A blog from the past. Enjoy!!
Part One:
Once upon a time (back in the early eighties) we sold copy machines.
It was a simple business. We had maybe three models of plain paper copiers. I can remember the EP Minolta (Eny Paper lol) 310 which just copied letter and legal size paper.
The Minolta EP320 not only copied letter, legal but also copied ledger paper. Dig this, you had to buy additional paper trays for each size of paper. What a drag this was when you were picking up the copier for a demo. You had to load the copier, then get the paper trays, and then the exit tray. Broken paper trays and exit trays were a common occurrence because they kept falling off the demo cart. We then had the BEAST which was the Minolta EP 510. What a pain the butt, copier had to weigh more than 300lbs. Was noting more than a square box and I believe it copied at 50 pages per minute.
Right, did I tell you, we had to deliver, install and train the users with every sale. It was a drag, however, this made us more knowledgeable about our systems, made us better sales people and gave us addition opportunities to see accessories.
There was no stapling, no two sided copying, no document feeders, along with no scanning, printing, and faxing. All we had was one paper tray and a single sheet by pass tray to feed paper from . You also had to make sure you didn't place a cup of coffee on top of the copier since most of those copiers incorporated a moving glass top (platen). Yes, the top of the copier would move back and forth for every copied page. Those copiers took forever to make a few hundred copies.
As the industry evolved we saw the emergence of companies that developed sorters (remember Gradco), key counters (remember Hecon), coin op units (can't remember one of these), copier cabinets, and even a company that sold custom covers for the devices. Yes, back in the day every new copier came with a cover and when asked "do ya think I should cover the copier at night"?, we stated yes, but please make sure you turn the copier off at the end of the day! Back in the day, everyone had heard a story about a copier catching fire. Few and far between, however it happened.
I can distinctly remember one company back in the eighties that manufactured a foil overlay for plain paper copiers. It was a novel idea that allowed users to make a copy of a document and then you could either slide the copy underneath the foil sheet (which was sealed on one side) and then run both the foil and the copy through the by-pass of the copier in one pass. Presto chango... all of the black image on the page was changed to the color of the foil. The foil would only stick to the black toner when the media passed through the fusing section. These foils came in many different colors and the most dramatic was the GOLD foil, we used to tell potential customers that you could turn your copies into GOLD!(pretty lame right?) You could even get fancy and with the use of removable tape and scissors cut strips of foil to get different colors on the copy. This was probably the inexpensive and easy way to get a color copy, the foil media was primarily used for certificates and proposals.
It was awesome, walking in with a proposal that had the look of gold print. Check it out, you can still get this stuff, I just may buy a pack just to mess with some of the younger reps in the office.
Someones novel idea added some sizzle to copiers at a time when the analog copier market had matured. That was also true for companies like Gradco, Hecon, and it's been so long I can't remembers the rest. Point is new products and new services not only helped us with hardware but we provided solutions for our customers. Believe it or not the ability to reduce or enlarge copies was a time saver for many companies.
How about the key counters, can you remember how popular they were? It seemed that every school had hundreds of them,. Key counters were used to track who made how many copies. Everyone was outfitted with a little box that had a mechanical counter (called the key counter). The key counter was then inserted into the copier. If the key counter was not in the copier, the copier would not operate. No key counter meant no copy!!
At a time when the analog copier industry was maturing. These products and solutions allowed copier dealers to sell more machines and capture additional clicks (back then toner was not included in any of the maintenance agreements). The copier manufacturers saw the success of these companies and thus started adding their own sorters, their own counters and expanded the offering for accessories for copiers.
Dealers and Manufacturers have always been on the front lines to introduce new technology that will help customers increase efficiencies, and reduce costs. In my 33 years in this business it's more about how we can improve our customers work flow and reduce your costs, whether it's imaging with copiers, printers, duplicators, managed print, or document management.
I'll have part two of this ready in a few days........
-=Good Selling=-
Where to start....hmmmmm, many years ago I had my first introduction into the Print4Pay Industry via the Minolta 450Z BETA copier.
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