*NEWS*HP FIGHTING INK RIVALS !

[Anonymous]

HP Fighting Rivals Who Provide Third-Party Ink By The Barrel
Hewlett-Packard’s most serious competition these days may not come from Dell or Xerox. It might just be coming from third party ink cartridge suppliers who are cutting into HP’s highly profitable supplies revenue.
Vince Ferraro, vice president of worldwide marketing for the HP LaserJet Business Unit, writes ……Have you noticed all of these printer cartridge refiller businesses popping up in strip malls across the country? You know, those places where someone uses a syringe to re-fill an ink cartridge (almost sounds like an addiction) or where used toner cartridges are opened and colored plastic is poured in. Many people think they are saving a lot of money by buying remanufactured printer cartridges. However, there are costs that these users probably haven’t considered.Primarily, those costs are in quality, he writes: “Put in another light, the cost of using remanufactured cartridges can be more than just the price of the cartridge. Our printed output represents the quality of our work and ideas. To have this output disparaged due having the colors look wrong is hardly worth the perceived cost savings.”But it’s those very cost savings — perceived or real — that rivals are going right after. For example, a press release from a company called OfficeSupplyOutfitters crossed the transom today. OfficeSupplyOutfitters provides, among other things, unbranded or other third-party toner and ink. Included in the press release (really more of a marketing pitch than a press release) was this passage:”Compatible brand toner cartridges and inkjet cartridges are a great savings for any consumer and are now becoming a mainstream purchase,” says Mike Gardner, the company’s president . “A decade ago it was a ‘build it in your garage’ business and the quality of your generic toner cartridge would be questionable at best. Now, publicly held companies are manufacturing these cartridges by the millions and with the same quality controls employed by the first party toner andinkjet printer manufacturers.”Visit a Walgreens, Staples or Office Depot and you will find their generic brands right next to the first party brands. Next to an HP brand toner cartridge you may see an Office Depot brand cartridge. Having the office supply superstores endorsing compatible toner and ink products provides a tremendous amount of validity to the compatible lines, says OSO.Ferraro didn’t mention it in his item, but solution providers have said that they’ve found luck and differentiation through HP’s Scalable Printing Technology, which it rolled out almost a year and a half ago and which, HP contends, introduced Moore’s Law to print head technology. The technology and consulting tools have helped them make an ROI argument to customers, convincing them in many cases to stay away from third-party ink.

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November 16, 2006 at 12:28 PM