Ricoh Acquires IKON

zeromax

I read today where Ricoh bought out IKON for $1.617 billion (USD). I never saw that one coming. This should be interesting how it plays out in the next couple of years.

hx0011yy

Yeah it's been brought up in the business talk section...
ricoh buying ikon

zcl_ccc

It will be interesting to see what happens to all their other dealers. Many of the small dealers are make or break based on RMAP service income. Now Ricoh will have their own field service fleet, so they will probably run all the RMAP calls themselves.
I wonder if ComDoc saw this coming? As one of Ricoh's larger dealers, if not largest, they probably stand to lose the most.
I wonder what Canon will do, or who they will buy? Canon is notorious for canceling dealers who are bought by competitors. Just ask any of the Toshiba dealers who also sold Canon. Will they cut their largest dealer's nose off to spite their own faces?

robin

Ikon has been servicing machines by multiple manufacturers for a number of years now. If they sever ties now than it's only going to benefit Ricoh. The split is going to happen inevitably. Ricoh can't strive to be number one while selling a competitor's product. About 8 years ago, Ricoh bought Lanier and shortly after that they only sold Ricoh products. All the Toshiba, Sharp, & Panasonic machines were phased out.

son30

And the redundancies just keep on coming...

zhaoke0727

Please enlighten (And the redundancies just keep on coming...) whats the latest?

xiaoyu28

The last I heard they'd just got shot of a fistful of salesmen.

jin5011

Now your sales people have to deal with the Savin/Lanier/Ricoh deals.Already been through one deal that we lost cuz 'big brother' got a better CPC than we could offer.Along the lines of .0024 if i remember correctly.
Dont know and now is time for a new beer!!!

hhajhh

You're not wrong there, some of the click charges flying around these days are woeful. That possibly says something about the sales rats who are buying the business rather than selling anything. They'll still be making a decent lumper at the front end though, dragging the service margin down to 3/5 of bugger all and hampering the chances of us technical chaps getting a payrise.
On the plus side though, the colour kit's not too shabby these days and that bodes well for the future.

zjp0633

Wow, less than a 1/4 of a penny per page? I could see it closer to a 1/2 a penny, but damn.......
I don't mess with this anymore, as I just buy wholesale boxes and fix them for a few years, but when I was in the sales/service game, it got a bit frustrating to hear about constant 'missed deals' by .0001 or some ridiculous margin, but the customer thought they'd be saving 40.00 over the service life, yada, yada, yada.
With Ricoh involved, they'll give IKON some VERY aggresive pricing for boxes, or turn many of them to corporate locations. I haven't read into the details, so they may have a different philosophy. I know that Xerox, when they bought Global Imaging, offered Global more aggresive pricing than Xerox would give their own dealers in the same town, due to Global's agreement. It's just how Ricoh pulled out of Global Imaging when Xerox purchased Global. They needed someone else to partner up with from the way it looks.

loyalxuan

About 8 years ago, Ricoh bought Lanier and shortly after that they only sold Ricoh products. All the Toshiba, Sharp, & Panasonic machines were phased out.
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One of the happiest days of my life. Those Sharps and Panasonics were nightmares.

cmkzjw

I would agree. I hated working on the Lanier 6714 (Sharp).

loyalxuan

The last I heard they'd just got shot of a fistful of salesmen.
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Well thats one bit of positive news from this recession!

sxyzy

I would agree. I hated working on the Lanier 6714 (Sharp).
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That was one machine I could make run fairly well - the 6616 (Sharp) was a piece of junk though. Not sure if it was worse than a 6517 (Panasonic) but they both were worse (barely) than a MP4000.
Lanier did sell the 5722 for and LC031 (Toshiba FC-22 and its bigger brother) for a long time after the buyout - not that I'd be proud of those machines either.
...ahhh, the good 'ol days