Ricoh has launched its new Pro C7200 and C9200 digital press ranges in Australia, with the event titled Alive with Colour mirroring a similar event which saw Australian printers flown over to its new customer experience centre in Thailand.
Ricoh notes the Pro C9200 Graphic Arts Edition prints up to 115 prints per minute in colour, with offset-like print quality, a wide range of media options, producing up to a million pages per month, while the Pro 7200 also features auto duplex on long sheets up to 700mm.
Mike Herold, director, Global Marketing for Production Inkjet Technologies at Ricoh made the trip to Australia, giving printers a forecast on inkjet over the next three to five years. The new presses are currently available in the US, meaning Herold has had a chance to gauge reactions from printers in the market.
Herold says, “Our receptions been positive. I think what Ricoh is bringing to the market with these new products, the 7200 series and the 9200 series is a great combination of value in terms of through print capabilities, high image quality, manageable investment costs with a lot of value to the end user.
“As they look to leverage digital print more and more, it opens up new opportunities that customers might not have had before, because a device like this would have traditionally cost a lot more, has a larger footprint. But Ricoh has really brought a lot of new value in terms of those attributes to the marketplace.
“We are an R&D technology organization. But we are also shifting the way that we bring our ideas to market. Jake Yamashita our CEO has been very open about creating what we call a co-creation development model, which is not just us in the labs building new technology and then putting that into the marketplace, but really working with customers to understand true business challenges, true technology challenges, trends that they see going on, so that we can map our strategy and road map to support those challenges that they have in the marketplace.
“I think one key example that you would see on the 7200 series is the ability to have the fifth colour in the platform. So a traditional digital technology is often CMYK or process colour printing, and the ability to add a new flavor to that, if you will, a new colour, a variety of colours really opens up the gamut for applications. And I think now what we see are agencies and other marketing firms that are really grasping on to the fact that you can create new applications, you can do different things with digital technology. And we also see a resurgence globally. We see it in the U.S. in terms of leveraging print as an effective way to communicate.
“You know over the past five to ten years there's really been so much explosion in terms of social media information sharing, marketing through the email channel. I think now what people are realizing, marketers, savvy marketers are realizing is that those are not effective ways to communicate with your customers, because it is just more noise in the daily electronic universe if you will, versus print which is a tactile experience which can have an impact on an end user, because it warrants dedicated time with that marketing piece and because of that, it is a effective way to help get the message out.
“We have been running some events with marketers, not printers, to help them understand the value of what print brings and they have been successful to help these marketers understand, here is a great way to communicate. Response rates are much higher than they are in email or social marketing, and really gives them a platform to use to go to market. And these new technologies assist with that.”
Comment below to have your say on this story.
If you have a news story or tip-off, get in touch at editorial@sprinter.com.au.
Sign up to the Sprinter newsletter