When you think about threats to Hewlett-Packard’s bottom line, you have to consider Daniel Wencel.He and 20-year-old son Chris have created a new franchise, dubbed Caboodle Cartridge, that refills old ink-jet and laser printer cartridges for about half the price of a new cartridge.
This kind of small business ordinarily wouldn’t catch the eye of Palo Alto-based HP, which reported $73.7 billion in revenue for its last fiscal year.
But 70 percent of HP’s operating profit comes from its imaging and printing division, and most of that profit, analysts say, is from selling replacement ink-jet and laser printer supplies. If Caboodle and other businesses like it catch on, they could put a dent in HP’s profit machine.
Chuck on August 4th, 2004 at 8:54 am
The price of printer ink is $8,000 per gallon… (the average inkjet cartridge has only 17 milliliters of the ink!) it’s a lucrative field. High profit areas open up entrepreneurial opportunities that drive the price down and windfall profits can then only be found in new areas of technology.
Roger on August 4th, 2004 at 2:25 pm
This is a fairly old industry, old in terms of the info economy. I used to sell office supplies a few years ago and my biggest seller was recycled/refurbished ink cartridges. I would save people hundreds a month, and these were small businesses.
Thing is the big boys (staples and office max) are already in this market and they have the distribution channel. You can definitly get a nice share of the market being a mom and pop, but the majority of this will go to the second tier distributors who have the facilities for making dependable recycled cartridges and getting them to the folks.
One of the hardest aspects of selling these is that people have tried them before and they either blew up in their printer or didnt work at all. I would have to show them six month projects and 100% guarantees in order for them to try just one.
Jol on November 19th, 2006 at 8:28 pm
interesting.