KMA Dealer Council Meeting Signals a New Dawn for KMA

Reed Melnick

Early last month, Norihiki Ina, the new President & CEO of Kyocera Mita America met with the KMA Dealer Council for the first time since taking over the position. By all accounts, and more specifically the account of KMA Dealer Council President Reed Melnick, the meeting was the most productive he ever attended.

In past years Melnick reports the meeting was attended by KMA’s President along with KMA representatives from inventory, sales, service.

“There were seldom people from Japan and it was more, ‘We hear you, we’ll try to make these changes, but we still need approval,’” recalls Melnick.

He and other members of the Council knew something was different from the moment they walked into the meeting and saw a room filled with key executives from KMA as well as key personnel from the R&D Division in Japan, including Keiji Itsukushima, senior general manager, Corporate R&D Division and Chisato Hatakeyama, senior manager, MFP R&D Division who had come to support Mr. Ina and hear feedback from the Dealer Council.

“The magnitude of the support that Mr. Ina received was unbelievable,” states Melnick. “It was clear that the new KMA under Mr. Ina’s guidance will be a more well-oiled machine than ever before.”

The representatives from Japan were particularly interested in how the new products were doing, and the comments from the Dealer Council were particularly insightful to those involved in product development. Apparently, Itsukushima and Hatakeyama had never spoken with the U.S. dealer community before and were interested in hearing what KMA dealers need to be successful in their marketplace.

“They came here to see how our marketplace works, to see how our customers perceive the products, and how they can support the dealers in this environment,” reports Melnick. “Again, for us it was amazing because we thought it was going to be a meeting where instead of moving 10 feet we would just move another foot or so.”

He adds this was a major stride in almost bringing together the dealers and customers into Kyocera.

“It felt as if we were coming together globally to bond and have success. I have never seen anything like that in my 30-year history. I don’t know of any other manufacturer that pulls so many people in.”

He feels Mr. Ina’s presence, whose career spans 25 years with the company, will bridge whatever gap may have existed previously between the U.S. organization and Japan, and from now on he expects it will be much easier to move initiatives forward.

“Mr. Ina is directly connected and they want him to succeed and they’re giving him every tool and every possible way to win,” notes Melnick. “In turn the customers and the dealers win.”

Although one KMA Dealer Council meeting may not exactly change the world, Melnick remains jazzed.

“When we walked out of the meeting we thought it was pretty good, but not until the next morning did I really understand the magnitude of individuals who were in that room. This was changing the look of KMA. If you hear another view and it becomes a part of your overall view, it’s going to change the way you feel and the way you think. That’s what I believe happened in that meeting. I believe Kyocera with the great products they have now, and the next piece coming in play, they’re going to be a force to be reckoned with. And the dealers are going to be the ones to truly win based on a great amount of input and a different frame of mind.”

Asked what he expects to see going forward that will validate those comments Melnick responds, “We’re already seeing from Mr. Ina being in place things move a lot faster and a focus on the things we push out that we’d like to see improved improving. Going forward I think we’re going to see more collaboration between the U.S. dealers and R&D in Japan, focusing on what we’re seeing with end users because it seems to me the people who are high up in the Japanese manufacturing world don’t see what the end user does with their product. I think we’re going to see more of that so they have a better understanding of the big picture instead of just the world of designing a product and not knowing the end result.”

Another expected change is that more products currently under development will be beta tested through the dealer.

“It will be more along the lines of real world testing where it comes in off the truck, goes out on our delivery truck, gets installed in a customer environment by our people, and is monitored by [the product development people from Japan]. That way it’s really done right.”