Epson: AstroNova & On Demand Color Printing

This is a snippet of the transcript, sign up to read more.

I believe that's part of AstroNova's strategy. Their revenue base in the product ID segment is roughly 80% recurring and 20% hardware. Of that 80%, it's 30% ink and 30% media. The remaining 20% includes print heads and other parts. Media manufacturing is significant for them. They are a converter and produce labels. They recently mentioned a customer contract involving a three-year supply of labels.

The feedback I received is that customers felt locked into buying media and ink for those printers, which left a bad taste. We didn't care about that, which gave customers flexibility. We aimed to provide the best printer and ink. Customers at shows were frustrated with AstroNova's printheads because they were expensive, costing between $500 to $800 each. The total cost of ownership was high compared to Epson machines, which didn't require printhead replacements.

This is a snippet of the transcript, sign up to read more.

I'm trying to think about different channels to market, like OEM, which is another channel besides standard resellers. You can work directly with specialty industries, like marijuana. If someone is making processing or packaging systems, you could be their standard solution for applying labels as packages are made. I was just thinking through that. I think that's most of the specific questions I had. As I continue to learn about AstroNova and the industry, we have a few minutes before you need to go. Are there any other thoughts or specific things I should be asking or researching?

One key obstacle preventing customers from shifting to on-demand is the cost per label. One of my main focuses with our resellers was assisting them. We developed a TCO tool and invested significantly to help our resellers determine the actual cost per label. Our TCO tool was so precise that we could take a high-resolution image or PDF, run it through the tool, and accurately calculate the exact cost per label based on the amount of cyan, magenta, yellow, and black ink required.

This is a snippet of the transcript, sign up to read more.