A leading provider of focused business printers, TallyGenicom is famous for the reliability and robustness of its products, as demonstrated by its decision to use metallic print mechanisms and interfaces rather than the industry standard flimsy plastic. In an important move that provides the thermal printing market with an exciting new alternative to existing competitors, TallyGenicom has introduced the new 7000 series of mid-range desktop thermal printing solutions. This extends the company’s range of solutions, and confirms them as the widest range on the market for the office, back office, factory or warehouse. With a print head speed of up to 8 inches per second, the new thermal printers are up to 25% faster than competing products. Robin Edwardes, TallyGenicom’s Executive Vice President and Managing Director for Europe, the Middle East and Africa, spoke to Warehouse & Logistics News.
Warehouse & Logistics News – When was TallyGenicom founded and who owns it now? How big is it worldwide? Where is the worldwide HQ?
TallyGenicom was formed on 7 August 2003, when the Tally and Genicom companies merged. Prior to the merger, Genicom LP was one of the leading manufacturers of line printers in the USA and Tally focused on design, development, manufacturing, distribution and servicing of printers for high-volume industrial and business applications including line, matrix and laser printers.
TallyGenicom’s world-wide headquarters are in the United States, in Chantilly, VA near Washington DC, with manufacturing sites in Reynosa, Mexico and Jiangmen, China. Its EMEA sales, marketing and finance HQ is based in Basingstoke, UK with the EMEA logistics centre in Ulm, Germany. Other key offices are located in Paris, Milan, Madrid, Moscow, Vienna, Singapore, Beijing, Dubai and Johannesburg.
WLN – How important is the UK as a marketplace within the EMEA region for TallyGenicom?
Very important! It’s the largest market in Europe for our line printers, with over 22% of sales. It provides excellent business for Serial Matrix printers, with over 12% share of the European market. TallyGenicom is also a major supplier of niche products, which require a high level of knowledge to sell and support. As the home ground for sales, marketing and support it provides an excellent opportunity to keep abreast of customers requires requirements and infrastructure at home and in Europe.
WLN – Where is your UK office?
The UK office is based in Basingstoke, Hampshire.
WLN – How much time do you spend in the UK?
I probably spend between 2-3 weeks per month.
WLN – Who are your existing UK customers?
TallyGenicom has UK customers in a variety of sectors and industries, including public sector, retail, automotive, distribution and manufacturing. Current customers include Metzler Automotive Systems, Tesco, Bookers, Westbridge Furniture, MBI, Georg Fisher, Fresh Direct and Doosan Babcock. We also have larger international corporations including VW, General Motors, Carrefour, BMW and Blockbuster.
WLN – As UK MD, are you personally involved with any of your accounts?
I am actually Executive Vice President EMEA. Pete Laplanche is the local UK MD, and has regular contact with both our channel and key end user accounts. I am personally involved from time to time with key channels and our largest end-user accounts across EMEA.
WLN – What are your best selling printers in the UK? What kinds of operations are they aimed at?
Dot matrix printers are our best sellers, closely followed by Line Matrix printers, where we have the leading market share, with warehousing and logistics companies taking the lion’s share of TG product. The company also has a range of heavy-duty laser printers, and has just launched its new range of thermal barcode machines.
WLN – Where do you make the printers you sell in the UK? Where is your technology development centre?
TallyGenicom’s two manufacturing facilities operate under Lean Six Sigma principles; our biggest facility is in Reynosa, Mexico, just 10 miles from our worldwide distribution centre in McAllen, Texas. This is a 148,000 sq ft factory that produces all TallyGenicom line printers, ribbons, spare parts and select business class dot matrix and mobile printers.
The other manufacturing facility is based in Jiangmen City in Guangdong Province in China. This 70,000 sq ft facility produces the 2000 series of dot matrix printers, including 2150, 2250, 2265+, 2280+ as well as spare parts.
The Texas-based McAllen site is home to our laser printer integration centre, where we configure units to customer requirements. In Europe we have a Central Distribution & Configuration centre in Ulm, Southern Germany.
WLN – How do you sell your products in the UK – direct or through distributors? Do you have your own after-sales and service network?
TallyGenicom sells mainly through the VAR channel, and we have a very successful working relationship with our channel partners. TallyGenicom is extremely careful not to over-distribute its products, so as to protect our reseller’s margins. Thermal printers allow our resellers to effectively and efficiently service their customer.
TallyGenicom offers after-sales opportunities, including a supply of ribbons, label stock, spares and print heads. We also have our own, fully trained, field services team who cover our entire printer portfolio, from heavy-duty line printers, to fast and efficient colour lasers.
WLN – Focusing now on the new thermal printers, when did you launch the 7000 series in the UK? Where are they produced?
The thermal range was first launched in the UK in April, with other European countries following on in the same month. We wanted to coordinate a pan-European launch for the products to make sure our customers in all key markets got the news at the same time.
The printers are built to our design in Mexico (7005) and Taiwan (7006 & 7008). Our design team is in the US but has regular input from EMEA product marketing and technical support teams, who also approve any products prior to release.
WLN – What different products are in the 7000 range? What can they do?
The product range consists of the 7005, 7006 and 7008, which cover everything from 2- to 4-inch thermal transfer and direct thermal printing for applications across a variety of products such as retail, healthcare, manufacturing and logistics. This extends the company’s widest range of solutions on the market for the office, back office, factory or warehouse. With a print-head speed of up to 8 inches per second, the new thermal printers are up to 25% faster than competing products.
WLN – I have to ask: why no 7007?
As much as we would like to have our very own James Bond themed printer, there is a simple reason for this. The way in which we name our products is that the last figure represents the speed; therefore we have 7005 (5 inches per second), 7006 (6 inches per second) and 7008 (8 inches per second). We have no 7-inch per second products, as our current range of products covers all the key speeds for the mid-range desktop products.
WLN – Can you talk us through the different products?
The entry-level TallyGenicom 7005 is the ultimate thermal desktop printer, offering performance and features until now only found in mid-range industrial machines. The 7005 has an industry leading 32-bit internal processor and 16MB of DRAM for best-in-class ‘first label out’ print speed. The compact 7006 offers the performance and features of industry-strength products at a desktop price point. In addition, it has a compact footprint and space-saving external power supply, large roll capacity for high volume applications and prints speeds of up to 6 inches per second. The 7008 is the best compact industrial desktop thermal printer on the market, and the first to include a fully programmable LCD menu as standard.
WLN – How do the 7000 series compare with “normal” office printers?
The 7006 and 7008 have a die-cast metal user interface built to withstand harsh environments, yet they retain certain elegance for the modern office, government department or retail areas. Thermal printers produce barcodes with superb quality when compared to other forms of printing. Organisations can use lasers or matrix printers, but at times these are not particularly robust for this type of application, as well as often more expensive to run for these applications.
WLN – How do you sum up the 7000 series proposition?
The 7000 series is a fast, solid, well-built product line, designed for hostile printing environments and is in line with TallyGenicom’s heritage of robust, reliable printing solutions. They bridge the gap between mid-range and desktop models and are competitively priced, without compromising on exceptionally high performance.
WLN – What environments can they be used in?
Thermal printers can be used in a variety of environments, such as shipping labels on e-commerce goods, patient wristbands in hospitals, price labels in supermarkets all the way to producing small barcodes for rings at a jewellery stores.
WLN – What can people use the 7000 series for in warehousing and logistics operations?
They can be used to print large volumes of high quality labels at low running costs and such items as dispatch notes, invoices and barcodes.
WLN – Do you supply complete printing solutions, including network connectivity?
All TallyGenicom printers come network ready. We also offer a range of other attractive features in our printers, such as USB, as standard. USB connection can negate the need for a computer connection for external applications such as flash cards, weighing scales, barcode readers or keyboards.
We have several years’ expertise in-house, and can provide our customers with attractive propositions for complete printing solutions. Our team of experts can write the necessary code to have our printers running on legacy systems such as UNIX or IBM. Further more our team of fast-track engineers are able to provide this service within a 48-hour time frame for most applications.
WLN – If people buy a 7000 series thermal printer today and print barcode labels with it, will they have to replace it when RFID comes in?
There has been a lot of discussion over RFID and its uses. Where it may well create a burgeoning market, at present it only represents 2% of the barcode and labelling market. We have identified that RFID is specifically used at the moment for very specialised and niche applications.
While it is currently thermal printers that are predominantly used to print high quality barcode labels, TallyGenicom’s 7000 series printers are future-proofed to print next-generation RFID tags. We are building architecture for businesses to take RFID on board as and when the market is ready. It is also worth noting that RFID and thermal barcodes can and will co-exist in the business environment.
WLN – How easy is it to switch from barcode labels to printing RFID tags?
Technically it depends on your engine. If you support RFID encoding as standard it’s very easy, although there are a number of standards for RFID, so ensure you have the units you need. For TallyGenicom, it’s a matter of adding components, as all the thermal products are future-proofed for RFID. The RFID tags are laid between the label and liner, so it’s easy to print and encode the RFID tags simultaneously.
WLN – What are the selling prices for your thermal printers?
The 7005 is available from £333, the 7006 from £561 and the 7008 from £626. All come with our standard two years on-site warranty.
WLN – If they’re maintained properly, what’s the lifespan of the 7000 series?
The life of printers is measured in kilometres. Our printers can print 25km of labels, a distance from London to Slough. We offer a one-year warranty for the print head if you use quality labels from our preferred suppliers or us, as the quality of media used will have an impact on the lifespan of the print head.
WLN – What technical standards are your printers made to?
TallyGenicom printers are ROHS compliant, and carry an Energy Star. With the introduction of such standards like Codabar and PDF417, thermal printers provide an increased data capability as well as reliability of barcode labels.
WLN – What has the UK customer response been to the 7000 series so far?
Launching the thermal range was actually a reaction to customer demand for the technology. Since the launch, the 7000 series is being received very well. Customers have been very quick to understand that TallyGenicom have products which complement competitive machines: they are not ‘me too’ solutions. We’ve been identified as providing a more reliable, better performing desktop machine than our competitors in important market segments. As an alternative to large expensive metal cabinet machines, they offer similar performance and features, but at much better price points. Also we have a large, loyal user and reseller base out there always willing to sign up to TallyGenicom if the value proposition is right.
WLN – How quickly can people get one? Who do they need to call?
Our thermal printer range is available from now, and any potential customer should contact one of our preferred resellers or the UK sales hotline, that will be able to assist with any queries relating to our printer range.
WLN – Have you won any awards for innovation?
Awards are nice to have, but for TallyGenicom the most prestigious award of them all is the solid relationship we have with our customers. We are also frequently recognised throughout the industry press. For example, our 9050 heavy duty A3 laser printer was recently reviewed in PC Pro, and received the ‘Most Recommended’ Award. Furthermore, we received an award from the Institute of Transport Management earlier this year for the ‘best return on investment’ on our entire dot-matrix range of printers.
WLN – How is the economic climate in Europe affecting your business? What other factors do you see affecting you sales in the UK?
To date we’ve only seen delays in closing projects in the financial sector, where we sell many laser and dot matrix printers. Warehousing and logistics are amongst the sectors that use our products in ‘Mission Critical’ environments, so replacement programmes are seen as a way of reducing overall costs, and not just as a strain on capital budgets.
Businesses are looking for technologies that will help lower running costs and provide above-the-margin quality and usability, which is fulfilled by thermal printers.
WLN – Finally, where do you see the 7000 series going from here in the UK? Any plans for launching more thermal printers in the series?
There are plans to further extend the thermal printer range, possibly towards the end of this year. The high-range market is of interest to us, but it is something that we will look at next year. We are also looking into the mobile thermal market. The new printers will complement our already existing range.
TallyGenicom Ltd
Phone (UK): 0870 872 2888
www.tallygenicom.co.uk
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