Reman Printers Are More Cost-Effective to a Company’s Printing Needs

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Date: Wednesday November 6, 2013 12:23:32 pm
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    Reman Printers Are More Cost-Effective to a Company's Printing Needs
    GPS leader charts growth for laser printer-rebuilding business despite paper's decline

    (Wisconsin State Journal (Madison, WI) Via Acquire Media NewsEdge) Oct. 13–Founded in 1996, McFarland-based Global Printer Services acquires and rebuilds laser printers, saving them from the landfill while providing buyers what GPS president Bruce Andre says is a more cost-effective solution to a company's printing needs.

    Remanufactured printers are 15 percent to 25 percent cheaper to buy than new machines, he said, with possible reduced maintenance and supply costs as well. GPS refurbishes up to 20,000 laser printers per year, and sells to around 600 office machine dealers nationwide.

    Cheaper rebuilt printers are a good option for dealers because of a shift in the way many companies pay for printing, Andre said. Rather than selling a doctor's office or an accountant's firm a printer, toner cartridges and repair visits separately, a dealer now is more likely to roll everything — equipment, supplies and maintenance — into a managed services contract that the customer pays for per printed page.


    Such a shift puts pressure on dealers to keep their costs low, prompting increased demand for refurbished printers and a surge in business for companies like GPS, Andre said, even as paper use among most companies continues to decrease.

    "The number of pages being printed has probably peaked and may be starting to come down, but there's much more acceptance now of refurbished products than 10 or 15 years ago," he said. "That's our niche." Last year, GPS acquired Valstar Printers in Eden Prairie, Minn., in a merger that increased production and opened two new markets to GPS: government sales and online sales. Then early this year, the company opened a third office, mainly for shipping, near Las Vegas, and in August moved its Minnesota operation to a larger location a few blocks away.

    Q: With your company now 17 years old, what's changed the most about how you do business? A: When we started out, many of the printers we sold required very little work because laser printers were a new industry. By comparison, most of the printers we sell now go through a very extensive process to return them to 'like-new' condition.

    In the early days, you only needed a few of the most basic tools, a bottle of Windex and the knowledge to work on a few models. Now we are working on over 150 models, each printer is handled by a minimum of six different people and we have to go through a process of cleaning data, reprogramming and the complete rebuilding of all printers.

    Q: Is the increased complexity of laser printers mainly around the new functions that have been added? A: Yes, that was one of the changes that we had to learn a lot about, when the scanning and faxing started, probably 10 years ago. It's not just printing, but it's sending info to a network and storing it on a hard drive. So security becomes an issue, and wiping information clean becomes a part of rebuilding them.

    Q: How much new material do you use to save an old printer from the landfill? A: We would probably be replacing maybe half a dozen parts, so maybe 10 percent at the most. The rest of it is just cleaned and reconditioned.

    Q: How does the reconditioning process work? A: I get a printer that looks pretty poor usually. We tear it down to its frame, until it's just a metal frame with a few components left in it. The frame and all the pieces are cleaned, and old toner and grease is removed. The plastic comes off the machine and is hand cleaned and repainted back to its original color.

    Q: What mainly gets replaced? A: There are a few critical components in every printer, like the fuser assembly. That's what actually bonds the toner to the printer paper. Toner comes out in a powder form and it gets fused or bonded to the paper by heat and pressure. We then rebuild every one of those important pieces that have wear and tear, like the pressure roller and hot roller. It could be gears, it could be levers, it could be springs.

    Q: Do you pay much attention to how it looks? A: We clean them inside and out, because if they don't look good, no one's going to want them in their office. We try to get them as close to functionally and cosmetically new as possible.

    Q: How long does it take to rebuild an old printer? A: Somewhere in the ballpark of four hours of labor for each machine. It's typically office-class machines, from 40 pounds for a desktop all the way up to 250 to 300 pounds for a free-standing, multifunctional printer.

    Q: What does it look like inside your plant? A: Primarily it's people working with hand tools — screwdrivers and pliers and wrenches. There's a lot of taking things apart and putting it back together. The guys doing the rebuilding of different assemblies are sitting down at a bench most of the day, wearing aprons, or they're at cleaning stations or paint booths.

    Q: How does somebody learn to do this kind of job? A: We do mostly internal training. I've got quite a few techs who've been here for 10 years or longer. We may also hire technicians from people who are in the field who used to repair printers out at offices.

    It really is learning by doing. A lot of our technicians have come from other hands-on backgrounds, like construction, or other shop environments.

    Q: What's your staffing trajectory been over the years — steady or rapid at different periods? A: In the last five years, we've probably added 20 people (for a total of 70 now.) And looking back 10 years, we would have been close to 25 total staff. So the last five years have been pretty aggressive.

    Q: What's been driving that growth? A: We went out and did more selling, at trade shows and other venues. And the other side of it is the shift to managed print services that has made our product more acceptable to the dealers. There's also been a lot of consolidation among my customers. They are by nature doing more business or bigger deals, so we're doing more business. A lot of our customers are also growing internationally, and we have some new customers expanding our business.

    Q: Your first task as a company must be just finding the right printers to refurbish. How do you do that? A: We purchase printers through recycling companies, or we get them from asset recovery companies, and there's also some brokers out there — guys that find printers and consolidate them and sell them to us.

    Finding them is as big a job as selling them. You have to have specific models when you need them. Storage of inventory is a pretty big thing. We have around 7,000 printers in our three locations right now.

    Q: Do you warranty your rebuilt printers? A: Ever since the beginning, we've offered our machines with a full one-year warranty, and we're in the process of developing a three-year warranty.

    Q: What's the weirdest thing you've seen in terms of damage to a printer? A: We've seen it all, from mice and frogs inside a printer to strange settings to where people have put messages into the displays. We've seen spray-painted printers — and then there are the notes that you find, where somebody just sticks a sticky note on it, saying, "I love my printer," or "I hate my printer." These printers could be sitting in a warehouse for a long time before we get them. Just recently I was at a vendor doing a visit out in Las Vegas, and that vendor had an actual little glass tank with a live tarantula spider inside it. That was a spider they had found in one of their printers. They took it out and kept it.

    Q: When did it first feel like your company had made it and would be successful? How did you know? A: Probably 10 years ago, when selling stopped being a primary focus of my day. That was a big thing, when I started realizing I was spending a lot more time with my staff instead of customers. That's when I knew we had the systems in place that we needed to keep making the sales happen and fulfilling the orders.

    Q: What are you most proud of about your business? A: We started out with two people and now have 70 people. It does feel pretty good to be providing those jobs, and we are proud that we're not outsourcing overseas. We're happy to be doing the work here and continuing to see growth within the 50 states.

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