How Easy Is It To Go Green?

The green movement continues to pick up steam in all facets of society but has it created opportunities for the average office technology dealer? For some dealers green opportunities depend on geographic location, for others it depends on the type of customer. Whether opportunities abound or are few, dealers are still working ‘green’ and sustainable issues into their talk tracks, especially with the emergence of managed print services—a no-brainer for ‘green’ if there ever was one.

“We address it, but we don’t have people openly approaching us asking us to reduce those processes,” notes JD Sullivan, president of Image Matters in Knoxville, TN. “That being said we do almost no state, local or federal business.”

As a business, however, Image Matters does its part, and green initiatives are also part of its managed print program. Fully 100 percent of every cartridge sold is recycled and that includes competitors’ cartridges that those competitors don’t take back. “If it’s a toner cartridge, put it in our box, shipping is prepaid, and it will go back to a recycling facility,” states Sullivan.

Some dealers have found that setting an example is helpful even if they’ve yet to see an immediate payback. Image Matters has an internal focus on reducing their carbon footprint whether through recycling or something as simple as not using disposable dishes.

Again, that doesn’t mean clients are clamoring to hear more about how they can reduce their carbon footprint. “I’m not seeing it, and in the South I don’t think they’re as aware as they should be or as they are on the West Coast,” states Sullivan. “From an office technology standpoint, maybe 10 percent of the time somebody wants to have a discussion about it.”

Bay Copy in the Boston area uses ‘green’ initiatives as one of the talk tracks for their MPS program although it doesn’t always resonate with customers and prospects. “In our area of the country it’s not as strong as in California,” says Bay Copy President Ray Belanger. “But it’s starting to grow.”

That’s thanks in large part to one of Bay Copy’s long-time major accounts. Recently, they refreshed the company’s entire product line, but it wasn’t easy. “They had a sustainability committee and we had all different players we had to interact with,” recalls Belanger. It was challenging because we still had to deal with our existing contacts as well as work through a different process with the sustainability committee.”
The positive news is that Bay Copy won the deal and retained their customer while expanding what they were doing with the customer as part of the customer’s green initiative.

“We did a lot more homework and ended up with an MPS-type program, more from their direction, and ended up replacing most of their printers because it was better for them to print to the larger MFPs,” says Belanger.

Bay Copy also assisted the customer with an internal campaign to sell this ‘green’ initiative to the end users within the office, focusing on why it was a good thing. “That required a fair amount of work,” notes Belanger.

As far as the rest of Bay Copy’s customer base, it comes down to customer size. “It’s definitely out there, and the larger the customer, the more conscious they are about it,” reports Belanger.

“None of my customers bring up green,” admits Art Post, a veteran copier sales rep for a dealership doing business in New Jersey and Pennsylvania. “It’s not high on the list of what they’re looking for. But it’s always a talking point for me when I get into some of the features and benefits of what the systems do.”

For Chip Miceli, president of DPOE in Des Plaines, IL, a dealership serving the Chicago marketplace, it’s a similar story. “Chicago has a green initiative for the City, but unfortunately if it costs people money they don’t seem to care about it,” laments Miceli.

The big ‘green’ opportunity for DPOE is toner cartridge recycling, which is also part of their MPS initiative. “That does help because it doesn’t cost them anything to do even though it costs me a little bit of money,” states Miceli.

That said, customers rarely ask Miceli if DPOE is a ‘green’ company, but he readily admits DPOE reps will talk up what the dealership is doing internally with customers such as recycling cardboard, toner cartridges, and computer monitors. “These are talk tracks we use; whether it gets us more business or not, I don’t know,” admits Miceli.

4theOffice, a division of Northeast Print Supplies & Equipment in Pittstown, PA, picked up a large customer in the healthcare industry recently by offering them free recycling on all of their toner cartridges just as long as they purchased them from 4theOffice. “They found out they’d get credits from the city by recycling so every year we provide them with recycled toner cartridges and they’re getting some decent press by promoting toner cartridge recycling,” notes Carmen Pitarra, president of 4theOffice. “That’s how we were able to get the business from Staples and at the same time help [our customer] by promoting their green policy.”

Pitarra also leverages PaperCut, the print accounting and print management software, to assist customers in their ‘green’ initiatives. PaperCut software enables automatic two-sided printing, redirects print jobs to less costly machines, and monitors color output, cumulatively helping organizations reduce their carbon footprint. The dealership is so confident that customers will benefit from the software that they offer them free 40-day trials.Although toner cartridge recycling may be an obvious opportunity for a dealership to leverage ‘green’, one can’t ignore how well it’s been working for 4theOffice, especially when combined with other solutions like PaperCut. “When you partner with the right people it doesn’t cost much if anything at all,” states Pitarra.

Flo-Tech in Middletown, CT, is at the forefront of the green movement from an office technology dealer perspective and has had an environmental program in place for nearly 15 years.

“Our EnVision for the Environment Program is focused on helping our clients reduce their carbon footprint through best practices, supply recycling, asset lifecycle management, etc.,” explains Scott MacGregor, vice president of sales and marketing. “Our focus the past few years that we have found highly effective has been on helping our clients create greater visibility within their organizations on how their participation in the EnVision Program is directly affecting their environmental impact. We include those metrics as part of our business performance reviews and have also implemented a recognition program that our clients can leverage with their Green Committees or Green Teams as part of their corporate wide sustainability initiatives.”

Is it working? Well, 15 years and going strong, clearly Flo-Tech must be doing something right.

Spectrum Business Centers in Huntington Beach, CA is perfectly positioned to leverage green in their sales presentations. Not only are they based in California, one of the states at the forefront of the green revolution, but their primary manufacturer is Ricoh, a long-time advocate for environmental responsibility. Spectrum also has an environmental message on their Web page and never fails to talk a good ‘green’ game when selling new equipment.

“But for the most part that falls on deaf ears,” acknowledges Glenn Plank, systems engineer at Spectrum. “I’ve actually had customers tell me, ‘Well, everybody does that.’ They tend not to differentiate one manufacturer from another and assume that they all have environmental [initiatives].”

Spectrum’s approach is not to discuss Ricoh’s talk track of environmental compliance, but focus on Spectrum Business Centers’ initiatives. Although they sell new equipment, the majority of Spectrum’s sales are reconditioned equipment.

“It’s a lot easier to talk about environmental savings when you can let the client know that these machines have been out in the field and that we can refurbish them and place them back out in the field because there’s still years of useful life left in them…and you’re getting a great deal and it’s not going into the dump or being ripped apart,” explains Plank.

That’s when the light bulb goes off for some of Spectrum’s customers. “You can’t do that selling the new machines,” states Plank.

Spectrum also reclaims and reconditions components from equipment that is no longer serviceable and shares that with customers and prospects who visit their office. “That not only reduces operating costs, but improves our time to repair because the parts are right here and we don’t have to order them,” explains Plank. “Again, people like that and see that their machine is going to get fixed faster and this is more environmentally friendly.”

These are messages that Spectrum shares with customers who are looking to buy a new machine as well.

“Maybe it’s not their choice this time, but next time they are ready to buy a machine, it might be something they’ll consider,” states Plank. “This is a totally different way to address the environmental stuff than talking ISO certifications, zero waste to landfill, and all that.”

Toner recycling is what Aric Manion, president of Kelley Imaging in Kent, WA calls “the green standard” that every dealer needs to provide to their customers these days. And Kelley Imaging does just that. Plus it’s something that Manion’s customers and prospects ask about. He’s also found that customers, in an overall effort to reduce costs, are looking to use less paper by printing less, particularly in higher-tech, progressive companies.

“That’s a big talk track, trying to get them to update printers that don’t have double-sided printing,” states Manion.

Like other dealers, Kelley Imaging has found solutions like PaperCut effective in helping customers reduce printing costs. As a Toshiba dealer, Kelley Imaging also leverages Toshiba’s Close the Loop program, promoting it in their welcome packages by handing out eLumber samples, rulers, or other items made from recycled toner cartridges. “We send them a link to sign up for that [program] or we’ll sign them up ourselves,” notes Manion.

Kelley Imaging is getting a lot of mileage out of the Adobe LeanPrint solution as well, a solution that Toshiba has also embraced. Meanwhile, Manion is anxiously awaiting Toshiba’s new ‘Green Machine’, an MFP that uses a special ink to produce erasable documents. He expects that device to have some appeal in the education market.

The office technology industry has always been dependent on clicks, however, so reducing printing costs hasn’t made it easy for long-time dealers like Manion to embrace ‘green’, but he’s rolling with the flow. “We don’t want all our customers cutting their volumes in half and seeing our revenues go down,” he laments, “but if we don’t, somebody else is going to come in and offer that to them.”

As a result, Kelley Imaging Systems is going deeper and wider with their product and solutions offerings as they educate customers and prospects on solutions that offer the potential to reduce their printing costs.
It’s not always easy to go green and can be painful at times, but as dealers like Manion have come to realize, it’s inevitable.