About turn: repositioning a brand to cope with COVID

What do you do when your entire business model is threatened by the impact of the pandemic? One CEO shares what it takes to turn things around

The pandemic shock made many dealers reconsider their ways of functioning and doing business. As restrictions relaxed, and the world opened up, many looked forward to returning to business as usual. Steve Weedon, CEO of Print-Rite Europe, was hopeful that 2022 would bring with it a return to normality - however, he was disappointed. “What’s transpired is that there’s no such thing as going back to normal, because that normal has gone.”

While many businesses are coping with the new hybrid ways of working - with people at home some or all of the time, and offices less well-populated - for most, this is just a case of figuring out logistics. For a company like Steve’s, reliant on selling consumables to offices, the impact of this transition has been far greater. “Traditionally, our business has been manufacturing and supplying consumables for office-based printing.

“You can imagine, during COVID when people didn’t go to the office, it was a very thin time for everyone concerned. We came out of that in 2022, but it soon became very obvious that we needed to become much more agile.”

Although, as people trickled back to the workplace, Print-Rite was seeing an uptick in business from the drought of 2020, it wasn’t back to where it once was. Steve had a desire to future-proof the business from sudden shocks like this in the future – and he knew this would be a challenge. “We ended up changing our whole business model. We’ve come from a direct distribution model which we ran for many years with our own warehouses, and our own staff, right around Europe.

“We closed all that down, and spun it around. We now have an authorised distributor model, where we authorise distributors in regional territories, regional countriessometimes more than one in one country, depending

upon the size.”

The move to this model has been a deep and fundamental change for Print-Rite. It has seen new distribution partners brought on board, some offices closed, and a downsizing of staff. On February 1st 2022 Print-Rite announced that it had completed the transition of the Pelikan Printer brand to the new model, and that it would cease direct trading.

“It’s a bit like stopping a tanker in the English Channel because you realise you’re going the wrong way, you’ve got to turn it round and you’ve got to start going back in the opposite direction. That’s what we’ve done, and we’ve done it a little bit quicker than we anticipated, but it’s been hard work.” that tanker in the Channel, and we’re now going in the opposite direction. What we need to do now is to get up some more speed.”

So, looking ahead, Steve’s mission now is to stoke the boilers of his ‘ship’ and get things moving. So far, around 41 countries have authorised distributors for the Pelikan brand, but there is still a long way to go. Central and Eastern Europe, as well as parts of the Americas, remain key opportunities where partners are still being sought.

Operating worldwide comes with its own challenges, and working well with partners and businesses in different geographical areas requires a deep understanding of their pressures and preferences. Depending on the location, in-person may be preferred to online, terms and conditions may be different, the customers they sell to might change. “That’s the sort of thing we have a challenge with. We have to stop and say one model doesn’t fit all, so what do we need to do to support the reseller, or the authorised distributor, to earn more market share?”

The Challenge Of Selling Quality

Learning Through Change

For Steve and his team the past year has been a huge upheaval, but the end result was worth the stress. As custodians of the 185-year-old Pelikan brand, Print-Rite has delivered better customer satisfaction by bringing the welldemanded products closer to the end-users. However, Steve admits that getting this done has involved a steep learning curve.

“We learned to be more agile and not fixed to decisions even though we made them in previous years, because times have changed. We quickly learned to listen; we now listen very acutely to what our customers are saying. Above all, it’s a question of helping our customers, who are resellers and dealers, to become much more profitable.

“We’ve had some really good success; we’ve turned

Regardless of the change of business model, one challenge that remains ever-present for Print-Rite and the Pelikan brand is that of competing with unbranded products. White label resellers are in a race to the bottom to offer the cheapest product possible - and that’s not a race that Steve wants to get into.

“This race to the lowest price with a white box is essentially a faceless relationship list sale. Normally, that customer won’t come back to you again next month, or the month after that, unless you are the lowest price on that day when he’s looking. That’s not a good business model; I call it a ‘cul-de-sac business model’ because, once you’re in, there’s no way out.”

This means that, to be successful, the brand has to be sold on more than just price. Print-Rite has harnessed the power of added value to deliver its sales, focusing on the quality of the product rather than trying to compete with lower cost sellers. “We have very high quality product because we have the brand to protect. I can’t mess around with a 185 year old brand, so it’s all about quality - we actually call it an OEM quality. We don’t sell by being the cheapest in the market; we sell with a value add.”

For sellers that are always focused on being the cheapest, securing a sale with quality at the forefront might seem like a difficult task; difficult, but not impossible. Now Print-Rite needs to pass on these skills to a new breed of sellers - its authorised resellers around the world.

Steve has passed on his full belief in the quality of the product, and he is already seeing great results from his resellers. “Often, our sales people working for an authorised distributor come back and say, ‘You know what? The price doesn’t come out until the end now’ and that’s right, because you’ve sold the value add.

“You’ve sold what this product is. They know a white box is going to be cheaper than the OEM - they know it’s going to be more expensive than a white box that’s currently sold on price.”

A quality product sold at a fair price, especially when considering all the research and development that’s gone into it, is a win-win all round. The dealer makes a better margin, the salesperson gets a better commission, and the end-user has a superior product he can rely upon. Rather than racing to the bottom of the price list, dealers have the opportunity to focus on customer retention and exemplary service, kicking the whole operation up a notch.

Advice For The Industry

Steve’s mantra is all about doing the right thing in any given situation, innovating when there’s room to do so, and not being afraid to change it up when things aren’t going to plan. “Ultimately, you have to do a sanity check and ask yourself every Monday morning, ‘Are we doing the right thing?’ and then have another go. It’s a continual effort as you move along.”

For Steve, having the Pelikan brand under his care involves a constant commitment to keeping it alive and well; wrapped into this is being unafraid to make a significant change if it means the difference between thriving or just surviving. “We’ve got the brand, and we need to feed the brand. It’s a bit like a monster sitting in the office and you need to throw it some vanilla sticky buns every now and again, to keep it fed - because if you don’t it gets lethargic – and maybe even dies. One day it will get fed-up of the vanilla sticky buns so you’ll need to throw chocolate ones at it!”