Above: Josh Santos (left) and AJ Baggott (right) have found the Kodak digital presses have raised RJ Young’s production print offerings to new levels.
RJ Young, based in Nashville, Tennessee, is not hesitant to blaze trails. Its foray into production print is an excellent example. Three years ago, RJ Young partnered with Kodak to add high-volume presses to its production print offerings. It was already selling production and light production devices from Canon U.S.A. and Ricoh USA, but the addition of Kodak’s NexPress cut-sheet digital press and NEXFINITY sheetfed digital press has raised RJ Young’s production print offerings to a new level.
Production print represents a sizable percentage of its yearly revenues—about 10% of total hardware sales and close to 17% of total aftermarket. After a 2020 in line with what many dealers experienced, optimism is high for returning this segment of the business to pre-2020 profitability and beyond. Key to growth within the production print arena is selling more of the Kodak devices.
“We’re going to continue to see declines in the core A3 market for our business,” observed AJ Baggott, RJ Young’s COO. “What we’ve lost from COVID probably isn’t coming back at least at any material level. Our best bet for those clicks is in the A4 space, managed print, and production. Production is inevitably going to have to grow as a portion of our business or our business is going to decline.”
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