Increasing demand from provinces buoy Epson sales

BULLISH LEADERS. (From left) Cherry Suarez, product manager for business inkjets, Epson Philippines; Jester Cruz, Product Management Department head, Epson Philippines; Cris Sanchez, Sales Division head, Epson Philippines. Siew Jin Kiat, general manager (Southeast Asia), Printers, Visual Instruments and Wearable Product Division, Epson Singapore and Ed Bonoan, senior general manager for Marketing Division, Epson Philippines.

A booming economy and unique technological innovations which have changed the printing industry.

It is to these factors that electronics company Epson Philippines credits its “tremendous” growth, as well as its 55 percent market share, said Eduardo Bonoan, the company’s general manager and head of marketing, at the recent launch of Epson’s new line of printers and projectors.

“Before, when the economic growth was a little bit limited, we saw the majority of our revenue coming from NCR. Now we’re seeing a lot of it coming from the provinces. The growth of the economy is also spreading the spending capability of the public, so it’s also coming from the businesses of provinces. And this is where our product lineups are starting to focus on. We are going not only after the consumer, but also businesses with printing and projecting needs,” Bonoan said.

He added that Epson’s speedy growth kicked off around the same time it introduced its first batch of printers with the Continuous Ink Supply System technology back in 2011.

“The growth has been tremendous; we’ve been continually growing at a double-digit pace since then, and it continues to get stronger,” Bonoan said.

Such change also revolutionized the printing process, said Jester Cruz, head of Epson Philippines’ product management division.

“When we launched the CISS, ink prices drastically went down,” said Cruz.

Now, paper is what causes printing costs to rise—but even that is being addressed by Epson through its auto-duplex printing feature, which is available on the new L-series Ink Tank printers.

“Back-to-back printing means an automatic 50-percent decrease in spending. Especially in corporate where people are looking to cut down costs, duplex printing is very much needed,” said Cruz.

Epson Philippines’ target clients are conglomerates, SMEs and schools for its printers.

Churches are also part of its market, especially for the company’s “entry-level” projectors, said Bonoan.

Epson is also No. 1 in terms of market share for projectors, both here in the Philippines and globally.

“I think what brought us to No. 1 is the quality of the images that you get from our projectors. If we were to put side-by-side our technology with the next leading one, I think the quality would be starkly different. I think the market has seen that, and that has [kept] us at No. 1 for around 13 years,” Bonoan said.

“With our printers and projectors, the technologies they utilize are our core ones,” added Cruz, referring to the Micro Piezo printheads and 3LCD projectors. “They’re homegrown, as opposed to competitors, which buy their technology from somewhere else.”

The Micro Piezo technology creates high-quality printouts and allows the printer to dispense ink more efficiently, explained Bonoan.

The 3LCD technology, on the other hand, promises to give users images with colors that are truer, brighter and easier on the eyes.

Bonoan believes it is these two technologies which will continue to strengthen the Epson brand.

“These core technologies are so important, because so many products can be derived for different markets and applications,” he said.