On The Move: InkJet Cafe

Technology Changes Everything

By Jamie Hamilton

Inkjet Café is a revolutionary machine that will refill end users’ cartridges while they wait and charge their credit card a fee for the service. The inkjet-filling kiosk will be set up in retail stores nationwide, and your company can be a part of the cutting edge technology. The www.inkjetcafe.com website has a video demonstration of how the machine works.

How does it work?

Released at this year’s Recharger World Expo, the Inkjet Café can refill over 90% of the top black and color inkjet cartridges on the market today. The machine is simple—all the customer needs is an empty cartridge and a major credit card.

A virtual hostess guides the end user through the process by displaying a touch-screen menu of the cartridge brands it can refill, including Lexmark, HP, Compaq, Dell, Xerox, IBM, and Brother. With the press of a button, the consumer can select the type and model of cartridge and begin the refilling process.

The automated attendant uses a video simulation to show the proper placement of the cartridge in the machine. After inserting the cartridge into the correct position, the cartridge print head is tested and diagnosed as to whether it has a “fitness level” that will allow it to be refilled. If so, the machine then empties the remaining ink, cleans the print head, and vacuum-fills the cartridge with new, quality ink.

During the filling process the customer is educated on the proper handling of the cartridge and cross-promotional advertising of in-store items.

The machine accepts all major credit cards and, since the procedure is 100% electronic, the customer can work at a comfortable pace and get accurate and complex cartridge information without the hassles of depending on a sales representative.

What’s more, the consumer receives the same working cartridge that they provided the machine. This ensures the cartridge is a good working empty and, since it is fresh, there is less time for changes in ink properties or handling damage to alter the print quality of that cartridge.

“The biggest retailers in the United States are bidding against each other to see who will get to put the machines in their facility. A Request for Proposal is out right now,” says CEO Harry Nicodem.

How Can I Benefit?

Your company can benefit by becoming a partner that will install and service Inkjet Café machines across the United States. In return, as a partner, you will receive a percentage of each cartridge sale that is refilled through the Inkjet Café kiosks.

To become a partner you must attend the Inkjet Café national training center for certification. After completing the course, each technician will receive an I.D. card to enable them to access the Program Mode of Inkjet Cafés in which they are the authorized service provider.

A tech partner’s responsibilities are to receive, install, and set up new kiosks at retail locations. Once that is done, the techs will service the machines and replenish ink supplies as needed. A four-hour response time is required, and 24-hour service may also be mandatory for some areas. Service providers will be notified with an auto-generated e-mail/pager message when service is required.

To sign up to be considered for the Partner Service Provider Program, fill out a “Roll-Out Partner Profile” online at www.inkjetcafe.com. After completing the form, you will be contacted by Inkjet Café representatives to further outline the project and discuss your company’s contribution to servicing the new technology.

Future Café

The future of Inkjet Café is opportunity: not only an opportunity to benefit from a revolutionary technology that may change the way inkjets are sold, but an opportunity to become a part of a network. The network will be unique because of the certification of the members that will link together companies with a high-quality standard.

Future opportunities of service will follow. Opportunities within the network will develop, but also the association to the network will be a great credential to give to customers as an indication of high-quality service.

Over 100 companies on the initial debut have already signed up to be service centers across the United States. Nicodem sees 10,000 Inkjet Cafés installed across the country.

“We started working on building it with our engineers 5 years ago,” Nicodem says. “We were really trying to do something unique, something that would change building cartridges, so we explored a lot of channels.”

One in a Family of Businesses

This is not Nicodem’s first business venture, or even the third.  He started out in the industry in 1989, after having worked for a company that sold office supplies. Fax paper was big at the time, but then came the laser.

“Everyone was excited. Customers hated thermal paper and I knew that the industry would move toward the laser technology. I like fixing things and the lasers just seemed so easy to remanufacture,” he says.

So Nicodem began Laser-Tek, remanufacturing cartridges at night in his garage and then selling, delivering, and going out to customer locations to fix the cartridges during the day. Since he was one of the few in the business at that time, there was no general knowledge of how to remanufacture a laser. He simply repeated this process independently until he got quality.

Today, Laser-Tek is one of the largest toner remanufacturers in business, handling over 100,000 cartridges last month. Since 1989, the industry has been through many changes and Nicodem foresees many more in the future.

“On the laser side of life, the technology is going to continue to get more advanced. Big guys are going to get stronger, while small guys are going to get more mechanically challenged,” he observes.

“The question becomes, how do you even identify what a color actually is. What’s the RGB value of a color, and how do you know that what’s coming from your supplier is what it needs to be?

“It’s not like the old days where you could just look at it and say, that looks pretty good,” he adds. “For color imagery now, with all this new equipment, you really have to understand what makes up color and how they all interface with each other.

“Then, you have to have a standard for testing. One of the things we struggled with at the beginning was, how do you standardize color laser cartridge remanufacturing testing and evaluation?

“So, we built TonerHead products for Laser-Tek,” Nicodem says. “I think today we are one of the largest laser producers in the industry because we built the tools first, the tools to be able to do the evaluation and testing and do it correctly. People need to understand testing so they can get their arms wrapped around what’s going on in the industry—how to build a quality color laser cartridge.”.

Aside from Laser-Tek and TonerHead, Nicodem also heads a cartridge collection company called The Cartridge Collection Center (CCC); a fundraiser program for schools (and a division of CCC) called Help Us Earn; as well as the new Inkjet Café.

By Jamie Hamilton— in addition to writing business profiles in ENX, Jamie writes and designs ads, brochures, catalogs, newsletters, and manuals for companies in the imaging industry.  She can be contacted at:  Tel/ Fax 502-896-1051 or e-mail her at: jamiewriter@hotmail.com.