Unlike other packaging companies at PackPlus 2018 who were offering products and services to attendees during the show, Konica Minolta came up with a unique strategy to market the products manufactured by its customers and printed on machines offered by Konica Minolta.
“This time around, for Konica Minolta it’s all about showing customers’ print samples to the industry. These samples have been printed on machines offered by Konica Minolta. We sold an MGI machine to Printology Experts. However, our aim is not to just sell our machines in the market but also do business development for our customers so that they get better returns on investment on Konica Minolta machines. Furthermore, we took up this initiative so that our customers can directly interact with the end print buyers,” said a Konica Minolta representative during the event.
Paving a way to success for its customers
The company aims to carry this tradition forward in the upcoming pacprocess 2018 show. The show will be hosted by Messe Dusseldorf in Mumbai this October. Additionally, the company has also decided to participate in at least 6-8 shows a year to promote its customers’ samples; it will assist print buyers in connecting with Konica Minolta customers. This, in turn, will help them to churn maximum profits post association with Konica Minolta.
“We’re promoting digital prints for various industrial print applications and we can see the industry growing. It is growing at about 8-12% in the digital space. These numbers are purely in terms of industrial print applications; we’re not talking about production printing here,” the company representative added. “Post demonetization and GST, I think people are afraid to invest in high-value print equipment. Moreover, the return on investment is the major factor that concerns them here. Through this initiative, we want to convey that Konica Minolta is not here just to sell machines; it will also help its customers develop their business.”
Konica Minolta came up with this initiative after a detailed discussion with its counterparts located in the US and European countries. The company learnt about the initiatives that the Western workforce adopt to help their customers get better returns on investment by promoting print samples in the corporate sector, FMCGs and retail space. In India, there is a huge retail boom at the moment. The company found some of its customers come from small business backgrounds or SME sectors; they do not have the potential to reach out to multi-national companies and market their print samples effectively.
