Copier deal: Ricoh to buy IKON
Ricoh, the Japanese copier company (one of the top three in the world) announced it would buy IKON Office Solution. IKON is the leading independent office-machine dealer in the US with around 400 branches. Announced price of the deal is around $1,6 billion.
IKON already sells Ricoh products, making up around 20% of Ricoh sales. But it also sells equipment from Ricoh's biggest rival, Japanese copier maker Canon. In addition, it sells Hewlett-Packard, Konica Minolta, and Océ technology. IKON gives Ricoh a big boost in sales and service, along with an eventual cutting out of Ricoh's rivals.
Over the past year and a half, the three biggest US copier dealer chains have been bought out. Xerox (April 2007) announced the purchase of Global Imaging for $1.5 billion. Konica Minolta (April 2008) announced it would buy Danka Office Imaging for $240 million. Assuming the IKON deal goes through, big independent dealer chains will be gone from the scene (though there remain lots of smaller dealers).
What's happening is part of a trend where the big copier/printer companies are snapping up major national accounts from Fortune 1000 companies, while leaving the rest to smaller dealer. Once again, only the big can serve the big.
The biggest threat is to Canon. IKON sells 40% of Canon copiers currently. Assuming that Canon won't want to sell through its rival, where can it go to replace that market share?
8:29:25 PM 
|
|
