EPSON IS A BUSINESS
ON THE MARCH IN THE
B2B RESELLER MARKET

The Japanese business recently announced a round of investment in the UK and Ireland that translated to a European base in Hemel Hempstead and a 35 per cent increase in channel- based employees.

Speaking in July at the Epson Partner Event, UK head of sales Chris Smith said that the business is committed to staying a 100 per cent channel company.


“We work really closely with our channel partners and through some of the presentations today we show how we have invested over above for the revenue that we currently have in the marketplace.


Epson is here to grow and to do that we need staff and we have invested in some new staff, about 35% additional staff since I took over in October and we are making sure that our resellers are getting the love and attention they should have from a manufacturer.”

“The elephant in the room is classrooms have a projector on their ceiling that is 10 years old. It’s a dull lamp, they need to draw the curtains, shut the blinds, switch the lights off to try to get a visual image. That’s not what projection is today.”
MARK SALMON – SALES MANAGER, EPSON

PROJECT PROJECTION

When it comes to the display side of the business, Smith said that the manufacturer is bringing new products to the floor soon, acknowledging that the responsibility for sales lands with them.


“On the AV side and the pro display side there is no recurring revenue necessarily from those products so it is kind of a one off sale.


That means it’s down to us to bring new products out to help stimulate new sales for the resellers and make people want to upgrade their device early because there is this new bright better technology out there.


We educate our resellers on our road map so they know it is coming, and we are currently bringing out, towards the back end of the calendar year, we have 4 new state of the art projectors that we are launching.


So helps to stimulate that market but again, our end user sales team, we are there because it is a very competitive market, it’s a large market and actually projection is a growing market compared to panel and we are investing to make sure we get opportunities to deliver to the channel.”


Smith added that education is the top of Epson’s priority list with Sales Manager Mark Salmon adding that, in classroom, projectors are being proven to be more effective as a tool to educate.


“One in two projectors sold, pretty much globally, is from Epson” said Salmon. “If you look at the projection market in the UK we have a 49, near enough 50 percent share, if you look at the interactive projection market, we are at 75 per cent of market.


“If you look at display space and B2B education, we are probably less than 25 percent of the market which is more exciting and where my team are focussed on.”


Salmon went on to say that any claims made by Epson that their projectors can improve a student’s classroom experience are backed up by statistics and that the manufacturer is setting up schools as Ambassador Schools that show off the latest tech for students and teachers to take advantage of.


“Ambassador schools is something that we’ve just kicked off using the display size matters figures. The intelligence that we have says that 80 per cent classes is about visual stimulation, there’s nothing new there.


But there is the element where 40 per cent of teachers have directly linked poor interaction in classrooms to poor exam results. So we went out with a large campaign that talked about the cheap seats in the classroom and that size matters.


What we are doing off the back of that is asked schools to come back to us and work with us to build a best case classroom scenario so in that case we are choosing a minimum of 10 sites throughout the UK and Ireland in conjunction with a board manufacturer, Schmidt in this case, in conjunction with resellers and as a team create the best environment and use that as a case.”

EMULATING AV

In the world of print Smith said that he is looking to grow the market share Epson enjoys to a similar level it enjoys in the projection market, adding that he believes the channel is the best way to do it rather than “buy the market”.


“The one thing that I’ve noticed with Epson is we don’t give a big bang, we don’t go out and buy a market place, we don’t throw money at it to gain instant success.


“We want to grow a channel that is sustainable and will be there in the next 15 to 20 years like we have done in projection, it’s what we are now looking to build in Print and it’s working because we are building about 20/25 year on year, and our resellers are liking the attention we are giving our them.


“Our main key messages around print are low intervention. Because of the technology around our products, they don’t go wrong very often and that benefits the reseller and the end user because they are selling a reliable product that they don’t have to spend time and money going our to fix.


“Our consumables for our products last a lot longer than any other manufacturer so you don’t have to keep shipping stuff out to the customers all of the time but also the environmental messaging at the moment.”


Jade Paris, product manager BI – spokesperson on topics relating to business imaging (business inkjet, scanners) reiterated that Print is a growing sector in the UK adding “we’ve been talking about a paperless office since 1975 but what we have actually seen is that the print market is still massive.


At the moment the UK market is worth £4.5bn and what we are seeingis a shift from traditional hard ware and consumable sales to a managedservice because people are used to being on a lease model, it’s just people are printing in a slightly different way.


“We are still seeing printing the same way in some aspects, people are printing about four pages at a time it’s just the market is shifting as to how they procure.


“I think people will continue to print in the same way and we see it in the market analysis that we do quite a bit. People are printing less in some ways but people still need to print.


“It depends on which vertical you are in as well so with education, a lot of teachers are sending homework to student that they will print at home, hospitality need to print invoices for their customers and staff rotas so there is still that need for a piece of paper. So, I don’t think that we’ll ever move to a paperless office and I think paper usage will stay pretty much where it is.”

“I think people will continue to print in the same way and we see it in the market analysis that we do quite a bit. People are printing less in some ways but people still need to print”

SUSTAINING BUSINESS

When it comes to print, Epson were also keen to show off the sustainability of its product, helping companies reduce their carbon footprint, using 92 per cent less energy than other lazor products.


“Blue Planet and those programs that have had a big effect on society and it’s prompting questions around what we do with our ink cartridges and the end of the life of the product” said Daniel Quelch CSR manger.


“If we talk about our products directly, with advantage InkJet we are about 99% more energy efficient than competitors in the market which equates to a 96% saving on CO2 emissions


“That all comes down to educating the channel as to what is in the box which is completely different to our competitors. Inside an Epson printer, there is no oven to heat up the ink cartridge, allowing us to cold print.


“Our competitors, would have to heat up that ink which is letting off worse emissions for the environment, it’s using more energy. We don’t have that technology in our products but we need to educate the channel on that.”