Over the past two years, Epson India has built its direct sales team to try to work closely with enterprise customer. Earlier the ratio of direct to indirect business in Epson India was 20:80 but today it stands at 40:60, informed RV Ramprasad, GM-West and South, Epson India.

But he is quick to add that though Epson has improved its direct sales, it does not bypass the channel when it comes to fulfilling orders bagged by the direct sales personnel. “All orders are routed through select partners, who can then add a whole host of other products along with our printers and thereby end up getting better margins as well,” Ramprasad clarified.

The idea to have a direct sales team germinated from a decision to reach out to enterprise customers and offer them an end-to-end printing solution. So the direct team will profile ideal companies as customers, educate them, get Epson product empanelled as their preferred brand, prepare rate contract for cartridge supplies and even promote employee schemes. The partner is then brought into the picture for fulfillment the order.

At present, of the 2,500 channel partners on Epson's network, there are around 100 who work as corporate partners. These partners bring the chunk of the value business to Epson, while the rest contribute the volume sales.

Epson is also increasingly focusing on the retail channel as against the VARs and IT dealers. “While our traditional channel will co-exist with the retail partners, including LFRs, we will be shifting our focus more on the latter,” said Ramprasad. One reason behind this move is the changing pattern of customer buying habits. Where earlier end-customers were more concerned about price points, today they view shopping for IT products as an experience and would rather buy from an expansive LFR than a dealer outlet with a small facade. Besides this, most successful retail outlets, especially the LFRs, leverage on the pull of consumer electronics to draw customers to their IT product offerings as well. This strategy works well for Epson as the cost of acquiring a customer in such an environment is very low as compared to that of an IT dealer outlet.

“The IT dealer expects a lot of branding and often we have to pay for their support staff as well which is not the way the retail business should work for any vendor. We prefer working with LFRs and consumer electronic showrooms which sell IT, because they use their electronics products as a magnet to pull crowds, who can also then go for our products,” Ramprasad added.

Epson will be taking its authorized partners either to Europe or Dubai later this year as part of its channel interaction program.

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