Inkjet & Digital Printing

Memjet: NEW CHANNEL MODEL FOR PRINT PRICING

Friday 28. December 2012 - Printing technology vendor Memjet has launched an 'all-in' printing plan, opening up new channel opportunities to distributors and SME resellers.

Memjet claims its new 100% colour printing model, which comes at a monthly cost ranging from £49 to £149 and includes a Memjet-powered Lomond printer, is the first of what will be the future of office printing.
In the new model Memjet, together with partner Lomond, a UK-based printing hardware and supplies vendor provides the printer to a partner who will deliver it to the end-user. When ink starts to run out, the reseller is automatically notified and comes and replaces the cartridge, and if customers go over the agreed monthly limit of printed pages, they will be charged extra per page.
Memjet’s President, Bill McGlynn tells IT Europa: “Just like mobile phone companies, we go by statistics; we know how much people normally print and it is all in the package. People no longer have to think: oh my god, am I going to get in trouble for printing this in colour, or am I going to get in trouble for printing out this photograph; doesn’t matter, it’s in the monthly minutes!”
Although Memjet is a relatively small player in the industry, Bill McGlynn believes it has the upper hand compared to bigger printing players, such as HP: “The [Lomond Evojet Office 2] printer is twice as fast as the fastest HP laser printer. It prints up to 60 A4 colour pages per minute and the cost per page is about 25% less than with any colour laser printer.”
The new model has been launched in the UK this month and will be available across Europe. “We are taking a more proactive approach here, everywhere else in the world we kind of leave it up to the market to figure it out, but they typically don’t do this. Because there is some risk; if the client always prints to the top of their plan and then stops, that is not so profitable. So there is a little bit of a leap of faith to this if it works, but we believe it will,” Bill McGlynn says.
The model is targeted at SMEs who traditionally don’t work with MSPs. “This plan is skewed towards small-medium businesses, who would never engage with a managed service company. This is how they can get the benefit of that [managed services] without having to work with somebody big. In the meantime some of the big MPS (Managed Print Services) players are very interested in running their normal model with our products.”
So far Memjet is partnering on the new model with one distributor, German Compatech, which opened a new office in London earlier this year. Head of Compatech UK, Mark Holland tells IT Europa: “I understand that the consumer wants choice but the challenge in printing has always been that there isn’t much choice. What Memjet offers, is a different way to give people what they want. What’s been incredible is the response from those who would not traditionally sell printers. They are actually very interested.”
Mark Holland says that resellers’ arguments against selling other printers are small margins in the box itself and difficulty in winning and retaining consumables sales afterwards. “What this concept gives them is margin up-front if they wish to sell the box in, and an opportunity to take ownership of any parts for the rest of the process of delivering consumables, servicing or maintenance. So actually they can buy into any element they want to and make good margin.”