Epson dumps NDs for lasers too

Barely a month after eliminating national distributors-Redington
and Ingram Micro from its inkjet business, Epson India has enforced the same
strategy for its laser business as well. 12 dealers have been appointed as Epson
Business Partner (EBPs) who will act as regional distributors for different
regions across the country. In some cases, these partners will be specific to a
location than to the entire region.

According to Sambamoorthy, GM, Business Products, Epson
India, it was Epson's internal decision to stabilize other businesses before
laying down a new strategy for the laser business, especially the color laser
category. "Neither Epson or its distributors were focused on the laser
business. The decision to streamline the laser business was taken only in May
2005 when we launched a range of color laser printer," said Sambamoorthy.

According to him, this is the right time to begin marketing
for color laser printer, because in the next three years color laser printers
will see rampant changes and will occupy a big chunk of the laser printer

market share.

"Our focus will be on color lasers as Epson is known as
a color imaging solutions company. Besides, color laser will be one product
category to watch out for in the next few years," he added. "It will
surely not replace the mono laser market, but will have sizeable numbers to
represent," he said.

Today, Epson is the only company in India with complete
printer offering of inkjets, DMPs and laser printers. By laying down plans for
the color laser business now, Epson may not see profits coming out this year.
"But the current plans are targeting at a long term strategy that will hold
good for the next three to five years when we can hope to see good
profits," said Sambamoorthy.

This year, Epson is only looking at a 10% marketshare from a
market size of around 10000+ units for color laser printers. The customer
segment will include the small offices as well as the medium and large
enterprises.

According to Sambamoorthy, the color laser makes sense
because the price points are more affordable to the extent that even a small
office can now afford a color laser printer. With a lot of competition coming up
in this business, Epson hopes to leverage on the total cost of ownership (TCO),
print quality, richness of colors and cost per page aspects of the printers,
which according to Sambamoorthy is any day better than others.

"Cost per page will be the driving factor, and we are in the process of
educating customers that cost per print for a mono as well as color will be
almost the same," said he. The 12 EBPs for the color laser business are:
For the North region: Peripheral Solutions, New Delhi; OA CompuServe- New Delhi;
Complete Computer Care-Ludhiana and DS Data Spec-Chandigarh. For the West:
AarVee Computers-Mumbai; Pacific InfoTech-Mumbai, Perfect Computer

Solutions-Pune and The Solvers-Nagpur. For the East: Technocrat-Kolkata and
InfoTech India-Guwahati. South region will have: Noveon-Cochin and Helix
Automation-Chennai.

NELSON JOHNY