New Canon Large Format Systems

That's a mighty big difference in price.  We buy our Epson plotters from Synnex and not Ricoh.  Big, big difference in price.  Maybe you should buy the lower end plotters from National Azon?

We may start buying them from the distributors if we keep running into the problem. 

Jason, in Canada the IPF models are sold through the dealer channel but in the US they're sold through the consumer channel. I've had a situation too where a customer purchased it in the US for less than my cost.

I've had success using those systems to knock out customers who are replacing their toner-based Oce systems. They're expecting to pay $10-20,000 and a Canon inkjet plotter is $2000. There's not always great margins in them but they're a foot in the door to the MFP and supplies.