Art Post
Harry Hecht is our guest blogger this week, and according to Harry he’s been in the office equipment business since Chester Carlson invented Xerography, and a little known secret is that Harry was actually Chester’s assistant! Really? Harry has been around for as long as I remember, and he always brings inspiration, vision and a can do attitude. I asked for a couple of sentences in reference old copier companies for a blog I’ll be posting in a couple of days, true to form, Harry gave me just a tad bid more, so without further ado, enjoy Harry’s ditty about the good ole days in the copier business. – Art Post
Do you remember the days when a complete copier line included one or maybe two models? Selling at full retail was not only a possibility but a regular occurrence? When Xerox owned 90 percent of the market and the saying that “nobody ever got fired for buying a Xerox” was an unfortunate reality for the independent dealer?
Harry Hecht
I may be dating myself, but I remember those days well and had to still have a lot of respect for the competition, camaraderie and “wild west” aggressiveness of many of the entrepreneurial manufacturers that competed against each other during the ‘70s and ‘80s.
Here are some copier manufacturer names that may serve as a blast from the past for many of you. Names like IBM, Kodak, 3M, Saxon, Royal, Apeco, Savin, Van Dyke, Escofot, Olivetti, and Mita just to name a few. These companies hit the streets with direct and dealer sales forces with the hope and confidence of stealing business away from “The Big X”. The products sold during that time were crude, barely passed a copy, and in some even came with tongs and fire extinguishers just in case there was a jam and a fire broke out. Oh those were the days. No need to worry about supply pirates and two-hour response time. Profit margins were huge and the yen was valued over 500Y to the dollar. Getting in front of customers and demonstrating your product using the sales order (already filled out) was sales training of the day. Your manager would say” don’t leave the office without an order!” Talk about pressure. If a customer accepted your demonstration, your competitor would be in the lobby waiting their turn to try and hammer out a deal on the spot and or leave the machine in the customer’s office until they fell in love with it or just used it and stroked you along- yikes!
Well, time to wake up to a new and renewed set of technology companies now entering the copier and printer space. Samsung, Dell, Lexmark, Brother, Epson plus all of the Big Players- Konica Minolta, Canon, Xerox, Ricoh, Sharp, Kyocera. Where does it end? We now deal with information overload, the World Wide Web, 1,000s of SKU product numbers, accessories, tight margins and 40 percent discounts. What the heck happened? Opportunity is still there for all of us, however success and prosperity is a game of inches verses miles. Without knowledge and a well thought out plan and execution, who knows who the next fallen Angels list will look like.
