When is the right time to take another look at reman color toner? Where can you obtain unbiased data to assess the risk/benefit of the current market opportunity? What is your risk profile for exploring emerging opportunities?
These are important questions to independent dealers and resellers who want to stay ahead of the market. Clearly the remanufacturers are making progress on improving quality and processes to consistently produce quality color cartridges. But how far have they really come and how can you assess this with a reasonable level of risk?
Watch a video of David Cameron talking about the color survey:
http://services.in2communications.com/davidcameron/2012remancolorstudy.html
This is the basis for initiating the 2012 Reman Color Toner Study. The objective is to answer the burning question, “Is Reman Color Toner Ready for Prime Time?” which we have reported on previously in this publication.
You can contribute to this study by taking the 10 minutes online survey to add your experience to the industry database. http://www.ccg1.net/colorsurvey
State of Reman Color
The assessment of multiple remanufacturer capabilities to produce reman color shows that field quality is now approaching less than 1 percent defect rates for two of the suppliers. On the surface this sounds promising. However a history of spotty industry performance and a great deal of conflicting anecdotal data makes it hard to understand how transparent the data really is. Also it would be helpful if the assumptions in defining defect rates were clarified to assure an applies-to-apples comparison.
The results of the field survey will give a market view of ‘readiness’ by providing an independent dealer-driven assessment of field performance. This includes key factors such as quality, page yield, and leakage as well as satisfaction about ease of doing business, and sales/technical support.
The initial field data is encouraging in that more than 60 percent of dealers who have used reman color in the last 12 months indicated a high level of satisfaction overall with reman color. On the other hand, 15 percent expressed dissatisfaction. As more dealers take the survey (currently >100) the strength of this data can only improve.
Ultimately to goal of the survey is to help the independent dealer, which is looking for an edge in the market, to assess the optimum timing to take another look at reman color. The key question, assuming the above quality trends are validated, is, “ Which remanufacturer are outperforming the competition?” In other words is there one or more remans that have cracked the code for consistently producing quality color cartridges for a broad set of models and SKU’s?
We believe that by providing a fair assessment of reman capability and quality performance based on independent dealer/reseller inputs, will enable a competitive dealer to decide for themselves the right timing to re-evaluate the use and potential advantages of using reman color toner.
About the author: Dr. David Cameron’s can be contacted at david.cameron@ccg1.net
