Canon Says Little Regarding RiKON

In response to the sale of its largest distributor, a Canon executive finally commented on the sale of IKON.

Off the Print4Pay Hotel site -

Canon’s managing director, Masaki Nakaoka, stated; “The acquisition (of IKON) will trigger a further reshuffle of sales agents for us and others. We will now aim to expand our sales network.”

Ricoh reported that if the acquisition of IKON falls through:

• IKON will pay Ricoh a termination fee of $66.7 million
• IKON will also pay $16 million to reimburse Ricoh for legal fees.
  

According to some reports, on 9/16/08, IKON conducted a conference call notifying its employees that Canon would cut off IKON from acquiring any new hardware inventory as soon as the Ricoh acquisition is finalized. IKON will however, still have access to Canon parts and supplies.

Because Ricoh does not offer high end production print equipment (as Canon did with imagePRESS color and imageRUNNER PRO relabeled Kodak b/w units), IKON may be in discussions with Xerox to market some of their equipment.

More details on what makes up IKON:

• Original company founded in 1928
• Formally incorporated in 1952
• Revenue peaked in 1996 at $11 billion
• Unisource, the paper distribution business, was spun off in 1996
• Has currently completed only 2/3’s of its “One Platform Conversion” program
• Copier division revenue peaked in 1998 at $5.5 billion
• Stock value peaked in 1996 at $65 per share, but declined to as low as $2.50 per share
• Has total of 24,000 employees in 400 office locations
• Canada & Europe account for 18% of revenue
• 6000 technicians
• 9000 are FM or professional services employees
• 500 work in the HQ located in Malvern, PA
• Has 500,000 customers
• Has 900,000 devices in field under service contract
• GE Capital provides most of leasing
• Includes 100 of the Fortune 500
• Sales and service of copiers accounts for 75% of business
• 50% of revenue comes from color and production print systems
• 20% was from professional services or FM
• B/W copier sales were declining by 7%
• 8% of service revenue was coming from color clicks

In contrast, when Xerox bought Global, it acquired 200 offices and 200,000 customers for $1.5 billion
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My reflections on the above:

• Canon is not going to bid for Ikon.
• Canon is out there expanding the "sales network" through purchasing some of the remaining independents.
• Ricoh may take a while to digest IKON but I do not think they will "choke" on IKON.
• We may see new product from RiKON as early as Q1, 2009 to fill the gaps in the product line or even see some short term partnerships with the likes of Xerox and Kodak.

She Speaks - CEO Anne Mulcahy

X Woman, by Michael Fitzgerald, Q & A

I found this article and pulled out some interesting parts -

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You have things in your labs like invisible ink and erasable paper, which lets the print on the pages dissolve after a day or two so that they can be reused. Is part of your goal to reduce the amount of paper that companies use?

Absolutely. We want to help our customers print less. This is the information world, and content management is a very big deal. A lot of what we do in our services business is help people go from paper to digital, help people create content that’s searchable, help people really live in a world of smart documents versus dumb documents. Documents that actually have embedded intelligence in them.

You still sell copiers, but not very many of them.

We don’t sell any stand-alone copiers. Everything we sell is networked. Most of it is multifunctional. It copies, it prints, it scans, it faxes. So most of it is really part of the networked world. And almost half of what we sell is now full color.

You said that by 2008 you wanted 10 percent of the pages Xerox prints to be color, and right now you’re ahead of that. The company’s at 16 percent.

It’s going to be 100 percent, because the world we live in is in color. And color is growing by double digits right now. Also, digital technology is letting us do things like print-on-demand and one-to-one marketing. Offset printing, the method usually used for marketing materials, is a $400 billion market. Only a small slice of it has gone to digital. One of the things we’re starting to enter into is digital packaging for consumer-product companies. We recently did a demo for a gum wrapper. Consumers can create their own personalized packages, or companies can print regional versions or versions in different languages. It’s more flexible and it’s cheaper.

It looks to me—don’t get mad—I know that it’s supposed to be the globe, and that the soft X stands for Xerox, but it looks like a croquet ball to me. Was this a long process?

Well, there you are. It took longer than I thought it should have, because I tend to think that things should move pretty quickly. I mean, how tough is it? But the fact is that this is a corporate asset. You need to test it. You need to think about it. We wanted the logo to be more informal, and we wanted it to be more attractive in a three-dimensional world versus a two-dimensional world. We also wanted to make sure that the color palettes reflected the color business and the company.

Also, the new logo took a long time to roll out. The name is everywhere, so you have to transition everything. We immediately transitioned on the Web. But they were telling me it was going to take six months to get the logo on the outside of the headquarters building here. About two weeks after we made the announcement on the brand, I was in Egypt. And I’m coming out of the airport and there’s this huge billboard with the new brand on it. I was on the phone saying, “Guys, I’m in Egypt. [Laughs.] And there’s a billboard up. I think you can do better than six months on the headquarters building.”

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LOL! "...it looks like a croquet ball..."

RiKON To Work with Xerox

Ricoh/IKON/Xerox

How big of a shock would it be if Ricoh Japan allowed IKON to ink a deal with Xerox to provide product in the gaps created by the Canon fallout(de-certification)?

Read the above again.

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Well, get over your shock because it's a doozy and it is happening...

Also, seems Konica Minolta signed a five year with RiKON - it appears that KMBS needs the channel too...

Espe may have this all planned out quite well with much more to occur in the next few days - the excitement level "on the ground" is electric.


- nod to "Scorpio"...

Canon To De-Certify as Soon as Ink Dry

September 17, 2008

Another question answered and oh so many posed...

During an internal conference call yesterday, IKON explained to it's employees that Canon would indeed be de-certifying IKON as soon as the Ricoh deal is final.

Falling back on "Policy" -

Canon expressed that this action falls within their policy on not certifying "competitors".

Indeed, this action is in line with their previous movements after Xerox bought Global dealers who sold and supported Canon.

-- Let the feeding Frenzy begin...

HP to cut 24,600 jobs worldwide

US technology giant Hewlett-Packard has said that it will cut 24,600 jobs worldwide...over the next 3 years...

Ok, I don't remember hearing HP say that the aquisition of EDS would mean "business as usual" like the RiKON announcement spawned.

Still, can we see the future of Ikon in this announcement from HP?

Hurd Speaks -

"HP has a strong track record of making acquisitions and integrating them to capture leading market positions,' said CEO Mark Hurd. 'HP now has the broadest technology capabilities in the market to meet customer needs today and in the future,' he added."

September "Bump" - Hold on to your Hat

With the recent Ricoh/IKON (RiKON) news, copier sales people are now more globally minded...

From AP, World stocks soar after Freddie, Fannie bailouts

I personally do not participate in recessions. I don't like them.

I believe that as in sales, most "systems" built around humans are driven by as much emotional energy as cold, strategic planning.

So, even if I do not participate in recessions, my prospects and clients may succumb to the unfavorable economic, emotional bombardment - it's much easier to be negative.

Take this latest news article that explains world markets "soar" after the US government takes over Freddie and Fannie - some may explain this surge as an expected and temporary up-tic, I would agree. An emotions carry the surge.

The price of oil is falling - it may go below $100.00 per barrel this week.

This is good news and will affect business's purchasing mentality as people start to "feel" better.

This good news should effect the way YOU project your positive mentality as an Agent of Change.