Copier Wars

Dozens of copier companies are battling for your business.Here's how to choose a machine you can live with.

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Look out, Small Business: Xerox is out to get you. So are Canon, A. B. Dick, IBM, Mita, Savin, Saxon, 3M, Toshiba, and a dozen other makers and sellers of office copiers. The battle for your affections, and your hard-earned dollars, is being waged on television and radio and in the pages of magazines like this one. The point-men in the attack range from modern heroes like Xerox's John Havlicek, late of the Boston Celtics basketball team and now a restaurant owner, to ancient heroes like Saxon's Saxon, who might have skewered a few original Celts in his time. Their support troops are an army of technical terms like fiber optics, micronics, monocomponent toners, cold-pressure fusing, and microprocessors. For the most part, they're trying to sell you plain-paper copiers -- machines that will copy on ordinary paper rather than some specially treated kind (not all of them will, but more about that later). The stakes they're fighting for are high: An estimated 469,500 new plain-paper machines went into U.S. offices last year, rising to 773,500 by 1985.

Copier companies, like computer manufacturers, have discovered small business with a vengeance. Competition in the low-to-medium end of the market -- machines capable of making 20,000 to 150,000 copies a year -- is intense and growing. On average, you can expect two to three new model introductions per month, and price lists, once so firm they could almost be carved in stone, now change with dizzying speed.

As is usually the case with technology, there's good news and bad news associated with these developments. The good news is that there are more copying options open to even very small companies, at a lower cost than ever before. The bad news is that the vast array of models and prices makes choosing the right machine for your needs more difficult. And, although the financial cost of a bad copier choice may not actually destroy most companies, the human cost, measured in sheer aggravation, lost time, and lost tempers, can be devastating.

Because "state of the art" (an overused phrase in copier ads, which will not reappear in this article) these days means plain-paper machines, the bulk of what follows will focus on helping you understand what's happening in plain-paper land. Whether you decide to pursue that option when you make your next copier choice, or choose a different process, there are several key steps to take if you want to become an intelligent copier consumer. The first is assessing your copying needs. Needs assessment is pretty straightforward. Answer the following questions and you'll be on your way.

1. How many copies do you make? This is the place to start, because if your answer is "fewer than 250 per month," you may not need your own copier. If you make fewer than 1,500 to 2,000 copies per month, you probably don't need a plain-paper copier either. (See "The Coated-Paper Copier," page 44.) Assuming that you make more than 2,000 copies per month, however, it's important to be accurate in estimating your present and future copy volume. "Don't fool yourself," warns Patrick Marasco, an independent dealer with 30 years of experience. "A copier forced to make more or fewer copies per month than the manufacturer suggests will break down -- a lot. With few exceptions, copiers that seem to be perennially broken are low-volume copiers in high-volume environments, or vice versa."

If you already have a copier, one way to go about making an accurate volume estimate is to examine the bills you've received for service during the past year, since many service charges are a function of copy volume. Another method is a user questionnaire, which, if done formally, might mean asking those who use your machine to keep track of the number of copies they make -- as well as what they copy -- over a month's time. The latter idea isn't a bad one, since it will also help you answer the second important question.

2. What kind of copies do you make? Copier experts suggest two simple procedures to make sure that a machine is right for the kind of copying you do. The first step is to make a list of what you need to copy -- for example, internal memos, form letters onto your own letter-head, names onto labels, drawings, computer printouts -- as well as an estimate of how often you need each kind of copy made. Second, take actual samples of the most important documents with you when you try out machines at the dealer or when the salesperson comes to call. "There's classic story," says Marasco, "of the electrician who discovered too late that his new machine wouldn't pick up the particular color of blue ink used for the preprinted numbers on his invoices."

Disappearing numbers aside, there are other important reasons to know exactly what you copy. If most of your copying is limited to internal memos, all you really need is legibility, not letter-perfect quality -- and you shouldn't pay for it. If you need long runs of form letters on your letterhead only occasionally, you probably can use a local copy shop for the job, and save yourself the expense of buying special features, or overall capacity, that you don't need every day. On the other hand, if you regularly copy documents that need to be reduced -- printouts, for example -- you should make sure the copier you buy has the capacity. This point leads directly to the third question.

3. Do you need convenience features? Reduction capacity, automatic document feeders, and collators are the power steering, power brakes, and air conditioning of the copier world. Gradually, as happened in the automobile world, the cost of these options is coming down, but not so fast that they still don't make a significant difference in the final price of your copier. Moral: Be sure you really need them. After watching his office grind to a halt once a month while 10 employees copied, collated, and stapled a massive report, the director of one trade association decided to invest in a copier with a collator. "But even before the new machine showed up," he recalls, "I realized we'd only use the collator once a month." He canceled the order and took his monthly report to a copy shop instead. You might want to do the same thing. In either case, very few copiers costing less than $5,000 offer these features, which leads to the final question you should ask yourself.

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