unnecessary pixels. Pixel Optimizer saves as much as 35% in toner and ink without visibly impacting quality"

At the booth Preton had sample books printing with using their toner optimization software, so far I've only had the chance to review the 10% toner optimization.  The booklet showed the print with zero optimization and then 10% optimization.  Hey, 10% seemed darn good.  The PretonSaver will allow MPS vendors or end users to extend the life of the toner cartridges. Thus creating additional profit for the MPS provider or additional savings for the end user.
As a subscription service, PretonSaver can comfortably fit into the pay-as-you-print pricing schemes of MPSs. The pricing for the PretonSaver service is based on the same chargeable clicks that an MPS is charging to customers.

Features at a Glance:

• Toner and ink optimization
• Print reports and statistics
• Print rules and policies
• Page coverage reporting
• Remote meter collection
• Real-time device service alerts
• Supplies level information
• Automated reports

I was also able to get some additional information about PretonSaver.  PretonSaver installs on the server, and the individual users can control the amount of of savings they desire.  Quality won't be degraded with up to 30% text and 10% photo (variable).   All in all, the samples in the book were greatly appreciated since anyone can claim a savings, with the book I was able to see the changes with the print optimizer software.  Preton also has a pretty cool ROI calculator, you'll need to give them your email address however I think that's a fair trade off for the value of the report.  Here's the link PretonSaver ROI Calculator.

If you're looking for a way to increase profits and or extend the life of your consumables I would definitely check out PretonSaver and see what they have to offer. You can also download a FREE trial here.

BTW, PretonSaver is not an advertiser for the Print4Pay Hotel, just a really cool solution that sets you apart from your compeititors.

-=Good Selling=-

Ricoh A4 MFP or Canon A4 MFP "That is the Question"

It doesn't happen that often....that you'll have two major manufacturing going to market with the same type of devices within a month or two of each other.  Canon is set to launch their  Black A4 MFP on or around 11/7/2011 and Ricoh is set to launch their Black A4 MFP in November also. 

The Canon 1700 series will have six different models ranging in speed from 32 pages per minute to 52 pages per minute.  These six models will be the 1750/1750if, 1740/1740if, and the 1730/if.  The if version comes with  standard PCL 5e/6 and PostScript 3 drivers, the ability to create searchable PDFs, along with a fax module. Color Send, is included with the imageRUNNER 1700 but you'll have to pay more for the better featured Universal Send.

The BIG deal with the Canon, it seems Canon 1700 will be the first to follow the A3 model cost per page in an A4 device.  For those of you that are not familiar with this, the A3 model cost per page model is when you do not have an AIO (All in cartridge) that houses the toner, the drum, the cleaning blade and the waste toner hopper.  The Canon 1700 will have a separate toner and drum cartridge that should support a low TCO (Total Cost of Ownership).  I haven't seen the cost per page yet, however I'm hoping this is the case.

The market is ripe for the picking if the cost per page is in line with Canon A3 MFP devices.  I don't think the imageRUNNER 1750 (52 ppm) will have the same cost per page as it's bigger brother Canon A4 MFP's that are 50 pages per minute.  I thinking it may be close, and if it is I see Canon with the ability to capture and take away clicks from the likes of Ricoh, Toshiba, HP, Sharp Konica Minolta, Kyocera and Xerox.

Some initial drawbacks for the Canon imageRUNNER if would be Postscript emulation, a non color GUI (Graphical User Interface) and only one paper tray and one by-pass tray is standard. 

Make no bones about it this system will be a force to be reckoned with, especially if TCO comes into play.

Right, this is a blog and I can't get too lengthy, so off we go with Ricoh....

My 2nd Reason Why Managed Print Services is a Loser

My first reason for Why Managed Print Services is a loser was waste and maybe that was to broad of a reason.  Waste can come in many different forms, such as waste in energy, waste is resources, waste in consumables, waste in landfill, waste of space, and waste of time!

As the second reason, I'd like to focus on waste of energy.  Think about it, 50 lasers printers firing up everyday, heating and cooling all day long. It's gotta take it's toll on energy consumption.  For those of you who are not aware of the laser engine technology, I'll make is real simple for you. Toner is needed to make a print, in most laser printers toner is housed in the print cartridge. Toner is fine plastic resin particles. In order for the toner to adhere to the paper it must be heated and fixed.  All laser printers have a heat roller or heat belt that melts to toner.  In order to have the printer print quickly most of these devices maintain a temperature threshold.

So, lets be bold and say we have 50 laser printers firing up and staying on all day wouldn't it be smarter to have 5 work group Multifunctional Copier Devices that could support every ones printing.  

Gesh, what would it cost on energy to run let's say a certain "Q" color laser printer?

Daily Copier & MFP Industry Notes from around the World

Fuji Xerox (Kanagawa / Japan; http://www.fujixerox.com/) has developed a biomass plastic containing more than 50% by weight of plant-derived materials for use in mechanical components in interior moving sections of its printing and copying machines. The company began introducing...need to read more?

Konica Minolta Business Solutions U.S.A., Inc. (Konica Minolta) today announces the launch of SchoolFlow®, EducationFlow®, HealthFlow® and LegalFlow®, customized electronic document management suites developed in conjunction with Prism Software to address workflow demands across key vertical markets. Fully integrated with Konica Minolta’s...what to know more?


One of the questions I hear frequently is about the potential impact of memjet – the inkjet print head technology – on the wide format digital print market. This question is likely to become even more common following the announcements at Graph Expo and LabelExpo that two companies have become the first to integrate the memjet print head technology into wide format digital print solutions...read more

UDOCX will be at the SharePoint Conference next week in Anaheim. My collegue and UDOCX Product Manager Fabien van 't Woudt will be attending the conference next week monday and tuesday (3rd and 4th of October 2011). Please let me know if you need any additional information...read more

Redwood City, Calif. and Ramsey, N.J. - All Covered, a division of Konica Minolta Business Solutions U.S.A. (Konica Minolta) focused on delivering high-performance Managed IT Services to small- and medium-sized businesses, is pleased to announce that Vertical IT Solutions, a Managed IT outsourcing company based in Tampa, Florida, has joined All Covered...read more

-=Good Selling=-
You know the story, it is not free.

You built a TV or a stereo into your cost and gave it away at N/C to the Decision Maker. I heard of one DM who get a free Recreational Trailer ($15k) if he signed on the dotted line.... and he did. ($10k copier + $15k trailer = $25k lease). I let how the DM handles these gifts up to themselves. If they object, no problem but the price remains the same. Is this ethical business practice?...want to read the rest?