Brother to launch first-ever partner program

Brother has unveiled its new range of business printers to expand beyond the consumer space and into the commercial market – and is set to launch a partner program.

“We’ve now got some product that allows us to step in and deliver some low running cost offerings to the market,” said Julie Woodward, national sales manager, B2B channel.

The printer manufacturer hopes a more modular approach will win over SMBs and SMEs customers. “By modularising, you can start with a base model printer and add extra trays or mailboxes for some models rather having to replace the whole fleet as the business grows,” said Woodward.

Those new products include the L5000 and L6000 Series. They offer faster print speeds, more flexible paper handling capabilities, advanced scanning capabilities, and access to business cloud services, according to Brother.

For companies with higher print and scan volumes, the new HL-L6400DW printer and the MFC-L6900DW MFC can print and copy at up to 50 pages per minute. Brother said they boast a fastest-in-class monochrome scan speed of up to 50 pages per minute and single-pass, duplex monochrome scanning at up to 100 images per minute.

Over coming months, Brother will roll out an authorised partner program.

“We’ll give access to some commercial products that won’t have general channel availability. We’ll have incentives, a deal registration program and we’ll be launching an MPS and volume print program. Our push is on profitability and delivering profit to our partners with ongoing revenue opportunities,” according to Woodward.

Brother’s current distributors are Alloys International Dynamic Suppliers, Synnex, Leader Systems, XiT Distribution and JTC, which operates specifically in Tasmania.

While multi-site retail is a key market, Woodward says there’s a strong push towards healthcare and education as well. A big part of that, Howard says, is supported by certification with a number of different managed print solutions such as Kofax, Cerner and Papercut.

Brother partner The Forum Group worked with children’s clothing retail Pumpkin Patch to install printers at all 128 stores in the ANZ region. The Forum Group installed the devices, delivered the MPS solution and manages the devices for Pumpkin Patch.

Another clothing retailer, Lowes, has also invested in Brother hardware for in-store printing. While the company is currently operating on a capital-purchase arrangement, corporate market development manager Luke Howard said they are looking at moving to a managed print solution.

"We’re looking to become recognised as experts in the verticals we are targeting,” he said.