The Challenge: Help a successful office equipment solution and IT service provider expand its office printing offerings to fulfill customers’ dynamic and demanding requirements.

The Solution: Foster a collaborative partnership centered on a full range of proven office printing solutions and financial benefits that support the client’s thriving business and encourage growth in previously untapped markets.

Disrupting the Corporate Office Printing Market

Epson strengthens BTA channel solutions with Heat-Free Technology business inkjet printers

“This is just what Epson means by disruptive technology,” says Terry Willcox, vice president and owner of Seminole Office Solutions in Longwood, Florida. “When I have the option to quote customers an attractive cost per page, regardless of whether it’s a small desktop printer or a big MFP and make money… that’s something that’s going to challenge the industry.” “We slice pennies to six decimals, because in a large installation our price may be almost nothing for the machine, supplies and maintenance, everything but the paper,” he says. “We typically must bid everything at the same price per copy and I might not make any profit on 40 to 200 machines because the hardware cost of a laser desktop MFP with all the features is too high.” That situation has changed with Epson’s departmental and workgroup multifunction printers. Seminole Office Solutions is part of the Business Technology Association channel, a trade group of independent office technology dealers. Founded in 1984, the company originally offered typewriters, fax machines and office supplies. But as client needs changed, they adapted, moving to stand-alone copiers, then networked MFPs. Today, in addition to office equipment solutions, they have a managed IT services division offering businesses 24/7 IT support, network security, disaster recovery, and document management. Altogether the company employs 48 people in the greater Orlando area. “Anyone in business should always have their eyes open for new technology, and I do,” he says. “That’s why I’m high on Epson. They’re supplying highquality products we can’t get otherwise, and we’re able to meet a need we’ve never met before.”

The move to Epson is a real departure for Seminole, which had never sold an inkjet product. “Traditionally, the cost to support inkjet was way too high,” Willcox explains. Still, when he was invited to an Epson product show in January 2018, he went. “We discovered that here was a technology that had matured.” Epson printers answered the objections he had to older inkjets. The printers were fast, the WorkForce® Enterprise WF-C20590 with Epson’s PrecisionCore ® Heat-Free Technology offers up to 100 pages per minute. The WorkForce Pro WF-C869R uses a Replaceable Ink
Pack System and delivers up to 84,000 ISO pages before changing the large-capacity ink packs. At the same time, Epson printers have a much simpler design than laser. The WF-C20590 operates on a standard 110-volt power outlet and uses 50 percent less power than laser. “The PrecisionCore printhead is something Epson is very proud of, and they should be,” he says. It’s a high-density
print chip that generates up to 40 million dots per second with astonishing ink placement accuracy. “We had a bid coming up for student printing at a local college, and so we looked at Epson printers, the small and the large. We were able to put a package together at a price that was not possible using laser technology.”

Innovative support

That first college bid, Willcox says, was for 60 printers, but the bulk of the printing would be done by just 15 devices located in high-traffic areas. The challenge was not in providing 15 high-speed MFPs, but the 45 that had to meet the same technology standards yet operate cost efficiently at much lower volumes. The school uses “follow me printing,” where a student can upload a document to the college network, then travel to any available printer, log in using his or her student ID, pay with Apple Pay, Google Pay or PayPal, and print the job. To make this possible, all 60 devices had to be compatible with PaperCut print management software and be tied to the payment kiosks and the college’s barcode-based student IDs. For the big printers, Willcox says he could have used any one of several laser MFPs, but he settled on the Epson WorkForce Enterprise WF-C17590 color MFP network printer which he determined was the best value. With full color printing at 75 ISO pages per minute. It met all the requirements and would be easier to maintain than traditional tonerbased devices. Sourcing the smaller printers looked like a tougher problem. “The lowest priced laser printer costs hundreds of dollars more than the Epson WorkForce Pro WF-C5790, which is PaperCut compatible and has a list price of just $299.99. Then too, Epson engineers were very helpful in supporting us when it was time to integrate Epson machines with the barcode readers and the payment kiosks.”

-In another, more recent project, Seminole supplied more than 1,000 Epson printers to a large Florida school district under a multi-year contract, mixing a smaller Epson model with traditional laser-based machines. “Schools have three points of printing: the print shop, the office MFP, and the classroom. The problem this district had was that, while we are supplying the staff with MFP machines, teachers were buying printers at big box stores, and the district was buying the supplies. They did a study and found they were spending hundreds of thousands of dollars per year supplying consumables for all those classroom devices. “I’ve been telling my manufacturers for years that we need low-cost solutions, but without one, I was unable to help this customer. But now, in the fourth year of our contract, I have been able to supply the Epson WorkForce Pro WF-C5290 desktop printers with lower total printing costs versus color laser and that’sextremely difficult to do.” “That’s the breakthrough,” he adds. “That’s what’s disruptive.”

The future of office printing

Willcox believes it’s only a matter of time before inkjet technology becomes the standard in the BTA channel. “Yes, I think inkjet is going to take over our industry. There are so many advantages. With more than a year of placing these machines with our customers, we know they’re extremely reliable.” “When we first started offering Epson,” he adds, “we were taking a leap of faith, but the low maintenance costs they promised are proving to be true. And we know nowthat they’re a good company, with a story to tell and a history like the best in any industry.” In the meantime, Willcox has been talking to other BTA dealers about the opportunity. “It’s a great product. They’ve done a really good job for us.”

For more information or to get started, contact Brian Mould at [email protected] or 770-845-6764.