Ricoh is a global company with a rich history in printing. It was first to market with commercial inkjet in 2006, through its InfoPrint partnership with IBM. Now, Ricoh is continuing to innovate, helping printers achieve greater consistency, faster speed and more uptime, at a lower cost than toner-based technology — all while using less energy.
“Uptime is the number one benefit,” said Dave Bell, Manager, Product Marketing at Ricoh. “We have customers who run seven days a week, 24 hours a day, at 96% uptime. Inkjet is also extremely consistent. From the first page to the ten-millionth page, each impression looks exactly the same.”
Bell recalls that, in the early days of printing, paper availability was a problem. “There was a significant premium for inkjet papers, and merchants weren’t stocking them. Now, every paper mill in the world is making at least one grade of inkjet treated paper. There are so many customers using inkjet, you can no longer ignore the market.”
The earliest adopters of inkjet were transactional printing customers, like banks and utility companies, who needed variable data. Next came textbooks. Now, Bell notes that the largest change in the market is direct mail, where designers are using data to target their customers in very specific ways. “For example, if you were to go into REI and buy a bike, why would I send you the entire REI catalog, with clothing and yoga equipment and everything else, when I could instead send you a catalog specializing in bike accessories and clothing that matches the bike you just purchased? It’s a far more effective use of marketing. Yes, you are printing less, but with a much higher buy rate.”
As inkjet technology improves even further, Ricoh remains committed to innovation. Its newest commercial inkjet printer, the VC60000, launched in 2015 in the U.S. “We are now achieving offset quality printing on an inkjet printer. We were the first company with a true 1200 x 1200 dpi printer to hit the market, which is right at commercial quality,” said Bell. “This will dramatically change the way the world prints.”