Kwik Kopy Perth kicks on with Ricoh C901

Since opening in 1997, Kwik Kopy Perth CBD has grown to become one of the largest sites within the Kwik Kopy group, and indeed, one of the largest franchised print businesses in Australia. Its rapid growth has been fuelled by a reputation for excellent customer service, high quality printing and fast turnarounds; and Ricoh digital production printers are helping the business deliver outstanding results on all three counts.


Challenge: Delivering high quality, quickly
“In order to continually deliver on the quality, speed and service expectations of our clients, it’s vital that we have the right equipment in place,” says Anthony Nixon, Owner of Kwik Kopy Perth CBD.

In its digital printing department, the business was using multiple colour printing devices in addition to a dedicated printer for black & white jobs. With both the black & white and colour devices rapidly approaching end-of-life, there was a great opportunity for the business to improve print quality and speed with the installation of new technology.

“We needed a new black & white production device that could deliver faster print speeds as well as more powerful inline finishing options,” Anthony says. “With respect to colour printing, we were looking for a printer with consistent, accurate colour matching, and double-sided printing on heavier weight stocks to help us achieve greater overall productivity.”

Solution: Ricoh Pro 1357EX and Ricoh Pro C901
Anthony and his team put the products of a number of vendors through their paces during a thorough evaluation process. By the end of the process, it was Ricoh’s combined device and service offering that emerged as a clear winner.

“Ricoh’s equipment put a tick in every box in terms of speed, print quality, finishing options and the ability to handle heavier stock,” Anthony (pictured) says. “But the biggest difference was the service and relationships: the way Ricoh treated us as a customer was the way we want to treat our customers. They gave us a high level of service, a bit of personality, and when they promised something they backed it up and delivered at all levels of the organisation.”



As a result, the business now has two Ricoh production printers handling almost all of its digital work:

• A Ricoh Pro 1357EX with inline saddle stitching and trimming, a GBC punching system and Plockmatic booklet maker, for black & white jobs;
• A Ricoh Pro C901 with an expanded capacity paper tray and inline Z-folding unit for colour jobs.

$20,000 saved
An immediate benefit Kwik Kopy Perth CBD has realised since installing the Ricoh printers is a significant improvement in productivity, resulting from increased print speeds, new inline finishing options and Ricoh’s ‘done right first time’ print quality. Most importantly, the business has been able to pass those benefits on to its customers in the form of faster turnarounds.

“One of the huge productivity gains is being able to duplex heavier weight stocks and have them back up correctly in a single pass,” Anthony says. “Print speeds are up across the board, and with the extra capacity inputs we can load all our different stocks and not have to stop to change between jobs.”

Further productivity gains are being realised from the inline finishing options installed on both machines. In particular, the Pro C901’s Z-folding unit is cutting production times in half for jobs with a mix of A3 and A4 pages.

“We print and bind a lot of A4 tenders and reports which have A3 pages included at various points for large charts and diagrams,” Anthony explains. “In the past, this meant a significant amount of manual folding or insertion, and it only took 20 pages per report in a run of 50 for that to add up to hours of work. With the Pro C901’s Z-fold unit, however, folding and insertion is automated and we’ve eliminated manual processes entirely.”

Similar gains are being realised using the inline GBC punching system and Plockmatic booklet maker on the Pro 1357EX, with staff no longer having to manually collate and punch jobs, or transfer stock to a different machine to finish booklets.

When not in use, the Plockmatic unit can be detached from the Pro 1357EX and manually fed booklet jobs printed on the Pro C901, saving the business about $20,000 by eliminating the need to invest in a second unit on the colour machine.

“Since installing the Pro C901 and Pro 1357EX, our digital department has been able to turn jobs around faster than ever before,” Anthony states. “That in turn frees up our account managers to focus more on customers, who are the real beneficiaries in terms of better service and faster job completion.”

In addition to faster turnarounds, Kwik Kopy Perth CBD’s customers are enjoying a marked improvement in the quality and accuracy of their colour printing – a direct result of the Ricoh Pro C901’s close and consistent wide gamut colour matching.

Pictured: Kwik Kopy Perth's Louise Moreton (l), Anthony Nixon and Gary Sargisson in front of their new Ricoh printer.


“Our clients are very picky about their corporate colours, but even more so, they’re picky about the consistency of those colours,” Anthony says. “It is important for their branding and image in the marketplace that we print the same shade every time we do a job for them. Consistency was an issue with our previous technology, but with the Pro C901 we’re able to deliver accurate results every time.”

One of the biggest endorsements of the Pro C901 is that the quality of its output is matching that of the franchise’s offset printing machines; and customers are taking notice. “Its quality is very much on par,” Anthony says. “We’ve had customers walk in, have a look at our production capability as well as our very capable staff and tell us they’ll have no problems giving us their biggest jobs, because they can see we’ll get them done properly. That’s about as good a compliment as we can get.”

Device uptime is paramount in the commercial printing industry, and Ricoh’s dedication to the highest levels of service is of particular benefit to Kwik Kopy Perth CBD in that respect.

Highly knowledgeable Ricoh personnel provide the business with rapid-response support, ensuring uptime is maximised and customers continue to receive their jobs on time. “We have an excellent support relationship with Ricoh, and its personnel make it clear we’re not just a number or another service call,” Anthony says. “They communicate openly with us, really know the technology and always arrive on site when they say they’ll arrive.”

Contributing to further improvements in printer uptime are Ricoh’s Trained Customer Replacement Units (TCRUs). With TCRUs, Kwik Kopy Perth CBD operators can quickly replace key components, such as fuser and toner systems, without the need for on-site Ricoh support.

“TCRUs give us another option for supporting printer uptime,” Anthony says. “Ricoh’s technicians are very quick, but having the ability to simply pull out a module, put a new one in and be back up and running quickly is brilliant as it saves the time that it might take for the technician to arrive.”

TCRUs also allow Ricoh technicians to minimise downtime when they are required on site, as they can quickly remove and replace a unit, allowing the printer to continue operating while they service an individual module.

“With the Ricoh Pro C901 and the Ricoh Pro 1357EX we have been able to realise the print speed, quality and consistency improvements we need to better serve our customers,” Anthony concludes. “Just as importantly, in Ricoh we’ve found a partner that treats us as a customer the same way that we treat our customers. They back up everything they say, at all levels of the organisation, and are dedicated to working with us to achieve our goals."