Business Profile: Imaging Supplies Depot

A World of Variety When it Comes to Toner Cartridges

By Jamie Hamilton

The next time you’re on a cruise or in a foreign hotel, pick up the newspaper—it just may be printed with Imaging Supplies Depot toner (located in Anaheim, Calif.). While shipping cartridges to places like Europe, Indonesia, Asia, Egypt, West India, and Bermuda to cover a client who prints U.S. papers throughout the international travel industry is a small part of their business, Imaging Supplies Depot enjoys the international acclaim.

Paul Doan, president and founder of ISD, first encountered the client when it was printing materials for the 2002 Winter Olympics in Utah. At the time, it was using 40 toner cartridges a day. Today, they continue to do business with ISD, printing U.S. newspapers all over the world.

It was a chance opportunity like this one that led Doan to the industry and eventually to found ISD. In 1987 a friend of his, Mike Summerville, had a year-old copy service business when he realized the market for remanufactured toner cartridges. At that time, there were only two cartridges available.

Summerville wanted to get into this new market, but didn’t have the capital to get started. He asked his friend Doan if he would be interested in financing the venture; Doan agreed, and built the remanufacturing side of the business, called BB Laser Products.

They started out, like many early remanufacturers, building the cartridges in the garage. Summerville went to Accutone (currently AQC) to take its two-day seminar on how to remanufacture toner cartridges. He came back and taught Doan, who is legally blind, what he had learned, and they started in. Doan primarily focused on growing the business, but did remanufacture some cartridges.

Eventually, Summerville decided that he just wanted to focus on the services business, so Doan separated from him. In 1997, Doan started ISD, today a multi-million dollar enterprise, while Summerville does not have a company in the industry.

Doan attributes his longevity to quality. “We have a high-quality cartridge,” he says. “I just got a four-color box two months ago, but people were still buying from me because we have high-quality standards.” Asked how his quality control procedures result in such a high quality product, Doan says that quality has to be more of a company philosophy than any single procedure.

“A lot of people put in new drums and they put in a new wiper blade,” he explains, “but they don’t replace the recovery blades, they don’t put in new mag rollers—or they put in faulty mag rollers. They don’t get good quality. We do not use a PCR more than once—and then we send it back to get recoated; the same with mag rollers.”

“We post-test every single cartridge,” Doan says. “And we don’t just post-test, we look at the tests and, if they don’t pass, then we send it back for rework.

“It’s a mindset that you have to have—that quality is important. It comes first and everything else comes second. If we can’t ship an order today because we have a problem with a cartridge, so be it. We’re going to make the cartridge work right before we ship it.”

Aside from keeping quality at the helm of their development, the $9 million company plans to take future growth one step at a time. Controlled growth is best, according to Doan: “I would be happy with 3% a year.”

The industry has changed a lot since Doan’s two-cartridge venture. Now that there are literally hundreds of cartridges available, remanufacturers have to keep up with new as well as older model cartridges.

“Many small manufacturers will not be able to afford to keep up,” said Doan, “They will become buyers from bigger manufacturers like us and some of the other larger manufacturers.”

In one word, manufacturers must offer variety, he says—and ISD does just that. Selling strictly wholesale, ISD offers dealers and resellers SKUs of products. But one gamut of customers he won’t have is the retail superstore market. “I won’t work with them because I don’t want to be under terms to things that I can’t or don’t want to do,” said Doan.

The variety of toner products ISD offers is the focus of its overall business. Its brands include, but are not limited to, Apple, Compaq, Canon, Dataproducts, Dell, Epson, HP, IBM, Konica, Lexmark, Okidata, Panasonic, Pitney Bowes, QMS, Sharp, Ricoh, Toshiba, and Xerox. A few of the latest cartridges carried are the HP 4250, HP 4350, Lexmark E330, and the Dell 1700, B 1500, S2500, M5200, W5300, 1600, and 1700.

In addition to toner cartridges, ISD offers its customers remanufactured inkjet/ compatibles and thermal ribbons. ISD cartridges are 100% satisfaction guaranteed. Orders made before 2 p.m. PST will ship same-day; blind drop ships are welcome, and there is no minimum order requirement. Customers can add monogram labels to the ISD four-color cartons with their company information, including logo.

Contact:

 ISD

Tel: 888-208-4901

www.imagingsuppliesdepot.net