PRINT
IT
RESELLER.UK
BUSINESS INKJETS
39
71%
year on year unit
growth for Business
Partners who took part
in the Toshiba Masters
Degree.
40%
increase in service
profitability through
improved commercials
and efficiencies.
19%
the largest
manufacturer increase
in A3 MFP market
share for Toshiba in
2015.
*
toshibatec.co.uk/about-us/join-us
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* Infosource Market Trends, 2016
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PITR:
I notice that the WF-C20590 and
WF-C17590 come under the WorkForce
Enterprise banner. Is this a new series
and what does it signify?
Dan Wogan:
Yes, it is. All top-end devices will
now be bracketed under the Enterprise banner
including the two new flagship products. They
are completely new engines and use a brand
new printhead – a linehead that sits across
the entire width of the page. Our other current
devices all have serial printheads where the
printhead moves backwards and forwards and
the paper moves underneath. This is absolutely
fine for our current devices, which are up to
24ppm ISO and up to 34ppm in draft, but
beyond that you need a different type of
system, because you can’t have a printhead
and paper moving that quickly.
PITR:
Is the 100ppm speed ISO or draft,
and if the former can it print even faster
in draft?
Wogan:
It is ISO, and it can’t print any faster
than 100ppm. As I understand it, print speed is
limited by the speed at which the paper moves,
not by the way ink is dropped. It duplexes at
60ppm and even when you put the finisher on,
it only slows down by about 20%.
PITR:
Even so, that’s massively faster
that your existing range.
Wogan:
This is a completely new, built-
from-the-ground-up device. It still uses the
printhead technology we have, piezo electric,
but in a line configuration, and rather than
being in a straight line, nozzles are arranged in
a diagonal configuration so there’s a greater
overlap, which increases print quality and
helps eradicate things like banding. There
is also new technology to prevent nozzle
blockages and to take faulty nozzles out of
action. If a nozzle is not firing, the size of
droplets from the two adjacent nozzles are
increased to fill the gaps.
This is a big duty copier. It’s a big, floor-
standing, four-tray device, with a big ADF, open
platform as standard, big screen and massive
consumables. It will carry two 50,000-page
black consumables, making 100,000 pages
of black on board, and 50,000 pages of each
of the colours. From launch we will have a
staple-stacker finishing option, and a little
after that we will have a booklet-maker and
folder as well.
PITR:
What is your target market?
Wogan:
We’re not pitching it into the 75 and
100ppm space – the reach is far broader than
that. Rather than just targeting that very high
end reprographics space where they just print
and print, the aim is for the 75ppm device to
fit in the 55ppm copier space. That is where
the bulk of the activity in the market is.
PITR:
Is it being sold through your
RIPS dealers or will it have broader
distribution?
Wogan:
The idea is to go through our 1.1
copier dealer channel. For larger opportunities
that are brought to us by corporate resellers,
we may also make it available through our
EPP, which is where we sell a service cost
per page and the box. But I would expect
the majority of sales to go through our 1.1
servicing dealer channel.
Because of the technology it uses, it
retains the key selling points of RIPS devices –
minimal waste, minimal interventions and very
low power consumption for the type of device
it is. Even though it’s a 100ppm MFP it has a
maximum power consumption of about 320W.
Even a desktop A4 colour laser will pull 900W
when it is printing. So, printing at 100ppm it
still uses one third of the electricity of a 25ppm
desktop laser.
PITR:
Isn’t it going to be quite hard to
persuade people in the market for a
55ppm copier to move away from laser
technology?
Wogan:
I don’t necessarily think it is. In
December, we toured the new models
under NDA around a lot of our existing and
prospective partners in the copier world. One
person said: “In 35 years of being in this
market I have never seen something to make
me excited, and this does”. If resellers see an
opportunity to make money, they will embrace
it. And they can see the opportunity.
PITR:
What are the benefits for dealers
in taking this on?
Wogan:
For this channel, service margin is
king. These devices reduce the amount of time
that a service technician has to spend on a
device, so a dealer can sweat their resources
harder. If they can get a service engineer to
see more devices in less time, it will save them
money from a service perspective. And because
of the low power consumption, they can
highlight savings the end user can make that
won’t come out of a dealer’s margin.
James Goulding talks to Dan Wogan, Epson UK product
manager for managed print and solutions, about
Epson’s new flagship MFPs
