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Oki has announced “medium term”
plans to double printer sales in
EMEA – already the company’s most
important region, accounting for
50% of sales. Much of this growth
will come from new and expanding
markets, but Oki also plans to
increase sales in mature markets,
such as the UK, through an expanded
product range and greater focus on
solutions and services.
Like other Japanese companies, Oki
had a difficult 2011. The disruption
caused by the earthquake and tsunami
was compounded by severe flooding in
Thailand, which forced Oki to suspend
operations at its printer manufacturing
plant in Ayutthaya Province.
Since then, Oki has overhauled
its manufacturing capability, building
in greater tolerance, extending the
geographic base of its supply chain and
expanding production capacity by 140%.
Takao Hiramoto, president of Oki Data
Corporation and one-time Executive Officer
and General Manager of the company’s
Systems Hardware Division, added that
Oki’s new strategy was underpinned
by a change of corporate culture. “My
approach is exactly what worked for the
ATM division: to take the business back to
basics and put the customer at the heart of
our organisation,” he said.
He declared that Oki would support its
sales drive with greater marketing activity,
much of it focused on the company’s
LED print technology, first developed in
1981, which remains an important area of
innovation and product differentiation.
“LED has many advantages over laser
print technology,” Hiramoto explained.
“The fixed LED head is a simpler
mechanism for easier maintenance, with
high resolutions and fast print speeds. It is
about half the size of a laser engine and
the flat paper path allows more versatile
media handling.”
He said that LED met customers’
need for “products and services that
give value for money, reliability and high
performance”.
Media flexibility
As part of its ‘Print Smart’ strategy, Oki
is highlighting how its printers’ compact
design and ability to handle a wide range
of media enable small and medium-sized
businesses to cut costs and improve
productivity by producing marketing
material in-house.
One company already doing this is
Citroën Scandinavia, which sells cars in
Denmark, Norway and Sweden. It used to
produce point of sale material centrally
for distribution to its 175 local resellers, a
process that was slow – new promotional
displays could take anything from five days
to five weeks to produce – and costly, with
distribution making up 50% of total costs.
Citroën Scandinavia has now
implemented a web-based design solution
that allows local resellers to design
and customise banners, outdoor signs,
window stickers, posters etc. online and
print them locally on an Oki printer. As
well as saving time and money, the new
system lets resellers respond to local sales
opportunities instantly.
Another customer benefiting from Oki
printers’ media flexibility is Waitrose. It
recently brought the printing of polyester
shelf-labels for freezer cabinets in-house
saving £1 million a year. Instead of
outsourcing label production, Waitrose
now prints them centrally on four Oki
ES9410 A3 colour printers.
To help resellers make the most of this
capability and increase sales of specialist
media, from plant tags to window stickers,
Oki recently appointed a new distributor of
print media that can supply resellers with
stock more quickly than before.
Opportunities for resellers
Terry Laidlaw, managing director EMEA
of Oki Europe Ltd, said that as customers
used modern technology to ‘print smarter’
and bring more print jobs in-house,
as Citroën Scandinavia and Waitrose
have done, the channel would have an
increasingly important role.
“SMBs won’t have IT expertise and this
gives the channel a perfect opportunity
to help customers improve print efficiency
through a more consultancy-style
approach,” he said.
He added that Oki has numerous
strengths from a channel perspective: it has
Print Smart
Takao Hiramoto,
president of Oki
Data Corporation
continued...
A revitalised Oki is putting last year’s
difficulties behind it with a refreshed
printer range and ambitious growth plans
“LED has
many
advantages
over laser
print
technology”