Scanner vendor line-up is stable, claims Midwich

Jonny Francis: Midwich will continue to work with Canon, Kodak and Visioneer

Midwich has confirmed that it will continue to sell scanners from Canon and Visioneer in the wake of signing Kodak.

When asked if the distributor planned to change its vendor line-up, Jonny Francis, print and imaging business manager at Midwich, said in a statement: “Midwich will continue to work with Canon, Kodak and Visioneer.”

Xerox-branded scanners are also sold through Midwich via Visioneer. Francis said the workgroup, departmental and low-volume scanner market was tipped by InfoSource in April to grow 18 per cent a year until 2014, and the objective was to target Kodak’s leading competitors. Midwich inked the Kodak deal in mid-July.

“Document scanners are a key focus for Midwich; we are setting up a document scanner division that will sit within our print and imaging division, headed by Craig Morrison as product manager,” said Francis.

“We are seeing more workgroup, departmental and low-volume scanners sold by the IT reseller channel.”

Midwich added Kodak with a view to pushing its SoHo and enterprise networked, workgroup and departmental scanners via 6,000 UK and Ireland resellers. It has already been busy signing resellers to Kodak’s incentives programme.

The vendor is funding the salary of a Kodak product specialist for Mid­wich and has hired Bob Grist­ock, former Visioneer business development manager and product manager at distributor Headway, as business development manager.

Neil Murphy, document im­ag­ing sales manager at Kodak, said Midwich already sells Kodak multi-function devices and digital cameras.