Office Supply Market Holds Strong, Sees Recovery
BOARDMAN, Ohio -- Bill Cross places great stock in his company’s sales of new office furniture and other accessories since business in this sector often points in the direction the economy is headed.
“It looks much more solid,” says Cross, president of Modern Office Products, Boardman. “We’re seeing a lot more confidence among small businesses.”
Throughout the Great Recession, Cross reports, sales of used office furniture jumped while sales of new products fell. Now, he says, the market is headed in the opposite direction, something that bodes well for the health of the local small-business environment.
“We look toward the sale of new furniture as to what’s going on in the industry as it relates to small business,” Cross points out. “We see it breaking loose.”
Others in the office machine and supply industry agree their market is enjoying a tempered, but steady, recovery.
More and more, offices are looking seriously at upgrading older equipment, thanks to a generally improving local economy and a lending market that has loosened, affording small businesses opportunities to lease that were absent just two years ago.
“All year long, business has generally been picking up,” reports Bryan Blakeman, general manager at Valley Office Solutions in Boardman. The company provides a range of office machines and software solutions that can integrate multiple functions into a single unit.
“From a technology standpoint, a lot of products are similar,” Blakeman says, “but some of the new services are based on customization.”
For example, it’s likely that the 4-foot-high machine in the corner of the office is no longer a simple copier and printer, Blakeman says. “They’re not copiers anymore,” he says, “We consider them multi-functional products,” or MFPs.
Within these devices is the capability to fax, scan, print, copy and email, Blakeman notes, eliminating the need for excess equipment inside the office such as fax machines or printers.
Valley Office is a certified dealer of Sharp brand electronics products and Blakeman says his company is taking the lead in providing advanced technology in support of these machines.
“They’ve eliminated the hard buttons from these MFPs,” he says, noting the features, displayed on a screen, are governed by software-driven applications that can be customized to suit the end user. “Instead of providing a machine with 50 different features, you can show us just what you need,” he says. “The learning curve is reduced and productivity increases.”
Should a customer request printing and copying functions that don’t include color, Valley Office can provide an application that simply doesn’t carry it, Blakeman says. “It’s great for a cost-savings standpoint.”
However, should that same customer in the future decide that color is an option he wants, the application can be easily tweaked to accommodate demand. “In the past, you never had this ability,” Blakeman notes
Office machines are so sophisticated today that they can include radio-frequency identifiers in which the copier can recognize the user. Once the user approaches the machine, the device automatically displays the customized functions in the language in which he reads and speaks.
“From a technology standpoint, it’s good in schools,” Blakeman explains, “because you have faculty that can use the machine at one level and students in a library that use it on another level.”
Blakeman says Valley Office started selling the customized MFPs more than a year ago and reports there are “hundreds of them in the field” in Valley Office’s distribution territory, which consists of Mahoning, Trumbull and Columbiana counties in Ohio, and Mercer, Lawrence, Butler and Beaver counties in western Pennsylvania.
What’s helped the market in the Mahoning Valley is a dramatic shift in lending markets, Blakeman acknowledges.
During the throes of the recession, about 65% of the company’s sales were to users who financed them through leases. Now, about 90% of MFP sales are. “It’s made things easier.”
And, he reports, gas and oil activity in the Mahoning Valley has helped pump new business into the area and his company. “We’ve had multiple placements from companies based in Texas and Oklahoma already,” he says.
Valley Office has also introduced a new product able to monitor and manage a company’s network, Blakeman says. The service can detect an equipment failure – whether it’s a PC, a router or server – before it occurs, alerting IT specialists to the problem. “It’s almost like an alarm system has on their home or business to prevent an intruder. We put an alarm system that monitors your networks on a minute-by-minute basis.”
Demand for such services is likely to increase as offices become more reliant on high-tech, Blakeman says. “There’s going to be a huge market for this.”
Technology has advanced to such a point that it is now possible to integrate a large part of a customer’s office business into smartphone functions, reports Tom Reeveley, president of Team Office Technologies, Austintown. “It’s not exactly a mobile office, but smartphones are becoming a component of the office,” he says.
In the last year, advances in technology have helped drive down the costs of MFPs and helped improve the quality of ink toner, Reeveley says.
“Advances in color technology have continued to improve output,” he continues. “Printers today are able to produce print-shop quality pieces.”
Reeveley says the overall market is very strong for these products as the technology culture of entire offices begins to change. “More and more, people understand their time is valuable,” he observes, “and they need to maximize efficiencies in their office.”
What’s also evident is that smaller offices are catching up with recent technology. Costs have fallen to a point where it’s now affordable and sensible for small businesses to consider the investment, observes Rocky Mitolo, president of Crosby Mook Office Equipment Inc., Warren.
“Technology is always being enhanced,” Mitolo says. “A lot of people are moving from standard copiers and faxes to MFPs.”
Crosby Mook is a licensed dealer for Lexmark products and Toshiba products, Mitolo says.
Software developed by Toshiba, for example, can convert documents to a Word or PDF format, and then store the files in the company’s system. Lexmark also sells MFPs that include a variety of applications capable of being tailored for the end user.
“It can help save 25% to 40% off a company’s current expense,” he says. “It’s pretty neat as far as new technologies introduced from the Toshiba line.”
Business remains steady, he reports, and he, too, has witnessed an “uptick” in the local economy and a rise in demand for these new office products.
However, Mitolo notes, while there is ample interest the latest advanced office-machine technology, one shouldn’t dismiss the appetite for the old guards and the workhorses of the office of yesterday.
“I’m going to drop off a few quotes for a fax machine today,” he laughs. “And tomorrow, I’ll probably sell a typewriter.”
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Copyright 2012 The Business Journal, Youngstown, Ohio.