Independent Konica dealers, are you still one???

[fixthecopier]

At some point last week the service manager mentioned that one of our competitors had gotten letter from Konica stating that their dealership has been pulled. I was told that Konica was trying to cut out the small dealers. Anyone else hear of this??

[907tec]

Well...we are a little outside their reach, but we are still an independent dealer. I don't trust the manufacturers (any of them), but I do trust that we are in a remote enough location that they would have a hard time coping without us. At various times in the past, KM has shown interest in buying us out, though their level of interest is rather inconsistent.

I am very curious to hear what other people report in this thread, as it might give added weight to a rumor that I heard from another manufacturer's Service Manager. His sources had told him that the only Konica Minolta branch within 1000mi of us would be shutting it's doors in the next year. When we asked KM, they said it was patently false...but would they really tell us, even if it were happening?

From what you are seeing down there, is KM moving towards a branch-only network? Trying to keep everybody in-house, rather than independent?

[brewster67]

I've have no idea what KM is up to, but I just heard that their Fairbanks branch let the admin staff go and everything is being run from Seattle.

[907tec]

That's pretty much what I heard. Rumors brewing in Anchorage too, it would seem.

[fixthecopier]

I was told today that they would like to use only large companies and phase out the small ones. We were the oldest of 3 dealerships for Konica. The largest is the newest. The smallest got pissed about Konica signing up a third and then signed with Cannon and were dropped.

[JR2ALTA]

Konica seems pretty healthy we're I'm at.

They should worry about US dropping THEM

Boards that drop likes flies, 30 minutes to change feed wheels, dinky desktops like the 161, archaic soft-switches and diagnostics.

It's not all bad, tech support aren't a-holes,knowledge base is a goldmine. Color products are very good.

Sorry for the rant, I came up during Kyocera's heyday with the 3035-3050 before I switched so Konica, so I'm always bitter.

[fulla]

It's not easy to be a dealer of Konica, or Xerox the like, unless you have firm grid of key channels or clients.
The trends is, though they still develop distributors direct or non-direct on desktop printers market, they do pull back grid of copier&parts business with new info tech & logistics.
Just imagine, when they can easily monitor in office the real-time conditions of countless remote copiers and response immediately. Why they need many dealers, or dealers weaker than them?　

That's why I feel certain unsecurity though the day has not yet come, here China. It need to be against the rainy day.