This week Greg Gondek, of Advanced Copy Technologies in Cromwell, CT discusses what’s hot and what’s not in his market. Advanced sells Ricoh, Kyocera, Riso, HP, and Xerox devices as well as 3D printers.
What’s hot?
Gondek: We’re selling a lot of mid-size color, 40-, 50, 60-, 70-ppm color machines are really starting to move. We’re just doing well across the board. Last year our revenue was up 15 percent from the year before, this year it looks like it will be up 30 percent by the time we’re done.
What’s not?
Gondek: Not much. We’re seeing the A4 pick up, which to me is scary. I see what A4 is doing and you have high-paid sales people dealing with low-end machines. They’re displacing printers but on a much lower cost per page. I think we have to be more careful than we realize with some of this A4 stuff. It’s good for the manufacturers and good for HP, but I don’t know if it’s good for dealers to be displacing a lot of A3 machines with A4. It’s a necessary evil, and I look at the number of machines we’re selling and the average transaction size and it’s been over $10,000, and I throw the A4s in there and it’s sucking that transaction average way down. You have to have X amount of revenue and profit to keep a big sales force out on the street. All A4 is going to do is reduce sales compensation.
