Our story chapter 1: Coding & Marking and why no one cares about printers

Why no one cares about printers

Let’s face it. Nobody cares about printers like us manufacturers and distributors. We are the ones that get really sincerely excited when we see some kind of ingenious construction that allows a printhead to be bolted on with only one screw (while everybody else needs two). We can literally go on for an hour about why this is a great USP. How for example it allows for quicker printhead exchange and thus one minute less downtime every time you replace the printhead. Now, exchanging the printhead happens at most once every 5 years, so that’s 12 seconds on average you’re saving there per year! Not to mention the € 0,10 you’re saving on the extra screw! Recognize this? If so, you must be in Coding & Marking. If not, you must be everyone else. Including our customers.

Yes, I said it: Our end-users mostly just see us as a necessary evil that needs to be dealt with in order to keep selling products that require coding. Unfortunately nobody buys printers because they’re cool or desirable. It’s similar to getting insurance or picking an electricity supplier. All you know is that you need it, and as long as it does the trick you don’t care what it looks like or where it’s from. Such products are called low-interest products driven by a generic demand from the market. In other words, if you want to win the project it usually all come down to…Pricing.

So ok, as long as product specs are competitive best pricing will probably win you the project. But what is pricing in Coding & Marking? List price + cost of ownership you might say? Not entirely correct I’m afraid. Pricing is costs! And the potential costs of Coding & Marking go way beyond equipment price, ink/ribbon consumption and maintenance. Think about it. Try needing some repeated custom software work to integrate printers into an ERP system, and having to hire that programmer again every time your coding need changes. And what about product recalls due to a wrong coding? The costs of just one of these will buy a customer many new printers and truckloads of ink and ribbon!

So saving on equipment price and consumables is good and necessary. And although they are bare necessities it won’t set you apart from the rest. But if in addition you can also help improve on a customer’s corporate KPI’s (like factory output or preventing production errors), all of the sudden your Coding & Marking printers aren’t such a low interest topic anymore. Especially if your equipment is designed in a way that it’s easy and affordable to avoid coding errors. And in addition your open platform software allows plug & print integration into any (ERP) system, AND can cover all imaginable coding needs straight off the shelf without needing custom software or programming…

Enter Kortho’s new SLIMLINE concept! Where SLIM stands for:

Smart

Less

Is

More

A concept that I will be unveiling through these publications until reaching full disclosure on the Interpack next year. This will be in the form of our new range of TTO machines built in accordance with our SLIMLINE concept. Curious on how all the above translates into machine design and specs? Then stay tuned for more as all will be increasingly unveiled the next coming year!