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While I haven't seen anything other than what Andy Slawetsky has posted today about the changes with RBS it seems Ricoh finally will get smart and really put the focus on the dealers. The way I read everything was that Ricoh will transition SMB accounts to dealers and focus on large business accounts for the directs. It took them long enough, in my opinion, as many dealers I know have sold out to global or stopped selling the Ricoh line. I am very eager to see if this goes through across the country at some point and they sell off the accounts to the local dealers all over.

 

I love being a local dealer and I have always hoped I will see the day when they close the branches or sell them off for pennies on the dollar like I have been told stories of the early 90's. 

"If any of my competitors were drowning, I'd stick a hose in their mouth and turn on the water." - Ray Kroc

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I think Ricoh leaving its loyal small and medium sized dealers out of the loop on this was a huge mistake.  They've given a handful of large dealers an instant market share in smaller markets without even the courtesy of the opportunity to the local small and medium sized dealers.  Very not cool.  Hopefully these bigger dealers will fumble the football and the small and mid-sized guys can pick up the pieces.

I think the handling of this could drive some loyal dealers to shift their business to other manufacturers.

Time will tell.

Fisher, i hadn't even thought about that! I am sure the smaller dealers will feel left out now more than ever. We had been single lone Ricoh for about 15 years before adding more lines. The only reason we added more lines was because of Ricoh's love with the direct business and we guessed that the damage they did to us over a couple years was around 200k of revenue. We got tired of hearing the same old BS from them about how we were important and they would do anything to keep us happy etc. 

we finally got fed up and brought on Samsung, followed by canon. Then Ricoh would always come in and ask us when we were dropping our other lines. When we dropped Ricoh we added muratec to have the Konica boxes and we haven't missed Ricoh yet. Our clients have jumped on the canon train and never looked back with us. 

In our case we have been loyal to Ricoh for nearly two decades and all of the accounts in our area went to a dealer nearly 2 hours drive away.  We didn't even get the opportunity.  Stop and think about that.

On the plus side we know that these customers will get poor service simply due to distance and logistics so perhaps there will be an opportunity after they fumble.

Last edited by fisher

Well, I got squat. I am in the NJ market with corp being in Reading, PA.  Stratix bought all SMB in Eastern, PA, except the Phili Market.  Atlantic took Phili, cause it was too much to handle for us. Atlantic all of NJ and Manhattan and TGI all the other NY Boroughs and possible Long Island.  I believe that's how it went down here in the East. 

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