the m arket place NEWS OF THE MICROFILM INDUSTRY
MARCH/APRIL 1988 No 9
Microprint’s battle with HMSO The Microprint Group, as dealers and agents for Mr Darby did receive a second letter from Downing Street manufacturers of micrographic equipment, speak for many saying that the Prime Minister had expressed a personal dealers when voicing this particular complaint — namely that interest in the matter. they spend a great deal of time, money and effort to promote Following the rejection of his olive branch the Chairman of a piece of kit in a local authority to find the order snatched Microprint Group started to ‘make a nuisance of himself with from them because the local authority’s purchasing suppliers every time an incident occurred or threatened to department can buy the same equipment from HMSO at little occur with the following results: if anything above the dealer’s cost price. —a letter from one supplier to HMSO saying that they would An incident along the lines of the above occurred with British not supply against any orders from them to customers already Gas, which is now a private company, and led Microprint’s registered as a prospect of their dealers. Chairman Bob Darby to write a strongly worded letter to —an undertaking from two others that they would not supply HMSO with a copy to his MP and the Prime Minister herself. specifically nominated prospects through HMSO. Mr Darby says, “I received an acknowledgement from the — a drastic reduction in the discount offered to HMSO by Prime Minister’s office; from HMSO I received a mass of another to prevent them competing on unequal terms. official gobbledegook masquerading as a set of accounts. Mr Darby concludes, “It is obvious that if the effort made by Hacking through the undergrowth revealed a complete ourselves and others can cause actions like this, think what a confirmation of what I had expected — HMSO’s gross concentrated effort by all micrographic dealers could achieve. margin equated to around 1% of its turnover!”. In short, by pressure on the manufacturers, we could In a second letter Mr Darby pointed out that with marketing eliminate HMSO as a competitor (except on terms equal to and stocking costs (borne by a distributor but not HMSO) no our own)”. commercial organisation could survive on such a margin, and “In addition, by inundating the senior management of HMSO that it represented unfair competition. He did, however, with complaints, we weaken the bureaucratic will to resist — suggest an amicable solution which would involve commercial distributors officially registering an interest in sales prospects and do send copies to the PM: whatever our political beliefs which HMSO would then undertake not to service. This was we must all accept that idealogically she is on our side in this rejected in a subsequent reply as “administratively difficult”. issue”. U.S. Market running parallel to U.K. It would appear that it is now being realised in the U.S. A. that the bureaux hold such a huge portion of the ^micrographics market. In the last issue (No. 8) of the 'Micrographics Market Place the front page article “If you run a Microfilm Bureau, do you STILL think you’re insignificant?” once again tried to point out the power of the bureaux in the U.K. To illustrate how closely the U.S. and U.K. markets run there now follows a short extract taken from the March 1988 issue of the Service Bureau Newsletter published by Image Publishing, Connecticut, U.S. A. “Micrographic service bureaux continue to be the fastest growing segment of the $2.2 Billion U.S. Micrographics market. Filming and related services rose to $520 million in 1987. Equipment maintenance and supplies grew slightly and equipment sales remained at a plateau. Major manufacturers of equipment and supplies acknowledge the growing distribution strength of service bureaux and dealers. Although micrograpic equipment sales have plateaued at $600 million, service bureaux have captured an ever increasing share of this market. It is estimated by Technology Database Associates, a division of Image Publishing, that the total service bureau and dealer sales of equipment, supplies, filming and maintenance was over $900 million in 1987. This is an astounding 43% of the $2.2 Billion U.S. Market. Research studies done by major manufacturers in the micrographic industry verify this figure”. See Pages 4 - 6 for Product News The Micrographics Market Place
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