(Editor’s note: The September feature in ENX is “Diversification in the Supplies and Aftermarket Markets.” That’s the theme for this month too in ENX/The Week in Imaging. Throughout the month we’ll be presenting complementary editorial that delves deeper into how various suppliers and wholesalers are broadening their product offerings. Our conversation with Luke Goldberg offers a more in-depth look at Clover Imaging Group’s diversification strategy and includes material that couldn’t fit into the September feature because of space limitations.)
For Clover Imaging Group, diversification is focused on services and products. On the services side there’s a lot of different things Clover is doing, but whatever they do and wherever they go, the ultimate goal is increasing consumables sales.
“Of course we want to sell more consumables because that’s where we make our money and where the rubber meets the road,” emphasizes Luke Goldberg, global SVP, sales & marketing, Clover Imaging Group. “But as the industry matures, resellers are expecting more from their suppliers than just a company that can move boxes from Point A to Point B. So taking these services and wrapping them around product to make those products even more attractive and adding more value to those products is the essence of how we use services. We’re not making money providing these services; we’re providing these services so our dealers are empowered to sell more of our products.”
That’s the thought process behind services at Clover, and the one service they’re most renowned for is their MPS offerings—a menu of turnkey Managed Print Services sold under the Axess and MPS engineered solutions brands from its West Point and MSE divisions offer everything from an entry to MPS to full blown MPS, including color cost of ownership, service and fulfillment, parts, training, and everything else.
“We provide those services because we want to offer a platform where our dealers are able to sell more of our consumables (toner, ink, parts),” states Goldberg. “When you look at MPS the majority of money is still made on service, parts, and toner, not software. The software and service is a vehicle to sell more toner, ink, and parts.”
Goldberg contends that Clover feels it has the easiest to use, most comprehensive menu of MPS services that any wholesale provider offers.
“That’s everything from data collection side, ability to collect meters, to a program we call Auto Toner Fulfillment which completely automates the process of setting alerts and fulfilling toner directly to a specific department, printer or user within an organization,” says Goldberg. “It makes the process proactive instead of reactive.”
For a company whose foundation is toner, ink, and parts, MPS is a natural way to diversify. But you cannot win at MPS unless you market it properly and Clover helps its resellers do that via a comprehensive, end user facing dealer marketing program. However, Goldberg acknowledges, “We’re not a marketing company. We want to provide marketing support as part of our value-added services to enable our dealers to increase their presence, create their brand in their own right, and to grow their business.”
That marketing support takes various forms, including a cloud-based program where Clover has created a custom portal for its dealers called ‘Empower.’
“That portal allows our dealers to customize their own end user facing marketing campaigns with three mouse clicks at either no charge or for a nominal fee,” says Goldberg.
Clover has also become a Master Distributor for PrintReleaf, a sustainability program, which is another value add for its dealers. The program’s software is attached to a data collection agent so the customer knows when they print 8,333 pages, Clover via PrintReleaf is replanting trees on behalf of the customer and end user to offset activities of printing in reforestation projects selected by the dealer.
Service is another area of diversification and through Clover’s Parts Division, Depot International. The company offers printer training in various locations across the country multiple times a year. This is designed to get the service end of its customer’s business up to speed on new printers, new technologies, troubleshooting, etc. Clover also provides Help Desk support for its parts and MPS customers free of charge. For some of its larger dealers, Clover’s turnkey outsourced Help Desk solution has been quite successful.
“I don’t know anybody else offering that type of service,” states Goldberg.
On the product side, Goldberg describes Clover/Depot International as the leading parts supplier in the industry for both aftermarket and OEM parts. Depot is an HP Parts One partner and Lexmark Elite partner. They also offer multiple solutions for rebuilding fusers with OEM, rebuilt OEM or aftermarket parts. Overall Depot stocks over 15,000 new and remanufactured parts stocked in 10 DC’S in the USA and Canada.
Now Clover is diversifying into IT server and computer parts for resellers expanding into Managed Services. Goldberg concedes that if you’d told him three years ago Clover would be selling thousands of IT, server and computer parts, he’d have said we don’t know anything about that, that’s not our core competency. But it turns out that selling parts is Clover’s core competency.
“Because we have a core competency in parts it makes it easier for us to understand that part of the business,” he says. “It’s just another consumable part for a different type of hardware.”
Speaking of a different type of hardware, as of last year Clover began offering filaments for 3D printers.
“It’s too early to tell if it’s going to set the world on fire,” says Goldberg. “We offer 12 different types in both PLA and ABS plastic configurations. This is a new product line we’re dabbling in because we’re not really sure how our dealer channel is going to interact with this product opportunity. If it’s a consumable item that goes into something that prints, that’s something we want to at least understand if we should participate in.”
