Quality Creates Advantages - Digital Express Store HP Original Consumables Application Experience The information technology wave has affected people's lives with unprecedented depth and breadth. In just a few decades, its tentacles have touched every corner of human life. Taking the large format printer as an example, it cooperates with the computer, which not only makes many time-consuming and laborious tasks such as architectural drawing, drawing and drawing, and outdoor advertisement drawing become easy and fun, but also gives birth to a brand new industry. . Nowadays, when you are on the street, the digital fast-printing shop full of colorful pictures on the windows has become a chic landscape in the city.
Due to the direct demand from users and fierce market competition pressure, compared with the design institutes, advertising companies and other entities that purchase and use large-format printers themselves, the digital express printing shops are more delicate in handling the relationship between print quality and cost. And important. At present, due to the mixed supply of printer supplies in the Chinese market, there are differences in the cost of original supplies and compatible consumables, and a large number of digital express printing shops adopting suicidal price reduction strategies use compatible consumables in order to reduce costs. The competition between the entire digital fast print shop presents an extremely chaotic disorder.
However, in this complex and complicated situation, a large number of digital express printing shops adhering to the strategy of winning by quality have consistently adhered to the original consumables and have earned a reputation in the industry with outstanding output quality. Relying on this strategy, they have stepped out of the quagmire of price wars and have gained more room for development.
What are the differences between original supplies and compatible consumables? How do digital fast print shops that use original supplies create their own competitive advantage? To this end, I visited the Beijing Jun-Shi Shi digital printing shop. Below, let's listen to their experiences with original HP supplies, and believe that users who are caught in price wars and who purchase and use color large-format printers will be inspired.
I. Basic information of the company Reporter: Would you please tell us about the development history and basic business conditions of your digital printing shop?
Jun Shi Shi: We started the digital output business from June 2000. The initial equipment used was a HP Design Jet 2000. Later, as the business gradually expanded, two HP Design Jet 5000s were added. This is the most important equipment of our company. As for the company's business, it mainly includes print effects and various types of equipment, production-level color digital laser printers, and printer-grade hardcover books. As far as the customer is concerned, we are mainly targeting the architectural CAD users and outputting the architectural renderings mainly used for construction bidding.
Second, why choose original supplies?
Reporter: At the beginning of the company's establishment, why did you choose HP Design Jet large format printers and original HP supplies?
Jun Cheng Shi: This will also start from scratch. When I first worked in my original unit, I used HP large-format printers and HP original consumables. I feel that the original consumables are of stable quality and guaranteed quality. Later I began to do digital output business. Compared with similar products, I think HP Design Jet has obvious comprehensive advantages in print speed and quality. For example, an A0 drawing, using the HP Design Jet5000, takes only 10 minutes to output and has a resolution of 1200 dpi, but another large format printer from a famous manufacturer at that time required more than one hour! This obviously can not meet the needs of modern architectural design efficiency. Therefore, we purchased the HP Design Jet large format printer. The initial selection of HP original consumables was mainly based on the work experience of the original unit and felt that this would ensure that HP printers and consumables achieved an optimal system combination to ensure high quality printing. At the beginning of the establishment of the company, we established a good reputation among users and laid the foundation for the company's future development.
Reporter: As we all know, many compatible filling inks are currently popular in the domestic market. Their price is only a fraction of the original ink price; moreover, it is said that there are also many fast print shops engaged in digital output in order to reduce the cost of using compatible inks. But why did your company insist on using original ink for two years?
Jun-Shih Shih: The price difference between the compatible ink and the original ink consumption that you mentioned just now does exist, but the difference in print quality between the two is even more pronounced.
Once there was a salesperson who filled the ink, they went to the door and offered free installation and commissioning. At first we refused, and we tried once. However, the results of the experiment disappointed us. The problem mainly arises in several ways:
First, the compatible ink particles filled are much coarser than the original ink particles. Therefore, the printed drawings clearly show the traces of their transition. In addition, due to the lack of corresponding standards and technical specifications for filling ink, printing colors are very unstable. For original ink cartridges, there is also a problem with certain colors, such as reddish or greenish. However, since the original ink cartridges implement strict standards and specifications, the slight deviation of this color is stable and can be predicted and adjusted. What is the compatible ink for filling? The deviation of its color is unstable, sometimes reddish, and sometimes blue, and we cannot predict the deviation from it, and it is beyond our control. A picture is often printed completely and only after it is found that the color is seriously deviated from the expected state, so it has to be repeated. Last but not least, it is also very important. Since the particles filled with the ink are much coarser than the original ink, the ink head is easily clogged, and the life of the ink head is greatly affected. The ink head price is not cheap. As far as I know, some digital output companies do not use ink heads when they are taken out of the water to soak up the ink plugs, but the effect is very limited. Other companies still work hard to get their heads partially blocked. As a result, the printed renderings have obvious textures and detailed tracks, which will greatly affect the visual effects of the architectural renderings.
Reporter: Can you tell us about the use of compatible print media?
Jun Shi Shi: Compatible print media we have used, but the quality and original media are very different. For example, the hygienic qualities of the combined media are very poor, and there are often contaminants such as paper scraps. Dust is a common occurrence, and even dead mosquitoes occur, which can cause damage to the printer. In addition, compatible print media often have some tiny paint defects, which are difficult to see with the naked eye. Only after printing can you find that this part is not printed, and the entire rendering is even scrapped! Even worse media can not even achieve the basic finish, and the effect is even worse.
Third, the quality of creating an advantage Reporter: But in many other companies engaged in digital output have used compatible supplies to reduce costs, but you are using relatively expensive original consumables, will there be a "lemon market" situation? In other words, high-quality products and services are disadvantaged in the market because of price factors.
Jun Shi Shi: (Smile) Your concern is unnecessary. Our current operating conditions prove this. Because our company uses HP original supplies, the cost is higher than compatible supplies, so the printing price is also higher. In practice, customers have recognized this high price and high cost. Although you will often see advertisements such as ultra-low-cost inkjet printing at $10 per square meter in the newspapers, our company does not advertise in almost all kinds of media; the quality we rely on depends on the reputation of high quality and Word of mouth. We are repeat customers here, the vast majority of customers are recommended by the original customers, and they think that our output quality is better.
Your concern is partly due to a lack of understanding of the architectural CAD industry. In the construction bidding process, the architectural renderings are the first impressions delivered to the user. The effect chart printed with original consumables is only about RMB 200, which is a percentage of the design cost of thousands of thousands of dollars per map, compared to the bid amount of tens of millions or even hundreds of millions. Almost negligible. Therefore, for most users, especially for architectural CAD users, the output cost is not important, and they are pursuing high-quality output. In this context, we have no doubt that the high-quality, high-price strategy we chose to use original consumables is correct.
IV. Conclusions and implications In the case of using Jungle large format printers and insisting on adopting HP original consumables to win competitive advantage with high quality, it is not difficult to see that in the area of ​​large-format professional digital output, due As for the customer's ambition for quality, original consumables have irreplaceable advantages over compatible consumables. Compatible consumables, with the gradual maturity of market demand, will surely end in time and exit the stage of history.
For professional digital express printing shops, only using the original supplies to take the road of high quality and high prices, in order to gain a firm foothold in the fierce competition in the market, and the use of compatible supplies to lower prices and low quality strategy will inevitably fall into the price war. It is difficult to extricate itself and deeper.