It’s sometimes dangerous to get caught up in prevailing theories, especially as they pertain to the office technology space. Larry White, for one, eschews the talk surrounding the demise, current or pending, of print. The president and CEO of Toshiba America Business Solutions (TABS) has heard the phrase parroted ad nauseam but isn’t about to join that chorus anytime soon.
That’s not to say White has ignored the downtrend in print volumes and multifunction printer (MFP) unit placements. But he respects the fact that print remains a $65 billion annual proposition, and it would be foolish to ignore the wealth of opportunities it represents and the fact that it’s still a key cog in TABS’ growth vehicle, one that witnessed the OEM capturing its greatest market share in nearly 30 years.
Thus, as White stood on stage in mid-September at the Bellagio Hotel in Las Vegas for the company’s first LEAD Beyond conference in five years, the heart of the message he provided to approximately 800 independent dealers, direct dealers and end-users hadn’t changed materially. The biggest difference is the continued emergence of diversifications from the OEM—managed print as a service (MPaaS), ecommerce, integration platform as a service (IPaaS) and the entire Elevate Sky platform, among others—that accentuate the MFP and the value of print.
White sat down with ENX Magazine on the heels of LEAD Beyond to discuss TABS’ continued growth, conference feedback and the highly touted joint venture with Ricoh. Most importantly, White underscored print’s role in enabling resellers and end-users alike to leverage a core offering whose demise has been greatly exaggerated.
Walk us through the highlights of Toshiba’s most recent fiscal year performance. How did the company perform in relation to the goals and expectations you set?
White: Our fiscal year 2022 ended in March, so we’re five months into FY23. In 2022, we overachieved within every key component. Whether it was our budget or any other objectives we set for the organization. The key areas of growth were our MPaaS business, our solutions business as well as our label and receipt printer business—all of which grew by double digits and in some cases high double digits. On the revenue side, it was outstanding. If we look at some of the other key objectives of FY22, it was the eye of the global supply chain storm. Our back orders hit the highest point by mid-year during the supply chain crisis, but it also had the steepest decline, to the point where we had it down to probably the lowest level we’d had in two years. So that was positive for us. As I alluded to in the keynote, it’s nice to have the supply chain issues virtually behind us now. Having to fly in product was quite an expensive hit to us. Overall, we’re incredibly pleased with the results, which provided a tremendous rebound over FY21 and FY20. We’re back to profitability, which is great. During the last six months of FY22, our business and overall performance took off, and I’m immensely proud of the team for making that a reality.
What stands out as some of the watershed moments for Toshiba over the past 12 months? What resonated the most with you?
White: The one thing that comes to mind is the joint venture announcement with Ricoh. That received the most industry attention and press by far of anybody in the industry. That and the global supply chain crisis obviously impacted the entire industry. Quite honestly, it changed the dynamics that occurred in our industry over the last 12 months. COVID has calmed down a lot, so we’re back to a normal operating cadence within our businesses overall.
It had been five years since the last LEAD conference. What do you feel was the most significant difference in the messaging you shared with dealer partners?
White: Our world and the industry have changed immensely over the last five years, primarily due to the impact of COVID. The impression of print has changed so much. Five years ago, we were talking about a steady decline in print, then COVID came along and the bottom dropped out. There was an attitude about print that although it may not be dead, it was declining so rapidly that we began to ask if there was going to be life after print. One of the main messages we want to convey is, yes, there are issues with print related to volumes and declining unit placements. However, this is still a $65 billion business, and it still provides huge opportunities. It’s understanding what the issues are related to print, but also understanding the opportunities it offers. For us, it was almost a revival meeting. Print’s not dead, we just need to understand exactly what’s happening with it.
It’s a continuation of some of the key objectives in trying to grow other parts of our business—the diversification into the solutions side and re-modernizing managed print into an MPaaS-type of business that we started about five years ago. We’re also spending more time and resources rapidly growing our label and receipt printer business. We see it as an exceptionally good diversification opportunity for not only ourselves and our direct operations but the dealer community as well. It sends a message that print’s not dead. There’s plenty of life and excellent value in print, and I feel we did a particularly excellent job of relaying that message in Las Vegas.
LEAD provided an interesting blend of dealers, direct operations and end-user clients. What were you hoping to accomplish in Las Vegas?
White: It all goes back to reaffirming the value of print and “The Sky’s the Limit” theme of the conference. We wanted to be one of the first industry players to have a major event such as this and reaffirm the importance and value of this industry while communicating that we remain a powerful OEM with which to conduct business. This is what we want to accomplish, and this is how we’re going to accomplish it. Those were the predominant themes we had at the meeting, and we believe we met those objectives. We’ve had our direct dealer operations at the last three LEAD events, and we’ve found that it works. Our distribution on a wholesale basis is almost 50/50, which is unique in our industry. The other aspect is bringing customers in. It’s not a diluted message that we’re giving to some really important customers. We’re sending a message of positivity to our channel partners, end-users and current or potential customers so they understand what we’re trying to achieve and how we’re going to achieve it.
While you’re still processing much of the feedback from attendees, what have been some of the more interesting observations you’ve heard?
White: What caught me off guard was one multi-line dealer who pulled me aside. He told me he stopped going to manufacturer events and almost didn’t come to ours because he always gets depressed by the messaging; they always say print is dead or dying. He grew up as a print dealer and an extraordinarily successful one. That negative messaging runs counter to what he feels about the industry and the opportunities available. To hear someone that vocal about it was very interesting. The idea that there’s still value in print resonates among the dealers, and it comes back to understanding where that value is.
When dealers learned about our iPaaS initiative and ecommerce initiatives, it was a wow moment for them to see what we’re doing in that technology space. They appreciate that we’re doing some really interesting things around the MFP that make a lot of sense and can benefit their business.
Your product showcase had a wealth of products and technology, from the e-STUDIO lines to the label and receipt printers and the Elevate Sky platform. What do you feel are the most impactful opportunities for dealer partners?
White: We feel our diversification initiative fits within the wheelhouse of what dealers are doing. It’s notable that we’re not in the managed IT services part of the business, which is a conscious decision we made for a couple reasons. We test-marketed it at a couple of our branches, but we weren’t successful; couldn’t make money at it. More importantly, what value would I, as a manufacturer, bring to dealers if I were in that business? It was one of the business initiatives that we pushed aside, knowing dealers can do [managed IT services] on their own without our help. Where they do need help is in areas such as Elevate Sky. This Toshiba-engineered technology delivers information to specific devices enabling dealers to support their customers better while also providing them with enhanced information about their business. There’s also iPaaS, the technology that provides higher levels of services and capabilities to your customers. When you combine that with the ecommerce platform, it provides a way to do it. There are a lot of things around the device that will allow the dealer to expand their scope inside a customer and yield new revenue opportunities. We also talked about label and receipt printers and the fact that these products are everywhere. People just don’t notice them. And I believe that’s a huge opportunity for dealers to sell further into their customer base without a lot of effort or expense in entering that business.
During your speech in Vegas, you quoted IDC’s finding that Toshiba has its largest market share since 1996. What’s been the key to grabbing a larger piece of the pie?
White: (laughing) Superior management execution. I’m just kidding. There’s been so much negativity around print, and we have a more optimistic mindset around what print holds in store for us. When people are so negative about something, there’s a tendency to buy into it and believe it’s true. We haven’t had that attitude at all within our organization. We’re bullish about print! There’s a significant opportunity we can leverage, and it’s been one of the driving factors in our success and growing our market share. It’s just a part of the business we focus on, and we’ve got a great product line, plus we have great dealers that are invested in growing their business. Part of that is us tagging along with that growth. Our direct branches right now are wildly successful; their growth is at the highest level we’ve ever had. Between our attitude, our dealers’ growth and our direct locations’ growth, we’re just capturing more market share organically.
Can you provide a status report on the joint venture with Ricoh? How are things progressing?
White: It’s moving along as planned. Right now, it’s in the assimilation stage. There are all these manufacturing facilities around the world that need to be brought into this one joint venture. For the most part, they have different operating systems. Toshiba and Ricoh have different benefits plans, comp plans, payroll plans, and all that stuff. It takes an extensive amount of work to pull together and operate a company with a consistent platform. It’s the grunt work they have to do to make sure they get this joint venture set up and able to operate. Once that pulls together, we’ll see them start manufacturing products.
Is there anything else on the horizon from a program or partnership standpoint?
White: With LEAD Beyond, we pretty much conveyed everything we’re doing and are going to be doing in the near future. That said, we’re always looking for opportunities, and if something comes our way that seems like a viable opportunity for us and our dealers, we’re going to take a look at it and see if it’s something that makes sense. One of the reasons LEAD was so successful for us was our business partners, which was evident with the product fair. Our partners worked hard, and they support us so well. The LEAD event wouldn’t have been as successful as it was if it weren’t for all the business partners supporting us and showing their products as well as being there with us, hand in hand. Kudos to them, and we’re looking forward to doing it again next time.
Talk about the goals you have as you prepare for 2024, and what are the measuring sticks for success?
White: It’s all about continuing on the same path as we have been by growing our MPaaS business, solutions business and label and receipt printer business at double-digit rates. We want to increase our market share to 10%. We achieved record market share in the last few quarters, but we haven’t hit 10%. It’s important to reach that level for several reasons. For one, it would provide additional economies of scale. We have a wonderful opportunity to accomplish that goal. In the near term, you’ll start seeing products manufactured by the joint venture, and we want to be able to support that as much as possible. It’s a unique situation with the joint venture, as we want to make sure we’re successful with it, but also see the JV thrive in its own right. We also want to continue supporting our employees. We have a great employee base, and we wouldn’t be where we are today without all their hard work, so we need to do everything we can to take care of them. We collaborate with them on a lot of charitable endeavors, and we’re going to be as good a steward as we can for our community. It’s important to be one of the best companies in this industry to do business with, and we feel our dealer partners and end-user customers would agree that we’ve met those expectations.
