Resellers to profit from revival of line matrix

Vendor claims VARs could benefit from return to matrix printing due to high cost of laser consumables

Printer vendor Printronix has claimed firms are returning from laser to line matrix printers, which it said will give resellers higher margins.

“Line matrix printers are high volume assets, so they hold their margin well, enabling resellers to make a big bottom line profit,” claimed Andrew Scherz, Printronix director of product marketing for line matrix and printer solutions. “Last year the international line matrix market grew 4.7 per cent. We’ve experienced the return of users who had migrated away from line matrix to laser. Businesses are focusing more on print costs; they can’t just buy the cheapest equipment today and ignore the future cost of consumables.”

The US vendor, with a UK base in Bracknell, is launching its first line matrix printer in nine years tomorrow.

“The P5000, launched in 1996, has been our most successful printer, so we had our work cut out to improve on it,” said Scherz. “The key thing customers wanted was reliability. With the P7000, we have increased reliability by 20 per cent, which will reduce the number of service calls.”

Printronix has also designed a new ribbon for the P7000 that has more than three times the life of the P5000 ribbon, and a system that is claimed to accurately track the life of a ribbon.

“If a business throws away a ribbon that still has a fifth of its life left, then in essence its consumable costs go up by 20 per cent,” said Scherz. “With our patented system, the printer can alert the user when the ribbon needs to be replaced.”

Scherz believes the P7000 provides resellers with a compelling return-on-investment upgrade story . “Resellers’ primary targets will be customers that have the P5000. The P7000 provides a reliability boost, lower maintenance costs, and 100 per cent ribbon efficiency, so they shouldn’t have a hard job convincing them to upgrade.”

However, Jason Harcourt, senior analyst at Context, said: “It surprises me that Printronix is claiming people are switching back from laser printers to line matrix – it would surely be a step backwards for businesses. I don’t think the line matrix market is diminishing, but it is certainly not a major growth industry.”