Midwich has been appointed to sell Ricoh’s print range alongside incumbent Northamber as the Norfolk-based distributor renews its focus on print products and services.

Jonny Francis, print and imaging business manager at Midwich, said it would be the first print vendor the distributor had signed for more than seven years. “A lot of thought has gone into this,” he said.

Francis said Ricoh’s strong branding, especially in the corporate and education market, represented considerable opportunity for resellers. “There are some good double-figure margins that they are talking about,” he said. “And it has a great colour range for entry level.”

Chas Moloney, marketing director at Ricoh, would not say whether sales via Northamber had been what he expected.
However, he confirmed that Ricoh believed it should make a deeper investment in the channel to get results.
“We have added 13 channel-focused staff for the UK and Ireland, bringing the total for the region to 16,” he said. “We had to look at what we did and realised that we had to get this right.”

Francis said Ricoh offered an innovative gel technology range ­ an alternative to inkjet or laser. Gel-based printers produced cost-effective high-quality images and were already seeing some market success.

He added that the firm has a very complete range of offerings, from A4 to A3 multifunctional printers, and solutions for every market that would compete effectively with industry giant HP.