Think about this, a copy machine that can copy up to A3 (11×17), and only onto A4 size (letter or legal). You don’t see that feature with today’s digital copiers. I for one believe many of today’s copier manufacturers are missing the boat on this, however, that’s a blog for another day.
Back in the early nineties, we were selling the Copystar (Mita) line of copiers. For a small dealership, the line was acceptable because the systems were manufactured by Mita. At one time Mita was a pretty big deal with copiers, although they never came close to the market share that Canon and Sharp enjoyed.
Back to that special copier. The Mita DC-1255 was so cool. It offered a non-moving platen (top glass) that would hold an original as large as 11×17. This system offered a lot of versatility for the end user with an affordable price.
The copy speed was 11 pages per minute, offered only one universal paper tray, which held 250 sheets of statement (5.5 x 8.5), letter and legal. The bypass tray was limited to one sheet of paper. Customers could buy additional paper trays if needed, but only one at a time would fit inside the copier. For the life of me, I can’t remember if the system offered zoom reduction or enlargement (I’m thinking no, but could be wrong).
Why do I rate this as one of my favorites?
The best feature with the DC-1255 was that you could place an 11×17 original on the platen and then have that document reduced to letter or legal size. Thus, the talking point to the customer was why pay more for a copy machine that could copy 11×17 size for size when you could reduce the 11×17 originals to letter or legal. In fact, the additional talking point was that reduced copies kept all of the documents the same size and were much easier to file than full size 11×17’s.
Thus, a simple little feature that allowed for the reduction of 11×17 documents to letter or legal allowed us to compete and steal business away from other manufacturers that only offered an A3 copier.
In the old days, we were taught FAB (Feature, Advantage, Benefit). You would tell the customer the feature, which was 11×17 reduction to letter, the advantage was they didn’t have to buy 11×17 paper anymore, and the benefit would have been the lower cost of the system when compared to the higher- priced 11×17 models.
I guess all those years ago, Mita had it right that the future was A4 devices. If anyone has a brochure for the MIta DC 1255, please e-mail it to me so I can add to our catalog of brochures.
Good selling!
