INTERVIEW businessinfomag.uk magazine 32 In April, Duncan Ferguson was made Managing Director of Epson UK, on top of his existing role of Vice President, Commercial & Industrial Printing at Epson Europe. Ferguson, who joined Epson from Eastman Kodak in January 2003, is taking on this additional role at a challenging time, with high prices and high interest rates dampening demand from customers and making life more difficult for Epson’s own employees. Indeed, Ferguson cites fulfilling the pastoral responsibilities of his new position as one of his top priorities, second only to his desire to encourage more communication between the different divisions within Epson. These include printers and commercial & industrial print, which together account for around 70% of Seiko Epson Corporation’s revenues; video projection and display (including Moverio smart glasses), which make up 15-20% of turnover; and several smaller divisions, including the company’s foundational watches business and industrial robots, which together The way forward generate 10-15% of turnover. “There is a risk in a company with multiple technologies that everything stays in specialist silos. My role is to make sure that there's communication across silos so that we're maximising the possibility and the opportunity in the market and getting the message out there about Epson’s technology,” explains Ferguson. As an example, he cites the company’s robot business. “So many people have no idea that Epson sells robots, and yet we are the leader in small, high precision industrial robots. At the moment, there isn't a great deal of overlap with other businesses, but we have found one or two. For instance, label applicators. Sometimes the best form of label applicator on a production line can be a robot. I'm trying to encourage people to think laterally rather than getting stuck in their silo. “Another priority is to keep motivation high in a very difficult economic situation, which is potentially having an effect not just on the business but also on people's personal lives. People who are being affected because their mortgage has gone up £5,000 a year or because energy costs are so high. “After that, my priorities are to make sure that we are working to the company's philosophy and getting people to buy into things within our philosophy, which is all about technology that makes a difference and contributes to society. We talk a lot about sustainability in Epson UK, and I'm trying to make sure that when we talk about sustainability we always do so with points of evidence. We focus on it very strongly especially in relation to our inkjet and PrecisionCore micro piezo printhead technology, because it is a significant improvement over what's in the market today.” Diversity brings opportunity When it comes to the business of selling products and solutions, Ferguson admits that the combination of high inflation/high interest rates and high energy costs are affecting demand and causing Epson to be cautious in its forecasts. However, he points out that the diversity of Epson’s offering ensures there will always be positive areas of growth to exploit, just as there were during the pandemic. “During Covid, the need for people to work from home or work more remotely or work in smaller environments suited Epson’s technology and products, which work very well in a distributed form. With that shift, we lost a little bit on the office side and on the commercial side, but we gained a lot from investment in Epson technology to enable working from home or from small or remote offices,” he says. Now that things have swung back towards the office/commercial side, Epson is maintaining momentum with the launch of the Workforce Enterprise AM-C series of 40, 50 and 60 pages per minute (ppm) inkjet devices, which, as businesses return to the office, is enabling it to meet the needs of customers that want technology with a more environmental focus. “We had a bit of a hole in our portfolio around 40 to 60ppm, the core of that business printing market, which we filled earlier this year with the AM-C series. This series utilises the same PrecisionCore micro piezo printhead technology as the offering we had at 70 and 100ppm, which was very well accepted but had minimal market reach, and brings it down to 40, 50 and 60ppm and Epson UK MD Duncan Ferguson tells James Goulding about his plans for the company and explains how the Workforce Enterprise AM-C series of 40, 50 and 60 page per minute inkjet devices is expanding the market for its energy-saving MFPs Duncan Ferguson
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