Advantage Enterprises’ Walter Lemmermann was interviewed about his company’s recent successes.
CRN interviewed Lemmermann about his MPS business, and about how the company “got ahead” of the MPS industry due to it being “his area of focus before [MPS] even became a term”. The San Francisco-based company has seen success “in recent years”, and CRN asked Lemmermann about his time as a refiller in the 1980s.
Lemmermann had “made the shift” to MPS in the late 1980s before MPS took off, having “looked into the idea of refilling toner cartridges” because “toner was expensive” and the refilled cartridges he bought “were just garbage”, and he bought empty toners from accounting firms near to his home to sell on, analysing the market for what is now called managed print services
Having attempted to become an HP reseller, he was told that selling used products was something HP wasn’t happy with, but later became the first authorised service centre globally “to refill toners for HP” in 1988, noting that MPS for him was “basically analysing what people currently had and what their operating costs were”.
Adding that selling all services separately is “a big mistake”, Lemmermann stated that he began to bundle warranties, repairs and services with cartridge sales due to “toner phoner” scammers, who would deliver poor quality products but try to compete with his business. His company makes a point of talking to people “about their current experience” to improve their systems, and he added that “relationships are going to generate a whole lot more revenue than a one-time transaction”.
The business has seen “steady growth”, though they are “finding it more competitive” nowadays, and Lemmermann mentioned that the company uses “business intelligence” to find out “who we’d like to have as our client”, and added that Advantage Enterprises is working with HP, Xerox and Dell, whilst 2014 will see the company expand cloud offerings as it is something Lemmermann “want[s] to do in the future”.