Gary Willert
In an industry where quality and reputation are everything, LMI Solutions has made every effort imaginable to ensure that quality and reputation are the hallmarks to their success. Unlike Rock & Roll Hall of Famer Joan Jett, they certainly give a damn about their “Good Reputation.”
Headquartered in Phoenix, Arizona with state of the art distribution centers across the United States and Canada, LMI is well renowned for delivering the right product to the right place on time.
If you’re not familiar with LMI Solutions, they’re an R2 certified manufacturer, distributor, and recycler of premium replacement toner cartridges, remanufactured printers, drums, fusers, parts, and maintenance kits. Altogether LMI distributes more than 1,000 SKUs, including OEM and non-OEM products with more than 350 aftermarket color and black & white options among its offerings. In addition, LMI is considered a global leader for Managed Print Services infrastructure and support and has a host of awards in recognition of its MPS excellence.
A Good Buy
CEO Gary Willert, who acquired the company when it was then known as LaserMasters LLC in 1996, acknowledges he didn’t know if it was the right thing to do when asked what made him think it was the right time to get into the imaging supplies business. However, history has validated that decision.
“I did some research into the industry, found this company, and it looked like an emerging market and the whole idea of recycling was a positive as far as the environment is concerned,” he recalls.
It didn’t hurt either that the Phoenix economy was growing during this time, making it an ideal location for an imaging supplies operation. “It was a low cost of living, which is good for our industry because [remanufacturing] is typically a laborious task,” says Willert.
Buying a business is one thing, growing it into a successful operation is another thing altogether. That first year under Willert, LMI’s revenue was a respectable $365,000. From there, due in large part to expanding product offerings and diversifying into client services, the growth has been exponential. This year revenues are expected to exceed more than $100 million.
That’s one thing even LMI’s customers might be surprised to hear—how rapidly the company has grown as much as it has over the years without sacrificing quality, reputation, or the personal touch of a privately owned company.
“I came from a background of doing the right thing and building a quality product and working hard—nothing fancy,” says Willert. “If you apply those things to your business you can be successful. We were fortunate; the business grew based on word of mouth. Our customers helped us grow.”
For the past five years LMI has been growing 30-35 percent every year. While this year’s numbers are not that high, they’re still impressive.
Asked what’s the biggest difference between the LMI of the early years after he first bought the company and today, Willert points to the company’s size.
“We were a small company and did everything on a shoestring,” recalls Willert. “Today we’re a complete business with a complete product line and strong distribution capabilities.”
LMI’s warehouse.
Satisfaction Guaranteed
LMI’s customer base encompasses office equipment dealers, VARs, and office supply retailers throughout the United States and Canada. The company takes special care to ensure the quality of its products and that customers remain satisfied. That’s one reason the company consistently spends an inordinate amount of time improving the quality of its products as well as expanding the mix of products.
“If you talk to our customers, talk to our competitors, talk to our supply chain, they will tell you we are absolutely relentless in our search for improving quality all the time,” says Christian Pepper, director of Marketing. “Our VP of Manufacturing, Juan Camargo, has been with the company since the beginning before Gary bought it. For 20 some years he’s been the guy responsible for quality and every product has his stamp of approval all over it. He’s ruthless in his pursuit of quality and won’t release a product to the market unless it meets the LMI quality standards.”
Ongoing investments in talent, product innovation, sustainability, and a Lean Six Sigma approach to manufacturing has allowed LMI to manufacture innovative products that outperform OEM standards with a field performance defect rate of only 3:1000 products delivered. LMI has achieved ISO 14001 and R2 certifications for the entire chain of custody of their products including manufacturing through to LMI’s end of life Zero Landfill Recycling programs.
Each of LMI’s toner cartridges are backed by one of the industry’s strongest satisfaction guarantees. Plus resellers have easy access to private labeling and bar-code scanning for blind drop shipping that ensures 100 percent order accuracy. Those are some of the reasons resellers choose LMI. Another reason cited by Willert for LMI’s success is because they’re easy to do business with. Plus they’re a company that many resellers can easily identify with.
“We’re not a multi-billion dollar company and we can relate to each other. We’re like a lot of independent dealers and have day to day struggles like they do. That goes a long way.”
“It’s in our DNA, the focus on the customer,” adds Pepper. “That permeates from Gary’s leadership to all levels of the organization where it’s understood that we’ll always go the extra mile for the customer.”
LMI also has a reputation for investing in its customer relationships.
“If they need help with their Website, we do that for them, if they need marketing material customized or aimed at a vertical market, we do that too and they reward us with loyalty and growth,” says Pepper. “By listening to the customer and understanding the challenges they’re having, we’ve diversified into offering services to our customers that has helped them succeed in their business. By listening we’ve built a wide range of services and tools for our customers.”
All of that expansion originated at the customer level. Customers asked for more and LMI delivered. That’s another example of the LMI difference.
Making a Mark in Managed Print
For dealers looking to grow their profits with Managed Print Services, LMI is an ideal partner. LMI has a full set of services around Managed Print that the reseller can take advantage of on an a la carte basis. LMI provides remote monitoring software, total cost of ownership calculation software, the cartridges of course, and its Peak Performance System, online training modules for a reseller looking to excel at MPS to use to train their reps.
The company’s entry into MPS was actually inspired by its customers who were impressed by how well its cartridges performed in a managed print environment compared to OEM cartridges, where LMI’s cartridges offered similar or better yields. Today LMI offers MAX-LIFE toner cartridges, a series of cartridges that exceed OEM yields to get more pages out of cartridges than OEM based yields.
MPS dealers also appreciate the company’s PageTrac Advantage Program, a best of breed suite of MPS tools and resources that ensures dealer success. The LMI PageTrac Advantage encompasses industry leading print management software, a TCO calculator, an automated proposal generator, an MPS sales training and marketing program, plus a proven fulfillment system designed to maximize dealer profits and ensure end user satisfaction.
The online training modules have proven to be particularly helpful for dealers. They educate reps on how to prospect, how to handle objections, and how to handle fleet assessments, and were developed in conjunction with leading MPS consultants.
“It provides everything a new or seasoned rep would need to know to understand the Managed Print Services business model,” says Pepper.
The modules also include interviews with C Level leaders and sustainability officers in large organizations who described how they’d prefer to be approached by a MPS sales rep along with their hot buttons for MPS. At the end of each module the rep must achieve a certain score on a questionnaire to progress to the next module. Scores are made available to management as well.
“Once trained we provide a full suite of marketing communications material for the rep to use,” notes Pepper.
The material can be customized by the dealer. LMI even provides MPS-related videos that the dealer can post on their Website.
Pepper adds that LMI can also produce MPS Websites for the dealer, as well as help with digital media from SEO to social media management marketing.
“We manage that all on behalf of our customers to help them find and field leads for the MPS opportunity in a reseller’s local market,” says Pepper. “It’s everything a reseller coming out of the copier industry would need to succeed in MPS.”
While LMI has built its business on quality supplies and consumables, diversifying into printers a little over a year ago has been a wise move and a move that fits perfectly with its MPS strategy. It’s all about adding more value while also meeting the expanding needs of its customers.
“That’s been more of a push this year as well as what can we do for our dealers,” explains Willert about the company’s printer offerings and its mission to add value. “How can we help them grow their business and improve their profitability? Whatever that grows into—whether it’s new and improved products or software, or a better solution to auto fulfillment—that’s what we’re going to concentrate on.”
“We’re giving our resellers an alternative to buying new printers and consumables,” adds Pepper. “We provide our resellers with everything they’d need—best of breed products and services from the aftermarket, consumables, MPS training, marketing tools, and remanufactured hardware.”
Raising its Profile
As successful as LMI has been over the years, many resellers are still discovering the company for the first time.
“We’ve kept a low profile and been under the radar for years and years,” acknowledges Willert.
Despite that low profile, LMI has been able to grow every year.
“We’ve never had a down year,” says Willert.
The company doesn’t have a huge sales force or marketing budget, but Willert says part of the growing up process is marketing the company better and differently. “There are still a lot of people who haven’t heard of us. We’re trying to change that.”
That’s why LMI is busy ramping up its marketing efforts and raising its profile in the channel.
Despite flying under the radar as Willert says, the industry has noticed LMI’s excellence and in 2013, BTA channel members selected LMI as the Winner of “Best Remanufactured Cartridges.” They’ve also been recognized by the MPSA with a “Best MPS Program” award and as North America’s #1 “MPS Infrastructure Provider.” Not a bad achievement for what began as a small business.
What’s next for LMI?
Willert doesn’t take LMI’s success for granted and truly appreciates the support of his customers.
“I respect every one of our dealers and what they’re trying to accomplish. We try to deliver the best product and quality we can and treat them the way they want to be treated.”
There’s no standing still at LMI and Willert reports that the company is intent on turning over as many opportunities as it possibly can. “There are some major opportunities out there and we need to continue down the path and be the alternative solutions provider people are looking for.”
“In the future for us is more vertical integration within this space,” adds Pepper. “Our objective is to deliver more tools, products and services to our resellers that help them succeed in the print industry. We believe we will succeed if we invest in helping our customers be successful.”
