Building a working product showroom is an absolutely essential element to any dealer’s production print plans. That’s the message ENX heard from every dealer we spoke with for our February magazine feature, “Production Print Growth Drivers: Why Some Dealers Are Cashing In.”
The showroom performs two important functions. First, production print customers will demand to see the equipment in action before making a decision. Second, having operating equipment in-house brings your sales and service teams up to speed on the technology more quickly and keeps that knowledge fresh. Another, though not absolutely necessary, reason for having an operational production print setup: It provides an opportunity to sell printing services or print customer jobs when their equipment goes down.
Becky and Bob Maxwell, Komax
Production print customers will want to see the systems they are buying in action, so dealers should have equipment available for demonstration purposes. “If [a customer] wants to see what his jobs are going to look like, we can run his job in our demo room and show him exactly what the output will be,” said Bob Maxwell, owner of Komax, who noted that a lot of his competitors don’t have demo capability.
Roger Hendrix, Hendrix Business Systems
Hendrix Business Systems understood the value of a showroom when it made the decision to get into production print. Company President Roger Hendrix believes the showroom not only demonstrates the capabilities of the equipment, it makes for a more meaningful conversation with the customer as to exactly what they are looking for.
“We work hard to produce the highest quality of production showrooms,” said Hendrix. “For instance, we were involved in a deal just recently where the customer went to Xerox in Rochester and then went to Ricoh to see their production showrooms. They found out we had one in uptown Charlotte and decided to visit. They were very pleased with what we had compared to what some of the directs have had in their main offices.” The quality of Hendrix’s showroom and the fact that it was local to the customer allowed it to win the business over the direct organizations.
John Fulena, Ricoh Production Printing Business Group
Having fully functional production print capabilities in-house creates new options for revenue and customer service. “When a customer says ‘I’ve been buying this equipment from you, but I can’t keep up with it, my budgets have been cut,’ they still need to do the work. Some dealers have been smart to step in and do [the printing for them]. It becomes a managed services opportunity,” said John Fulena, vice president of Ricoh’s Production Print Business Group. “It sure beats losing the opportunity altogether.”
Several dealers offer production print services themselves, essentially acting as a commerical printer. Not every dealer will want to offer printing services, especially outside its customer base, but it might be an interesting opportunity depending on the local market.
Hunter McCarty, RJ Young
RJ Young also provides facilities management for some of its in-plant customers. That’s a service that would be very difficult to offer if the dealer did not have its own production facilities. “The customers wanted to maintain an internal copy center but they didn’t want to go through the headaches of manning and running [an in-plant operation], so we do that for them. We provide all the equipment, all the supplies, service, and personnel to run it,” said Hunter McCarty, COO at RJ Young.
This has been an effective approach for customers who had been considering outsourcing or wanted to bring the capability back in house without hiring more people. McCarty said margins are good because they control the use of the equipment and service, and they have well-qualified staff who can run the facilities efficiently. Ideally, RJ Young likes to see 500,000 impressions a month for each facilities management contract.
