Well the rumors of who is going to buy Danka are finally over. The "winner" is Konica-Minolta, who "won" by getting a company for slightly more than half their annual sales revenue. Danka Office Imaging serves over 45,000 customers across the U.S. and generated about $450 million in revenue for the fiscal year ended March, 2007. Konica Minolta picked them up for $240 Million, a relative bargain, considering they get a large group of new customers to displace Canon, Toshiba and HP equipment with their own. Surely Canon and HP will drop Danka from their distribution channel as fast as they can, as they did when Xerox purchased Global Imaging Systems. Not sure what Toshiba will do as Danka was a large distributor for them and also a national service department for Toshiba.
In my tenure the rumor mill was that Toshiba was going to buy Danka. Then the rumor became Ricoh since they purchased Danka's European division. While I was with Danka it was pretty obvious they were looking to be purchased by a larger company. It began when they outsourced their HR department and divided the company into 4 distinct operating entities across the US. Then they began to lay off sales and support personnel and many long-time employees.
All that was left to purchase was the leaner sales and service departments with low overhead. Danka was selling Canon, Toshiba and Hewlett-Packard products, along with larger production equipment from Kodak's Digimaster line (Which they owned, sold, bought back, sold again.....) and 2 Hitachi models (since sold off too) .
Now the next interesting thing to watch is who is going to buy Ikon. With Global Imaging becoming Xerox (right after Global hit $1 Billion in sales with 185,000 customers) last year and Danka becoming Konica Minolta (450 Million with 45,000 customers) in May 2008, Canon and HP have lost large distribution/service channels. Canon is left with Ikon and Canon Business Solutions, as well as many smaller independent dealers across the country. What they lost with Danka was a national dealer with lots of service presence throughout the country. Canon does not do their own service but relies on their dealer channel to service equipment they sell direct to the end user.
The wrinkle is that HP just put their new Edgeline inkjet-based copier line in Danka's hands for a national service presence since they also outsource their service to a network of HP dealers. I can't imagine either Canon or HP doing business with Danka once they are Konica Minolta, so both Canon and HP may be looking to Ikon for an increased role in their equipment service...and maybe revenue and sales too! HP is going to push big to move inkjet-based Edgeline copiers into the corporate office but they need a national repair ability if they want to support corporate sales nationally. Look out Ikon, I think your value just increased through no fault of your own.
Wednesday, May 7, 2008
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Agreed!
The rumor when I was at IKN was Canon was going to buy them.
And with the latest HP purchase of EDS(for 14 billion) - and an IKN purchase by HP for, what, 3.0 Billion? Seems almost trivial.
I don't know who it will be or if IKN would start selling off bits and pieces(Professional Services)
...time shall tell..
http://thedeathofthecopier.blogspot.com/
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