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Ricoh

From several Print4Pay Hotel members and one of them I've know for 20 years plus.

I've heard that there are going to be some huge changes for fiscal 2017 with the way Ricoh is going to do business. 

Mind you, these are rumors. 

The word on the street is that Ricoh may, I repeat may be dealing off SMB accounts to dealers, reducing the direct channel to just concentrate on the largest of accounts.

My Thoughts

Most of us agree that the dealer channel subsidizes the direct channel indirectly.  Meaning, Ricoh USA makes their highest percentage of profit from the dealer channel that in turn off-sets the lowballing of pricing from the direct channel.  Now, that may or may not be true, but from speaking with others that is the general consensus among our peers.

Recently, we've seen Xerox abandon the SMB market place, migrating accounts to Global Xerox locations.

With profits from the likes of Ricoh, Konica, and Canon on the downward tilt, along with pressure to increase profits, the migrating of accounts to dealers would be a smart move.

Ricoh would increase their profit in the channel and reduce their costs with a reduction in the direct channel work force.  Those Ricoh employees that would be included in the reduction would be able to find work with the dealers, since the dealers would inherit "x" amount of accounts and would need to ramp up their staffing in order to service those accounts.

If this comes true, this could be the win that dealers have longed for.   One P4P Hotel member stated, "that's all well and good, but what happens if Ricoh just opens a web store for the purchasing or leasing of their copiers".  That statement through me for a loop, and the only answer I had was, "if they were to do that, we'd all be doomed".

I don't live in the world of doom and gloom, yes it could happen. But, we could only guess that the uproar from the dealer community would be deafening!

Samsung/HP

All I can tell you is that I heard from one dealer principal who stated, "Yeah it's been interesting that's for sure. I think everyone is more confused now than when they got up this morning".

That's it for now.

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