By Paul Kunert
10 September 2008
Ricoh is preparing to release a managed print service for IT resellers in the coming weeks, after it finally completed its distribution line-up in the UK with the appointment of Westcoast.
The deal with Westcoast goes live on 1 October and comes after Ricoh penned a contract with specialist printer and AV distributor Midwich and launched a channel programme for printer resellers.
“We are building a model that takes services into the IT distributors and resellers, as partners are keen to find an annuity stream based on their hardware sales,” said Ricoh marketing director Chas Maloney.
This will mean that consumables revenues, often lost to resellers post sale, will be included in a print services contract to the benefit of the two tier supply chain.
The building of Ricoh’s IT channel has taken nine months and Maloney said while it had a strong range of printers, “We have never had an effective route to the IT market”.
The vendor has partnered with Northamber for the past year but Ricoh admitted it had not been particularly proactive.
“They key message is that we’ve had a reactive relationship but now we are geared up and have put the people, the infrastructure and the programmes in place to work with the channel,” he said.
The Ricoh programme offers dealers rebates and competitive analysis tools and the vendor will have 16 staff to manage partners, up from three who had looked after IT partners part time.
In the last week Northamber and Midwich had signed up 600 resellers that will take Ricoh’s colour and mono standalone printers, low-end All In Ones to market and printers based on its gel technology.
With a 2% market share of printer sales, Ricoh views the market as a growth accelerator and despite an 8% fall in shipments during the second quarter according to Gartner, Maloney said there were pockets of growth in MFP and colour laser.
