Rumor has it.....

quote:

Ricoh Americas is out of space in NJ, operating inb three seperate building I beleive

This is very true, even though recent layoffs have freed up some space in the NJ buildings. Yet, with the IKON PA Army, they could never just utilize those three NJ buildings when IKON is integrated. I suspected this and do believe the 'rumor.' A lot of the rumors on this thread have come to fruition.

Anyone have any idea on how many Canon and other competitor's MFPs are still in IKON's MIF base?

How about the percentage of IKON's overall fleet?

Whats the strategy for getting these cleared out because Canon is not making it easy to service them...

Thanks!

nothing here, can anyone help GINTEL out?

as far as I knew 99% of the MIF was knocked out by the end of last year that was a ricoh Japan

Thanks Yeti!

So IKON's fleet is now 99% Ricoh then?

Well, seems I know of at leat 12 units that are Canon's and still being serviced by Ikon.

Yeah that was my belief, it has to be hard to transition all those MIFs given the economy during the last 18 months.

As of one year ago, IKON still had 300,000 Canon machines in the field.

http://theconnectedcopier.word...-to-ricoh-equipment/

I hear Ikon layed off 1500 people two weeks ago

Ricoh A4 devices to hit market at the end of this year. Heard theat they are true MFP's and not combined printing and scanner. New engine design and corp is worried they'll damage A3 sales.

I made a comment that what's the big deal about hurting A3 sales, since all of the money is in the consumables? Seems now there is quite a bit of profit in the A3 devices as I'm told.

BTW new wide format to replaced the aged W3600 has been pushed back to November.

Well up here in OH the layoffs haven't been seen, they seem to be doing quite well....

Ricoh (Rikon) will keep the two Headquarter locations (West Caldwell, NJ and Malvern, PA).

The Savin or Lanier brand will go away on or around 3/31/11.

quote:

Originally posted by GMAN:
Ricoh (Rikon) will keep the two Headquarter locations (West Caldwell, NJ and Malvern, PA).

The Savin or Lanier brand will go away on or around 3/31/11.

Will be interesting to see how that affects the local dealers who carry Savin or Lanier???

Looks like that is not the case for Ricoh/IKON Canada....

Ricoh Canada Inc. and IKON Office Solutions Inc. Officially Amalgamate as Ricoh Canada Inc.

http://www.tradingmarkets.com/...da-inc--1084492.html

That was quick...

Could I ask if anything lead to this rumor, such as an article written or anything?

Actually it is no rumor www.ikon.ca

Actually I meant the rumor that the Savin and Lanier labels would be absorbed by the Ricoh label.

The article you referenced is about Ikon being absorbed by Ricoh in Canada only.

I am with a Savin dealer and have heard they will keep the name going forward, but you never know, that is why I want to find out if this rumor is founded in anything definite?

It was announced on Friday (10/1/10) that IKON will fold into RBS and that the IKON name will be eliminated, with additional layoffs on the horizon. This could be the first in a series of moves to place an even heavier focus on Direct operations, which could be followed by the Lanier or Savin brand also being eliminated by 4/1/11. Has anyone else heard that the IKON name is being eliminated and RBS will be the sole 'Direct' channel?

This makes sense.

When Ricoh Canada announced that it had integrated of all of IKON Canada's assets and liabilities in August, Ricoh Canada said that it was the first step in a worldwide integration of the IKON channel and the IKON brand, so the US is a logical next step.

I can't say if the rumors regarding the integration of the Savin and/or Lanier brands , but from a supply chain perspective, it makes more sense to me to only operate and supply on brand.

I think the IKON name will remain until 4-1-2011. At that point it should be just Ricoh no IKON. Personally I feel it is definatly time to be intergrated.

I sat in on a conference call from Ricoh on Friday, and that's not what I heard. The names will remain with a co-market strategy.

Dealer Division is going down to two (2) Regions from the current four (4) Regions. This will allow Dealer Division to mirror the IKON geographical territory.

Wow - I can't believe that I was correct (see Post directly above).

To update the story:

Today, Ricoh (or do I mean IKON?) employees (Dealer Division) were had to Call IN and they received one of two PRE-RECORDED MESSAGES:

A. You have been eliminated
B. You are being re-positioned

Disgusting.

I am sure there will be some exceptional talent on the street and the other manufacturers will benefit greatly from the knowledge of these former RAC employees.

More information...

If you are a Savin Dealer, you now have a DSM that will handle:

A. Savin Independent Dealers
B. Lanier Independent Dealers
C. Ricoh Independent Dealers

Same goes if you are a Lanier or Ricoh Dealer.

Mark Conant (RVP, South) and John Stewart (RVP West) are now the two (2) Regional Vice Presidents for Dealer Division, who will now be spread thin if you are trying to get in touch with them.

More to come...

True, yes. So if there are any quality sales people in NJ or Philly needing a position, call me. I have many good openings, some with existing accounts/income making up 60-70% of monthly quota at present.

Bill DiMinno - CEO/IPG.

WWW.IPG-USA.NET

New Ricoh East Regio willlook like this:

Mark Conant, VP
Ginger Adams, Assistant

direct to Mark -

Dru Baker, Area Director South
Scott Kitchens
Kevin Doyle, area Director, East
Strategic Marketing Manager (open)

Dru Baker Reports

Gerry Davis M Spears
D Degner K Reidy
S COle G Powers
L Salazar F Rubino
S Ross Smith
open J Cannon
open


Scott Kitchens Reports

Meraviglia Cannon
J Moran Valdez
DiCarlo Macklin
Goldsmith L Stone
C Jacobs

Kevin Doyle Reports

D'Agastino J Palermo
T Zailo Gorman
Vitale open
Dudek J Tambone
Rantilla TBA

Art, As always thank you - and thanks for the email. Hopefully members will keep us posted as they receive updates. I'll see if I can find out any details on my side. Thanks again!

Dear Ricoh Family Group Dealers,

Thank you for your continued support of Ricoh. We truly appreciate your business. As you know, our dealer channel is a critical part of our growth strategy.

Our new integrated leadership team at Ricoh has been focusing on a strong growth strategy through our dealers, and increasing the level of support we provide to you. While we see many dealerships aggressively growing their business with Ricoh, we still recognize the need to further increase our financial and structural support to help expand and grow your business in the coming years. With this important strategic plan in mind, I have decided to make some changes to our internal dealer division organization, effective December 1, 2010.

Our new dealer division support structure is designed to best align our sales and support resources to continue providing you with strong sales coverage, while also helping you better respond to changing market and customer demands, as well as providing focused programs to help support your growth objectives. Our new structure is organized geographically, rather than by brand. Through this structure, we will provide strong coverage and support to all Ricoh, Savin and Lanier dealers in a given geography, with District Business Managers supporting all dealers in a geography, regardless of brand. Of course, our commitment to the three brands remains unchanged and we will still go to market through our dealer channel under three brands – Ricoh, Savin and Lanier.

Our new structure will have enhanced teams exclusive to dealers that you can call on to support you in key strategic areas, such as Managed Document Services (MDS). We will also utilize additional MDS resources within Ricoh to assist with your business growth in this area. Other dealer support specialists will focus on production printing and digital duplicators for the dealer channel, while Vertical Market Managers will help you leverage Ricoh’s relationships with group purchasing organizations.

Additionally, several other new functions and systems are being created to improve the general service level for our dealers. These include new marketing tools, web services, simple purchasing methods and inventory efficiencies, to name a few.
Lastly, as part of our new structure, the dealer service support team is now exclusively dedicated to the dealer channel
.
Our new Region structure for the dealer division now consists of two Regions, East and West, led by Mark Conant and John Stewart respectively, as Region Vice Presidents. In addition, reporting to Mark and John, we will have four Areas, with Area Directors leading a team of sales and support specialists to help you meet your business objectives.

With our dealer division changes, Art Mahony and Bill Corry will take on new responsibilities within Ricoh. I appreciate their hard work and excellent contributions over the years. Please join me in wishing them success with their future endeavors.
Your new District Business Manager and Region and Area leaders will be in contact with you to review the structure and support in more detail. I strongly believe that this new organization structure will enhance our capability to increase our support to our dealer community, while increasing your dealership’s capability to respond to new market requirements and growth opportunities. Should you have any questions about this announcement, please reach out to Mark Conant, John Stewart or myself.

Best regards,
Kiyo Shimizu
Vice President, Dealer Division
Ricoh U.S.

Well.........I don't know what to say, however one DSM supporting the same Ricoh, Lanier and Savin Dealer for bids in the same geo area?

I think this will prove to be a good thing for the largest RFG dealer in each market, but for everyone else, it makes differentiation and creating a competitive advantage versus each RFG competitor all the more important.

txeagle24

I agree, but what happends when you have two mamouth dealers in the same geo area, like ricoh and savin? Who gets the best support, the best pricing, the best deal making?

We lost three support people yesterday and they all did a fine job. I was told by someone else that at lease in the (old) East Region that almost 90% of the business business was written by 20% of the dealers. I'm thinking that maybe just maybe Ricoh is willing to part ways with the 80% or concentrate more on the 80% to bring their revenues even higher.

Ricoh is prepared to lose revenue from Dealer Division, as a result of this change. Yet, they need the $5M cost reduction now and thus, more talented individuals lost their jobs. The revenue is big from IKON, but not the GP. Ricoh Japan took action to reduce costs...on the backs of Dealer Division and it's employees, where the profits has historically been made. When the Dealer revenue declines (along with Profit), this will be one big machine not able to look to IKON for profit. MDS ain't gonna get it done for them.

quote:

Originally posted by Art Post:
txeagle24

I agree, but what happends when you have two mamouth dealers in the same geo area, like ricoh and savin? Who gets the best support, the best pricing, the best deal making?
.

I think that in that case, everything else being equal & assuming that both dealers only carry RFG gear, the nod goes to dealer that has the best relationship w/ the powers that be at Ricoh Americas, or to the dealer that is moving the most of what Ricoh considers to be the "flavor of the month" at that period in time.

For example, in my market, a Ricoh dealer that is new to our market but is one of the larger Ricoh dealers in the country is likely to get preferential treatment in our market. They came to our market when the largest Ricoh dealer in our market was acquired by Xerox as part of the Global takedown. The interesting thing is that one of the smaller RFG dealers in our market has been making some headway w/ incentives from Ricoh because their new owner was a principal in the former Ricoh dealer that is now owned by Xerox. Prior to the recession, we were the fastest growing Lanier dealer in our region, but now I wonder where we'll be on the todem pole since all brands roll up to one guy. We shall see.

quote:

Originally posted by GMAN:
MDS ain't gonna get it done for them.

You've got that right. One of my Lanier MFP customers has a Lexmark fleet running roughly 100k per month. Due to compatible cartridges not being available for the majority of their fleet, at $.0198 we would be at roughly half of our target margin. Ricoh (RBS) came in and wrote the deal at $.0170 (4% margin for us as a Lexmark BSD) across the fleet and stated that when they can get compatibles they should be able to reduce the CPP to $.0150. If MDS is their primary hope for remaining semi-profitable, they are already putting that at risk by doing the same low-margin deals in MDS that they've been doing for the last several years in MFP hardware & aftermarket.

Ok, help me out with MDS?

MDS is what Ricoh calls MPS.

quote:

Originally posted by txeagle24:
stated that when they can get compatibles they should be able to reduce the CPP to $.0150.

It is highly unlikely the compatible market for Lexmark will ever be consistent enough to put in a compatible-only plan. Lexmark does a great job of getting their cores back in their warehouse and keeping them out of anyone else's.

Posted by txeagle24:

"everything else being equal & assuming that both dealers only carry RFG gear, the nod goes to dealer that has the best relationship w/ the powers that be at Ricoh Americas, or to the dealer that is moving the most of what Ricoh considers to be the "flavor of the month" at that period in time."

You might also think that the RFG Dealer who had / has the best relationship with the DSM left standing in that area, will get the bexst treatment. For example, if the Lanier DSM remained employed in a certain area, the Lanier Dealer would receive the best support and financial benefits.

The game board has just cahnged.

Rules of Engagement are out the window.

The legacy IKON sales organization is loving the chaos within Ricoh Dealer Division and prepared to attack.

Next steps in the transition:

1. Technical Service Representatives (TSR) may be eliminated or reassigned, such as Sales staff were this past week. IKON Service Technicians will begin to support RFG Independent Dealers. This is already happening in some instances, wherein an IKON Service Technical will act as the TSR for a Dealer and visiting Dealer accounts to help resolve technical issues with Ricoh equipment.

2. Malvern, PA to become Ricoh HQ in the long term. This is not happening until late 2012, yet it will happen. Announcements to close the West Caldwell building at 5 Dedrick and sell the building (that they own) to raise capital, will be made next fiscal year (FY2011). Ricoh has office space in surounding buildings in that area, such as Ricoh University, which may remain open.