HP Fighting Rivals Who Provide Third-Party Ink By The Barrel

Vince Ferraro, vice president of worldwide marketing for the HP LaserJet Business Unit, writes on his corporate blog:

Primarily, those costs are in quality, he writes: "Put in another light, the cost of using remanufactured cartridges can be more than just the price of the cartridge. Our printed output represents the quality of our work and ideas. To have this output disparaged due having the colors look wrong is hardly worth the perceived cost savings."

But it's those very cost savings -- perceived or real -- that rivals are going right after. For example, a press release from a company called OfficeSupplyOutfitters crossed the transom today. OfficeSupplyOutfitters provides, among other things, unbranded or other third-party toner and ink. Included in the press release (really more of a marketing pitch than a press release) was this passage:

Ferraro didn't mention it in his item, but solution providers have said that they've found luck and differentiation through HP's Scalable Printing Technology, which it rolled out almost a year and a half ago and which, HP contends, introduced Moore's Law to print head technology. The technology and consulting tools have helped them make an ROI argument to customers, convincing them in many cases to stay away from third-party ink.