Ricoh On the Rise

Hewlett-Packard has its eye on the enterprise printer and imaging market. Lexmark is pushing its vision of total document management solutions. Ricoh, though, is just looking to assert itself and elevate its profile. So far, it's registering solid results.

As Ricoh closed the books on its fiscal year last month, it tallied some impressive stats: top-line revenue growth of 138 percent; printer growth of 196 percent and multifunction printer growth of 215 percent.

At least part of that success is attributable to Ricoh's increasing commitment to the channel. In the past year, the company has added 380 channel partners and more than 40 channel managers and support staff. It will add at least 10 more staffers within the next 60 days and hopes to get its partner ranks above 500.

"We've really beefed up our commitment to the channel and infrastructure," says Ann Moser, vice president of the printing solutions division at Ricoh. "We've added salespeople, but we've also expanded our services and support."

Like every printer vendor, the challenge is competing against HP, the overwhelming market leader. Lexmark says it wants to be the true alternative to the printer behemoth (read "Turning the Page"), and it scored highest in the VARBusiness Alternatives survey. Ricoh's target is to overtake Lexmark, Oki Data and Xerox as the leading HP alternative. How it will do that is through good channel support programs, reseller education and growing the number of "quality" partners.

"I think we can get to 700 or 750 partners this year," Moser says. *