Think about this, a digital copier that can scan up to A3 (up to 11x17), and only print or copy onto A4 size (letter or legal). You don't see that feature with today's digital copiers. ( I wrote this a 5 years ago, figured I would update, there are a few of these available new today)
I for one believe many of today's copier manufacturers are missing the boat on this, however, that's a blog for another day.
MITA
Back in the early nineties, we were selling the Copystar (Mita) line of copiers. For a small dealership, the line was acceptable because the systems were manufactured by Mita. At one time Mita was a pretty big deal with copiers, although they never came close to the market share that Canon & Sharp enjoyed.
Right, back to that special copier. The Mita DC-1255 was so cool, the copier offered a non moving platen (top glass) that would hold an original as large as 11x17! This system offered a lot of versatility for the end user with an affordable price.
SPEED
The copy speed was 11 pages per minute (can you believe only 11 pages a minute), offered only one universal paper tray which held 250 sheets of statement (5.5 x 8.5), letter and legal. The by-pass tray was limited to one sheet of paper. Customers could by additional paper trays if needed, but only one at a time would fit in the copier. For the life of me, I can't remember if the system offered zoom reduction or enlargement (I'm thinking no, but could be wrong).
Why do I rate this as one of my favs?
The best feature with the DC-1255 was that you could place an 11x17 original on the platen and then have that document reduced to letter or legal size. Thus, the talking point to the customer was why pay more for a copy machine that could copy 11x17 size for size when you could reduce the 11x17 originals to letter or legal. In fact, the additional talking point was that reduced copies kept all of the documents the same size and were much easier to file. In addition reduced copies would take less space, and letter size copy paper was half the cost of 11x17!
Thus, a simple little feature that allowed for the reduction of 11x17 documents to letter or legal allowed us to compete and steal business away from other manufacturers that only offered an A3 copier.
FAB
In the old days, we were taught FAB. Feature, Advantage and Benefit. You would tell the customer the feature which was 11x17 reduction to letter, the advantage was they didn't have to buy 11x17 paper any more, and the benefit would have been the lower cost of the system when compare to the higher priced 11x17 models.
I guess all those years ago, Mita had it right that the future was A4 devices. If anyone has a brochure for the MIta DC 1255, please email to me so I can add to our catalog of brochures!!!
-=Good Selling=-
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