If there’s one thing Jim Coriddi abhors, it’s the thought of his company falling behind the curve. But the chief dealer officer, U.S. dealer division for Ricoh USA doesn’t have to worry about the manufacturer becoming complacent from a market or technology standpoint. Not to mention a partnership point of view. Or through the M&A lens.
Actually, Ricoh gets credit for crossing M&A with technology courtesy of the 2024 acquisition of natif.ai by its Tokyo parent company. That promises to proliferate the product and service catalog with various incarnations of artificial intelligence. Its joint venture with Toshiba Tec seems to have triggered a new wave of manufacturer-to-manufacturer agreements. Closer to its U.S. headquarters in Exton, Pennsylvania, the 2022 addition of Cenero—a service-focused audio-visual technology, unified communications and IT solutions provider—buttressed Ricoh’s desire to expand the conversations its dealer partners have with their customers.
Coriddi sat down with ENX Magazine to provide perspective behind Ricoh’s wide-ranging initiatives, from smaller-scale dealer meetings that cut to the chase of business integrations and efficiencies to the JV with Toshiba and other elements that may not necessarily be product-driven.
How did Ricoh fare in the U.S. during the first three quarters of 2024, and what were some of the variables that played a role in shaping the year? How did expectations line up with results?
Coriddi: It’s been a solid year. I think we certainly held our own relative to the industry for the calendar year. But quite frankly, it wasn’t the same type of year-over-year growth we had seen the past couple years since COVID. It’s difficult to make an apples-to-apples comparison, because I think there was a lot of pent-up demand because of supply chain blockages that got shipped last year on top of the regular business. In that sense, we had a 15-month year last year from a pure shipment standpoint. The good news is production has been very strong, particularly in the higher segments where we play. We didn’t have as much unit growth, but we had good revenue growth because of the mix on the higher end. We think that’s because print is increasingly going from the office devices to more volume on the production units. I think that market trend certainly plays to our strategy. There’s a continuous focus on sustainable workflows and the demand for adjacent offerings to help customers manage their information. In the core, I think we maintain our leadership position as a top-tier provider, along with production and the cloud-based applications and services.
What can you tell us, progress-wise, about the Etria joint venture with Toshiba? Is everything on schedule, including the timetable for technology development?
Coriddi: We announced that joint venture with Toshiba Tec [in 2023], and as of July 1 [2024], the new manufacturing company, Etria, was launched as a Ricoh subsidiary, and we own 85% of it. The most significant part of this venture is that it emphasizes Ricoh’s innovative commitment to stay ahead of the business landscape when it comes to MFP print devices. This is a big commitment and investment, and everything’s moving on schedule. As we stated initially, we’re not going to see any newly manufactured product for 18–24 months, and there’s been no departure from that schedule.
We learned a lot from the supply chain issues a few years ago. From a manufacturing standpoint, it’s really all about sourcing the parts and components, and having a wider variety of vendors. This joint venture puts us in a position where there’s much more flexibility by having additional facilities and different sources for these components. That part is very positive. And I think it’s important to stress that Ricoh and Toshiba remain two totally different, independent companies. Neither company has a line of sight into each other’s plans. We’ll continue to market and support the businesses exclusively.
It seems as if Ricoh started a trend when it comes to OEM agreements. Considering the new players in the landscape, do you think we’ll see any fundamental changes in the U.S. market?
Coriddi: Each of these partnerships have different characteristics to them. In terms of OEMs establishing different types of relationships, Ricoh has been an innovator for a long time. In years past, we acquired Savin, Lanier and IKON, and in a lot of ways those deals were different from what had been done in the past. When we acquired Hitachi and IBM print solutions, we used that as a catalyst to be a leader in production. That was a big thing. In 2017, we basically transferred our SMB strategy to our dealers. So we’ve been at the foreground of those types of deals.
In 2024, these OEM relationships kicked into high gear. I think the new players in the market are going to be challenged by a lack of customer support footprint. Some of our competitors have chosen to reduce their dealer field support, and we’ll see what it all means. Customers look to their providers for more adjacent offerings, and this is right in line with Ricoh’s strategies. We’re in a strong position as these changes continue. And we expect there will be more.
What stands out as some of the watershed moments for Ricoh over the past 12 months? What resonated the most with you?
Coriddi: The business is changing on so many levels. One of the recent investments we made, Etria, really exemplifies our commitment to support our dealer partners. We also had a provocative acquisition of a software company called natif.ai, which is going to allow us to bring artificial intelligence into the DocuWare content management platform. We also acquired Cenero, an A/V services company that brings new revenue value to our offering. In fact, we’re launching a dealer support system to provide that to the dealer. Ricoh has made all of these acquisitions in a coordinated, thoughtful way.
Another thing that stands out is how we’ve dramatically increased communications with our dealers. We’ve gone to smaller conferences and venues so we could have more transparent dialog and more intimate business discussions with our dealers. That’s critical because we plan to work together with them to take share. It’s important to have a strong connection and an element of integration with the strategies.
What does this mean for the future of the Partner Summit?
Coriddi: We had two national meetings in 2024—one in Washington, D.C., the other in Los Angeles. The total amount of time we were together with our dealers during each meeting was 24 hours. The idea was to ensure dealers didn’t have to be out of the office for long. It was an intense 24 hours, however, and the feedback from our dealers was that it was an extremely transparent dialog. It was high impact because it was business focused. It was our next step in coming out of the larger meeting that we had in Denver in 2023. We’re able to dive deeper into business efficiencies with them. There’s always talk about products and programs, as in all OEM-client conferences, but we’re looking to take this relationship with our key dealers to another level, and that’s integrating and making our business more efficient working together. In 2025, we plan to have more connections with our dealers and their teams and do these smaller events. We’ll couple that with more webcast-type initiatives where we can talk directly to the sales forces and leaders at the dealerships. Are we planning one large event for this coming calendar year? Probably not. A larger event will probably happen sometime after 2025.
What innovations can we expect to see during 2025?
Coriddi: We’re going to be leveraging AI a lot more in our overall solutions. AI is such a broad term, but we’re utilizing it a lot now in how we’re going to provide our portfolio, how we’re going to support our portfolio and how we’re going to work through to the customer. I think you’re going to continue to see an expansion on our focus on security and sustainability. As we launch our new products, we’re developing more extended life parts to drive fewer service calls. We’re leveraging Ricoh intelligence support that allows quicker resolution of the more common issues with dispatching and things of that nature. The other thing you’re going to see is the business integration, in which Ricoh is going to be offering more x-as-a-service—supply chain and marketing, for example. That’s where you’re going to see a lot more different innovations in how we do business. We’re really looking to take the whole business efficiency element to another level.
You’ve already addressed the role AI will play in future Ricoh technologies. If a manufacturer isn’t talking about AI actively or pursuing it, then they’re kind of falling behind the rest of the pack.
Coriddi: No doubt. We’re all going to be talking about it. The concept of AI is a broad stroke, but we’re taking practical action. The natif.ai component is playing a large role in the DocuWare IDP that we’re launching in 2025. We’re looking to bring the AI functionality more into what we call our Ricoh Smart Integration platform, and that’s already starting to be more and more embedded. The AI piece of it is going to take on a lot of different forms. It’s going to make the content management and document handling more intelligent than we’ve done in the past. It’s also going to be creating efficiencies in how we support and service the product. This isn’t Star Wars anymore—this is in our lab and coming soon.
What will be the keys to Ricoh garnering a greater market share moving forward?
Coriddi: When we look at print, we have to grab it wherever it is, including office machines, single-function printers, production, getting into print centers and going more remote/work from home. While we feel our core business remains paramount to where we’re going to be, we’ve also been preparing for and investing in different types of adjacent technologies. When I talk about the A/V services and what DocuWare brings, they’re all the things we’re doing to provide more value to print, to differentiate ourselves, to be able to secure more market share. We’re providing something that’s not just about print. It’s about helping customers manage their information. We’re going to continue along the more traditional lines and get more aggressive with print, but it’s also about bringing our partners a more well-rounded overall value and offering to secure their positions.
Is there anything on the horizon from a program or partnership standpoint?
Coriddi: When we talk about partnerships, we’re looking to take our current ones to another level. It’s not as much going out and engaging new relationships. Ricoh is in an acquisition mode as far as looking at entities that could add to our portfolio in an adjacent manner.
What will a successful 2025 look like in your estimation? What are some of your goals?
Coriddi: When I think about our goals, it’s really to accelerate the growth of our dealers by providing a portfolio that’s more aligned with the changes in the marketplace. It’s not just the traditional elements, but putting our dealers in more of a position to change the conversation with their customers, to be more consultative, to be more in line with helping their customers manage their overall information. We certainly anticipate growing our market share in the core. We’re looking to expand with our dealers, particularly as production continues to grow, and building out the software and services capabilities we have with our dealers. We’re targeting a lot of growth in specific markets, and that includes the public sector on the print side as well as health care in managing the overall information management solution. So I guess to net it out, it’s growth. I know that sounds trivial, but that’s growth in a flat to slightly declining industry. It’s a big claim, and we feel as if we’re going to be able to grow the business. We’re going to need to do that by taking share, and that’s what success looks like in my estimation. If we have 4%–5% growth by taking share, that would be considered successful in 2025.
