Standards and Legislation
Over the next 12 months you will be hearing a lot more about the new German DIN standard and the new ISO standard, as well as EPEAT regulations. In one way or another, and wherever you are in this business over the next few years, you will be impacted by these new standards and legislation: so find out about them now.
The Mobile Franchise
The van sales concept is a proven one: like a friend who runs a garage buys all of his tools and cleaning materials from a van salesman. Back in 1996, during my remanufacturing days, I had a branded van to do deliveries and collect empties, and our technician used it to do serving and repair jobs. The van cost us about €20,000 ($24,476) including branding, and we spent about €5,000 ($6,119) putting stock in the van. It was on the road every day and more than paid its way with added sales.
The market for imaging consumables has shrunk over the last few years and so everyone is chasing a shrinking market, and anything you can do to get in front of a customer is welcome. The franchise map is changing to reflect the new retail environment, and I can see the logic of changing from fixed premises to mobile as possibly a good viable option. But you should talk to your doctor about insanity and your tax advisor about how to treat the losses, or anyone from the planet Zog before you even think of getting your cheque book out to spend $125,000 (€102,139) on a van and some stock.
One Sale at a Time
Our new neighbour works for BP and only ever put OEM cartridges in his printer. Keen to bond with his new neighbour – me – he sent his wife around to ask Stefanie to have a look at the printer because it wasn’t working properly. I know it’s a man thing that we don’t ask for directions and we can’t ask for help, just in case we look stupid. Anyway, the printer was out of ink and we (Stefanie) gave him some advice about what to look for when buying aftermarket cartridges, and gave him some names to look out for.
He went online and bought a set of inkjet cartridges for his printer in the happy but misguided impression that his purchase was helping us pay the rent. They arrived the next day and were duly installed and all worked well. Over a BBQ a few weeks ago his friend recounted a horror story of buying some cartridges and in an instant he repeated all our advice to his friend, and is now the most knowledgeable consumer of inkjet cartridges in Germany!
Clone Wars – The OEM Fights Back
The genie is now out of the lamp and you never know what will happen. But Canon is now well into a programme to defend its intellectual property in Europe, and the basis of the claim appears to be the patents on Canon’s drive gear.
We know that several companies have now received letters from Canon’s lawyers and more are in the pipeline. Canon seems to be focusing on companies that have or are selling new, non-OEM, or clone laser cartridges. But the companies in question are also selling remanufactured and OEM products.
A familiar saying has become especially prescient with this development: “size does not matter”, because Canon is targeting the smallest and the biggest. I get a sense that if you have sold new non-OEM laser cartridges then Canon’s lawyers will be talking to you soon, and you will have the opportunity to cease and desist and settle or fight your corner in the courts, which is both expensive and time-consuming, as the delegates at Focus on Europe found out last month.
Some importers of new, non-OEM cartridges sometimes describe their new product in the mistaken belief that if they call it remanufactured the OEMs won’t take any action. To do this in Europe is against the law and is in fact deception and misleads the customers. At least one OEM has taken action on this very issue and ETIRA, the European trade association, has dealt with over 50 complaints in the last year, and the board is now tackling this issue.
New, non-OEM laser cartridges are now in all the European markets at some level or another and are being bought by all sorts of organizations, and are now even being specified in government tenders. This is impacting on the OEM and remanufacturing communities, and if left unchallenged could change the market in Europe forever.
OEMs have the research and development costs and make a huge investment, and some are a real pain in the derriere in the excesses they go to to defend their market. But they are the ones that place the printers and cartridges on the market: they are the ones that have invested and have all the REACH, EPEAT, take-back responsibilities and everything else to factor in. The remanufacturer exists to service a legitimate customer demand for used cartridges to be refilled and repaired. European remanufacturers have employment, minimum wage, health and safety, environmental and their own take-back responsibilities to factor into their costs.
The new, non-OEM laser cartridge does not have any of those overheads. I don’t know a single maker of new, non-OEM laser cartridges that will take back their empty cartridges, and a lot of the ones I have seen (and I have seen a lot) don’t appear to be able to be remanufactured: even if it is legal to remanufacture them.
Non-OEM laser cartridges in the collection system are a problem for the whole industry as well. According to one collector we spoke with, as much as 30 percent of the small diameter cartridges he collects appear to be non-OEM, and not previously remanufactured. But he operates in a “clone-rich” market, where as other collectors say it is anything from five to 12 percent of the small diameter monochrome cartridges that they collect. Apart from the price they pay for the empty there is another euro or so to dispose of the cartridge. All of these costs are passed on to the remanufacturing community and add to the cost base.
And finally, a word about the manufacturer of new, non-OEM cartridges that we spoke with. He really understands all the issues and has been in the business a long time. His view is that in China what he makes is legal, and if he can’t sell his product in Europe he will switch to making something else. But his view is that it is not for him to decide to stop producing, it is for the courts, either in Europe or in China to tell him to stop.
The time is now right for the status of new, non-OEM cartridges in Europe to be tested, in the courts if necessary, because it is essential that the market is defined so that everyone can exist on the same level.