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16 Feb 2007
Epson has admitted it focused too heavily on the consumer market in the past, but is now ploughing resources into its business-to-business (B2B) channel.
Simon Kitson, sales and marketing manager, business products, at Epson, told CRN: “Epson has focused largely on the consumer side over the years as that has been our bread and butter, but as the consumer market is maturing we’re now focusing more on the B2B side. Over the past 12 to 18 months, the B2B channel has received more focus from Epson and this will continue throughout 2007.”
Epson looks after a large amount of its partners directly. It has a major account team that works with 10 resellers directly and a dealer/VAR team that handles 100 selected accounts.
“We launched the Epson Business Partner Programme 15 months ago and have about 100 active resellers signed up,” Kitson said. “Our door is always open to new resellers.”
Despite having the largest share of the UK projector market in Q4, according to figures from Decision Tree Consulting (DTC), Kitson said the vendor will focus on raising its brand awareness as a projector vendor.
“We are the number one projector vendor in the UK currently, but it is amazing just how many resellers don’t associate Epson with projectors,” Kitson said. “The home cinema market is another area in which we want to grow this year.”
Stuart Mizon, business manager at Epson distributor Midwich, said: “We’ve been selling Epson projectors for over five years. Epson is well known in the education market as a projector vendor, but it needs to raise awareness outside of that, among corporates for example.”
According to DTC figures, Midwich sold more projectors than any other EMEA distributor in 2006.
Kevin Jones, managing director of VAR Printware, said: “We’ve been dealing with Epson for six years. Last year we weren’t sure what it was doing, but this year I’m encouraged by its clear focus on B2B. It now has a range of products aimed at the B2B market.
“A lot of printer vendors are taking the B2B market more seriously now; we’ve seen an increased focus from Lexmark, Xerox, Samsung and Hewlett-Packard.”
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