By Tom S. Noda
Computerworld Philippines
August 1, 2008

Profiting from eco-friendly products is the way of living for printer and copier distributor company, Philcopy Corporation.

It is Philcopy’s faith with the so-called “ecosys” (ecosystems technology) products that continue to steer the company’s two-fold mission as a channels partner to the user community—and that is to help their client companies become environment-friendly and to achieve positive total cost of ownership (TCO).

Andrew Chiong, general manager of the printer division at Philcopy, shares that since Philcopy’s birth in 1979, it has been distributing Ecosys products particularly copiers manufactured by Mita Corp., a Japan-based company involved in document management technology.

In year 2000, Mita was bought by Kyocera Corp. a provider of document management devices, also based in Japan, to form Kyocera Mita. Later on in 2004, it changed its brand mark to its present name, Kyocera, where Philcopy gets its Ecosys copiers and printers.

He says Philcopy’s eco-friendly corporate mission is something they adopted from Kyocera, claiming all Kyocera products utilize “long life components” which enable their customers to enjoy the benefits of improved reliability, reduced environment impact, and regain the product’s purchase price in a short time, especially among networking environments.

“As a distributor, we strongly believe in the Ecosys products and we prefer Kyocera,” Chiong says, noting they have been solely distributing Ecosys products in the past three decades from Mita’s time to Kyocera.

LOW TCO & GOING GREEN
Aside from living the Ecosys gospel, another vital part of Philcopy’s mission is to help client companies achieve the lowest TCO when it comes to purchasing printers and copiers.

“It’s part of our mission to spread the Ecosys technology and to educate companies about TCO because it’s not just us who benefits but also them, and at the same time giving them better choice,” Chiong explains. “More options and a better choice by being more environment-friendly and, at the same time, helping them get good value for their money.”

He advises those buying equipment that have consumables, such as printers, to not just consider the price but to carefully study the cost of the entire usage of the product.

Chiong says the Kyocera printer products they distribute offer a one-two punch combination. Because of the products’ eco-friendliness, it results in a very small cost for print among users.

He explains that compared with other printer brands, Kyocera printers have long-life drums of about 100,000 pages and so there is really no need to dispose the drums throughout printer’s life.

“The products are very different, there’s very minimal waste. Almost every component or part is environment-friendly. Even if you burn the casing of the printer, after you use it for several years it won’t produce the CFCs or CFLs that harm the environment,” Chiong says, referring to chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) that damage the stratospheric ozone layer and the Compact Fluorescent Lamp (CFL).

The Philcopy executive describes the Kyocera printers to be “very green” and has, in fact, earned numerous environmental awards like the Blue Angel in Germany and Energy Star in the US.

In his recent visit to Manila, Yasuyuki Ushio, manager of Kyocera’s overseas business development sales department, explains that the benefits of Kyocera’s cartridge-free Ecosys technology are twofold—ecologically and economically.

Ecologically, Ushio says Ecosys eliminates the environmental burden of used print cartridges worldwide that are now disposed of each year. Economically, by eliminating the recurring costs associated with replacement print cartridges, Ecosys printers provide the industry’s lowest TCO.

“What we’re trying to sell to companies is we’re trying to teach them to look at the cost per print and then compute based on their monthly print volume,” Chiong says. “Generally, if we compare it to the number one brand among laser printers, basically we are either one-third or one-half of their cost per print.”

He adds that since the drum or developing system is inside Kyocera printers, users only have to change the toner cartridge, unlike other printers which require changing of the drum also whenever the toner cartridge needs replacing, which he describes wasteful and harmful to the environment.

PARTNERING WITH CLIENTS
According to Chiong, they prefer to be partners with their customers and not just serve as vendor or supplier to them.

“We just don’t sell printers to them and leave them. We take care of them in terms of service. I think we’re the only brand which offers warranty on the drums because we have faith on our products’ technology,” he says. “We warranty the drums to give our users confidence that our long-life drums do work and they will have no problem with it if it breaks down before the guaranteed number of prints.”

Meanwhile, Philcopy employs opposite marketing strategies for the printers and copiers it distributes. For the printers, Chiong says the distribution is through dealers. They also have people to directly help dealers develop their businesses.

However, for the copiers, the approach is to sell them directly to customers. “Philcopy takes direct care of the customers. The branches are composed of sales and technical people and no dealers,” he says, adding that there are now 30 Philcopy branches in the Philippines with 400 employees spread throughout 14 of the country’s 17 total regions.

Chiong says that the absence of dealers in the distribution of copiers serves as an advantage to Philcopy since copiers are service intensive. “It is very convenient for the end user to have the distributor directly taking care of them because they call us for service.”

INDUSTRY BATTLES

Chiong says that one of the toughest challenges of Philcopy as a distributor of Kyocera products is competing with several popular brands of printers and copiers, whose manufacturers also produce ordinary home appliances.

“It is kind of hard to sell a brand like Kyocera which is quite industrial, unlike others who also manufacture appliances which are very popular,” he says.

However, Chiong believes the competition in terms of popularity of printer brands and improved product specification would come to a slowdown, and the battle would shift on what products are more eco-friendly and gives the lowest TCO.

“Right now, there are lots of printers going very, very fast. I think in the years to come, the battle is not going to be on speed anymore, and I do hope it’s going to be on the issue of consumables,” Chiong says.

Currently, Chiong reports they have about 20% market share of all copier products in the Philippines and a market share of only 4% when it comes to printers. Given these market shares, Philcopy is still satisfied with its performance considering it only engaged in selling the Kyocera printers six years ago. He recalls Philcopy, at the time of the MITA copiers, made the products known by participating in lot of trade shows in the early ‘90s.

TWO-FOLD BENEFITS
Chiong believes they are faring well in the market and are emerging strong with their Ecosys and TCO campaigns, claiming a lot of companies are now considering the two-fold benefits.

He says Philcopy expects that Kyrocera copiers will continue to double in sales since a lot of their customers are happy with their services.

Meanwhile, for the Ecosys printers, Philcopy sees that a lot of companies are beginning to open up to the tone of eco-friendly products and the TCO concept. Chiong relates that while educating their customers about Kyocera, they found out that many of those who bought Kyocera printers four years ago are now replacing or upgrading them with the same brand.

As for market segments the company is targeting, Chiong reveals that the government sector has been a major contributor to the company’s sales, adding that the agencies buy the equipment in bulk. Chiong says that one of the greatest achievements of Philcopy is the effect they have made on government biddings.

“Before, when the [government] made product choices, they didn’t really look at how much it would cost them to print in the next three years. So they could be buying a very cheap printer today and they could be spending like a hundred thousands more than they really need to,” he says, adding that government institutions today consider TCO when bidding out equipment purchases.

Having made a mark already in the government sector, Philcopy now intends to expand its market and penetrate hospitals, schools, manufacturing firms, and insurance companies, among others.

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