*NEWS*TONER WAREHOUSE GETS EPSON STAMP

[Anonymous]

Toner Warehouse gets official Epson stamp
(AUSTRALIA’S TONER WAREHOUSE  NOT THE U.S. TONER WAREHOUSE)
australia
NSW-based consumables specialist, Toner Warehouse, is the latest Gold
Seal distributor to be added to Epson Australia’s books.
Toner
Warehouse business development manager, Nigel Baker, said the business
had traditionally imported the vendor’s printer consumables, but had
now grown to a stage where it made better sense to deal with Epson
locally.
“While we always dealt with reliable sources and were never
caught out by anything we brought in, there are advantages to dealing
with Epson here,” he said. “We get greater access to product, a more
reliable source for product and we don’t have to pay upfront, either.
This offsets any benefit we might get from the grey market.”
Epson
marketing director, Mike Pleasants, said: “Toner Warehouse came to us
wanting to be a national consumables distributor,” he said. “Gold Seal
authorises and approves consumable distributors and when resellers go
to one, they know they will get the product that is guaranteed.”
Epson
currently lists 11 Gold Seal disties on its books, including Ingram
Micro, Synnex, Dicker Data and JTC Tasmania. Pleasants said there were
no immediate plans to add more into the program.
“At this moment
we’re at a pause,” he said. “We will sit back and see how this strategy
works and ensure our distributors are securing enough business between
themselves without over distributing. We’ll review it in a few months
time.”
Epson famously revoked Digiland’s membership to Gold Seal via
a public advertising campaign in late 2002 after the distributor was
found to be parallel importing Epson cartridges from Malaysia and
selling them at reduced rates.
Toner Warehouse also distributes
consumables from brands including Canon, Lexmark, Brother, HP and Oki.
Baker indicated that this still included importing product in some
instances, in addition to buying from vendors locally.

[Author]

February 22, 2006 at 9:15 AM