David Finn: Time for a change

If you'd asked people five years ago to predict the biggest impetus to change within the printing industry for 2007 and beyond, I doubt many would have been able to pick the environment. But that’s where we are, climate change is upon us and the environment will continue to demand that we reshape businesses globally.

Sustainability is becoming a requirement
Whether governments impose further legislation upon businesses regarding sustainability and emissions is inevitable, but business can’t afford to be complacent and wait for this to happen or they will be left behind. Consumers are demanding this level of accountability now and will vote with their feet. The customers I speak with are increasingly concerned about these issues and there is a growing impetus within their organisations to change their purchasing to become more sustainable and move towards carbon neutrality.

Goldman Sachs JBWere just announced that stockmarket analysts are already anticipating higher electricity prices caused by the imposition of some form of price on carbon emissions. So it’s only a matter of time before this is a real cost of doing business.

And I mean it when I say customers are voting with their feet. The ground swell of public opinion about global warming and concern for the environment is growing. Increasingly my team at Kyocera is seeing a change in attitudes of purchasing personnel in large corporate and government organisations. For instance, our fifth generation of printers is the first and only in the world to be completely ozone free. Customers are going crazy for it; we’ve seen a massive volume sales increase of more than 30 per cent in this range. When we tell them we’ve recently added RoHS compliance through the range where we exclude six hazardous materials: lead, mercury, hexavalent chromium, cadmium, polybrominated biphenyl (PBB) and polybrominated diphenyl ether (PBDE), all of a sudden they’re really paying attention. That certainly wouldn’t have been the case a few years ago but this trend towards buying sustainable products will hopefully continue and those vendors who can’t adapt and offer products which address these concerns will be left behind.

What will green cost me?
Often what I hear from resellers and the channel is margins in the printing industry are increasingly tight and I know they fear that green considerations will just add cost to their bottom line. This really isn’t the case, to be successful in this market you have to listen to what your customer is telling you, be able to adapt and always looking for ways to add value.

Fortunately for Kyocera we have a significant edge in environmental sustainability. We’re not just Johnny come lately taking on the environment as a current fad. It’s been part of who Kyocera is since 1984 and our products have been designed with the environment in mind. It’s a huge advantage, as technology such as ECOSYS (which means customers replace the toner only rather than drum and developer unit, reducing unnecessary waste and costs drastically) is obviously not inexpensive to develop, but this technology has been incorporated in our products since the 1990s so we have absorbed those development costs long ago.

There are a number of ways businesses and resellers in particular can incorporate green policies into their everyday operations which will not only save the business money but will make you a more appealing vendor to your customers and a more sustainable entity. Kyocera has commissioned a number of E-waste surveys, the first in 2002 and most recently in 2006. In both surveys it was obvious people are environmentally responsible in the home, but when it comes to the office environment they are confused about what to do and often feel exasperated and give up.

It shouldn’t be so — we’ve made some very simple changes at Kyocera as well as some more sophisticated ones. Simply separating our waste into three bins, recyclables, paper and general waste saved us 27 percent on our waste disposal costs. Movement sensors on our lighting, so it switches off when you leave the room, slashed our electricity costs. Banning screen savers is another good one. Our head office in Japan has solar panels on the roof and now puts electricity back into the grid. We’ve been associated with Clean Up Australia for more than six years and our staff has shown incredible commitment in cleaning up local Brush Farm Park — it was polluted with cars, scrap metal, toxic waste and weeds. It took us five years, but through an annual Business Clean Up Day event, we’ve restored it to a pristine state, so all the native
wildlife has returned.

Adding reseller value
Resellers who are pro-active, can add value and can re-invent themselves are the ones who will survive and thrive. The marketplace offers a great opportunity today as consumers are savvy and deeply concerned about the environment. Visionaries such as Al Gore and Rupert Murdoch who have the foresight to give the environment the benefit of the doubt and the courage to make brave decisions (Murdoch has just announced he’ll take Newscorp Corp businesses worldwide to be carbon neutral by 2010) are raising awareness of the environment to the masses. This is rocking consumers’ beliefs and changing their buying behaviour drastically.

We’re only just seeing the beginning of this shift and the businesses which can harness this and offer consumers what they want will thrive. But you have to be very careful about ‘Green washing’ here as there are a lot of companies doing that right now. Consumers are smarter than this and they’ll see through it.

It’s an exciting time for resellers because a couple of years ago it was a harder sell in many ways, a proliferation of brands and tight margins. Today a customer understands that orphan brands may offer a cheap quick fix, but there are bigger costs down the track both for the consumer and the environment. That product is unlikely to be robust and of good quality, it may not have readily available parts, service and support and more than likely questionable manufacturing methods let alone the manufacturer taking charge of the responsible disposal of the product at the end of its life.

Now more than ever, customers understand the benefit of paying a premium for quality products. It makes it a much easier sell for the reseller as not only can they show the cost savings of buying a Kyocera printer for instance, but the end-user now understands the value attached to a product which creates less waste, uses responsible packaging and is broken down and re-used at the end of its life.

I presented to a group of corporates at a recent seminar and used the example of Kyocera toner container taking 30 years to degrade, with no residual toxic chemicals, while other toner cartridges take 900 years to degrade and leave a toxic residue of carcinogenic material. One of them approached me later and said that alone was reason for her to spearhead a project to replace all their current printers with Kyocera. I can’t tell you how encouraging it is to get that sort of a response from a customer. I’ve been in this business a long time and I’d certainly call this a major mind-shift in customer attitudes and buying behaviour.

David Finn has spent the past 10 years heading up Kyocera Mita Australia. He sees right now as a time of great change within the industry and a time offering great opportunities for resellers.

“Customers understand the benefit of paying for a premium product.”