In an exclusive interview with PrintIT Reseller, Richard Wells, Head of Office Print Sales at Epson UK talks about the company’s commitment to sustainability and the advantages of Epson heat-free inkjet technology. Here’s an excerpt of the discussion
PrintIT Reseller (PITR): Uniquely from day one, Epson has consistently focused on sustainability and in particular the eco-advantages of its heat-free inkjet printing range. Now that sustainability has fast become a buzzword, are you finding it a bit harder to differentiate?
Richard Wells (RW): Sustainability has always been at the forefront of what we do but not just in our products, but also in the way we operate as a business. The products are really important, and the technologies that we deploy do allow us to offer more sustainable solutions than some of the other options that are out there.
But you’re right, sustainability has really become a key topic and for good reason. We’re delighted that it has, because the world needs to wake up to the changes that need to be made. There are many different views of what sustainability means, we’re finding that a lot of people are talking about things such as the amount of recycled materials used in machines for example and we’re seeing more companies wanting to do better.
We’ve always looked at this across the many products we produce, not just inkjet printers. Epson considers the packaging that’s used, at the energy consumed in our own business, especially in our manufacturing facilities, and of course, the one that we talk about quite a lot is how much energy is used to be able to create prints.
We have tried to make it easier for people to understand and measure the environmental impact of print, so we use our optimisation report that quite clearly shows how much energy can be saved by using an Epson product rather than an alternative technology.
We’d like to think that we’re in a good place, that our message is understood, and that people do see us as a sustainable solution. We’re not the only one, everybody is acting on sustainability improvements and that’s a good thing, but we’d like to think we perhaps just have our noses ahead of most of the field!
PITR: The launch of the AM-C series in 2023, plugged an important gap in your portfolio. At the time you said it opened up a massive new addressable market for Epson. How successful has the new range been and is it helping partners to win more business?
RW: It was a very proud moment for me and for Epson when we were able to bring this product to market. We knew that the MPS industry especially in the UK and Western Europe was dependent on the requirement for an A3 medium to high-volume machine. The AM-C series plugged that gap in our portfolio and did open up a much bigger addressable market for us and our resellers.
Most of our resellers completely understand the value offering and how putting sustainability, reliability and efficiency ahead of many of the other considerations that are typically made when buying an MPS, but they felt like they couldn’t really offer a full solution previously with Epson because there was a gap right in the middle where many of their customers actually sit.
So, giving them a product that plugs that gap, in a very small footprint, that consumes less energy as is the case with all our heat-free technology, and with the functionality that they needed to be able to meet customer requirements made a big difference. And I have to
say it’s been exceptional, we set some ambitious targets, but our dealers exceeded those targets and that’s continuing.
So, it’s been really exciting to see how it’s made a difference to our business, but more importantly it’s made a difference to our partners’ businesses and allowed them to sell the technology they really want to promote to their customers who are very sustainability savvy these days.
PITR: Do you have any plans to expand your portfolio further in the coming months?
RW: Yes, the work is not done. We don’t perceive there’s too many major gaps
in the offering that we have today, not only within our office products, but also in document management through our scanner range and our EcoTank products which are also available for the office not just for the home market. And that obviously is really important to us because that’s allowing people to move away from cartridge-based solutions.
We’re already addressing much more of the market than perhaps some people perceive, for instance, we have a highly successful label range, which again uses our heat-free technology and the same systems for printing. And we also extend that into wide-format where we’ve been one of the market leaders for many years in most sectors.
But yes, we’ve identified that there is a need to bring in some further products in the not too distant future. And they’re actually born out of the need to address how the marketplace has changed and more importantly, how the print user has changed.
We’ve been hearing for many years about the decline of office print. The actual numbers of decline are very, very small in terms of the number of pages being printed. But where and on what people are printing is the thing that’s changed because of a number of things but particularly the pandemic.
People going to work from home, then coming back to the office, in some cases, going into agile working and being in the office, perhaps two or three days a week, rather than five days. And all
of these changes are bringing about a changing requirement for printing, one which really is dependent on balanced deployment, as we call it.
So, looking at what you actually print, and what do you need to have in the office to deal with the high demand that comes perhaps in two or three days and office occupancy, rather than five, and making sure you’ve got a good balance of solutions. And when people are printing in volume a home, having the sort of devices that allow them to do that. So yes, there will be a couple of more launches before too long.
PITR: The MPS market continues to evolve and there’s been a reinvention to some extent of the model traditionally delivered via the copier channel. Is this something that Epson is looking at with a view to expanding routes to market?
RW: Yes, addressable market is important to us, as it is to everybody. And having strong home and home office products, as we’ve always had, was always a bedrock of what we’ve achieved. But when we entered the office space, we had to understand what that marketplace in the UK looks like, and that’s where my background and experience comes in.
It isn’t the sole preserve of the copier industry. Whilst the majority of requirements are fulfilled by value- added resellers, people who add a lot of expertise and have the infrastructure and the ability to support customers with all of their needs around an MPS solution on an ongoing basis, that isn’t what everybody needs, especially as businesses have changed.
There are a lot of smaller businesses who work in a different way and therefore have different requirements. We’ve seen a growing trend across Europe but particularly in the UK, that there is more need to embrace and work with the IT resellers to address parts of the market that customers want to deal with them for.
So, we’re trying to make sure that we’ve got the right offerings brought to market from a preferred route for people as well as just saying the products are great and they’re out there.
Our copier channel is very, very expert in what they do. They’re very good at creating the understanding of value and sustainability benefits that our products offer, and they do a fantastic job. But we must embrace the wider routes to market. We already have and we will be doing in a greater degree as we go forward.
