OEM Epson ink

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frederick

MSRP from Epson sites (for R2400 cartridges)
*¥1102* = $9.34 = £4.96 (Japanese price)
¥1776 = *$14.24* = £7.94 (US price)
¥2646 = $22.42 = *£11.90* (UK price)

Why is Epson MSRP 50% more in the USA than Japan?
Why is Epson MSRP more than double in UK than Japan?
 
frederick said:
MSRP from Epson sites (for R2400 cartridges)
*¥1102* = $9.34 = £4.96 (Japanese price)
¥1776 = *$14.24* = £7.94 (US price)
¥2646 = $22.42 = *£11.90* (UK price)

Why is Epson MSRP 50% more in the USA than Japan?
Why is Epson MSRP more than double in UK than Japan?
Click to expand...

Uhhh...home town advantage? :-)
Frank
 
Arthur said:
What are the printer prices like?

Art
Click to expand...
Printer prices similar in US and Japan.
Much higher in UK - so the model of "sell the printer cheap - make up
for it in ink" doesn't explain the variation
 
Interesting... Might have to do with taxes or other fees, number of
sales and the distribution structure.

Before Canada got big enough for direct sales through the manufacturers
to the retailers, many of the larger brands used private distributors
(middle men) which raised prices considerably. Over time, most
companies now handle their own distribution here, and prices dropped by
removing one layer of mark ups.

Art
 
Arthur said:
Interesting... Might have to do with taxes or other fees, number of
sales and the distribution structure.

Before Canada got big enough for direct sales through the manufacturers
to the retailers, many of the larger brands used private distributors
(middle men) which raised prices considerably. Over time, most
companies now handle their own distribution here, and prices dropped by
removing one layer of mark ups.
Click to expand...
Except that for the US and UK prices, these were from Epson direct from
the website. The 1102 yen price was suggested retail used by Epson in
product data, but verified by checking online resellers of consumables.

Of course the ink cartridges are "region" chipped, so you can't use
Japanese cartridges in European printers.

In light of the huge price differential, I am somewhat cynical about
Epson spending considerable resources attempting to shut down
competition from third party suppliers in the US and Europe. I bet they
don't face that problem in Japan - who would bother with third party
inks if OEM ink was so much less expensive?

The same differential applies for larger "production" sized cartridges,
where the US and particularly European consumer pays many hundreds of
dollars more per set than the Japanese consumer.
 
frederick said:
Except that for the US and UK prices, these were from Epson direct
from the website. The 1102 yen price was suggested retail used by
Epson in product data, but verified by checking online resellers of
consumables.

Of course the ink cartridges are "region" chipped, so you can't use
Japanese cartridges in European printers.

In light of the huge price differential, I am somewhat cynical about
Epson spending considerable resources attempting to shut down
competition from third party suppliers in the US and Europe. I bet
they don't face that problem in Japan - who would bother with third
party inks if OEM ink was so much less expensive?
Click to expand...


Oh Yeah so what you are saying is that Epson is really superior and the
only reason to go with an inferior product is to spend less money.
Since you admitted that, at least I can understand that.
 
measekite said:
Oh Yeah so what you are saying is that Epson is really superior and the
only reason to go with an inferior product is to spend less money.
Since you admitted that, at least I can understand that.
Click to expand...

What are you on about?
I wouldn't use other than OEM ink. The price Epson charge sucks. They
sell it much cheaper in other markets. If they sold it at those prices
everywhere, then they mightn't have a third-party ink "problem" to worry
about.
 
frederick said:
What are you on about?
I wouldn't use other than OEM ink. The price Epson charge sucks.
They sell it much cheaper in other markets. If they sold it at those
prices everywhere, then they mightn't have a third-party ink "problem"
to worry about.
Click to expand...


I agree with some of what you are saying. I think they could cut the
price in half and stil make a profit.
 
measekite said:
I agree with some of what you are saying. I think they could cut the
price in half and stil make a profit.
Click to expand...

I *know* that they could cut the price in half and still make a profit.
Nobody sells at a loss - unless they have a gun pointed between their
eyes.
 
I wasn't aware Epson had regionalized their chips, as apparently, HP
has, as well. HP told me they were doing it "to control for gray market
and currency differences", but I suspect it may have more to do with EU
laws which will shortly require the cartridges to be refillable.

Is the differential that great with the larger cartridges? I hadn't
looked at that factor. Obviously, Epson being a Japanese company would
compete most heavily in their own country to maintain market share. Do
HP or Lexmark cartridges show the same differential in Japan? I wonder
about Canon ink cartridges.

The whole thing is pretty annoying. Could it be worthwhile to buy
larger ink cartridges in Japan and having them shipped, and then either
resetting or replacing and resetting the chips, if one wanted to stick
with Epson inks?

Art
 
frederick said:
I *know* that they could cut the price in half and still make a profit.
Nobody sells at a loss - unless they have a gun pointed between their
eyes.
Click to expand...

Obviously, you've never heard of a loss leader. That's something too
often used in retail food stores. Something popular sold at a slight
loss to get people into the store, in hopes that they will buy something
else that is much higher-priced and make up for the loss. It's also an
important part of the printer/ink business model - the printer part. Do
you really think they could make the printers they do for the price
they're getting if they weren't making the money on the ink?

TJ
 
TJ said:
Obviously, you've never heard of a loss leader. That's something too
often used in retail food stores. Something popular sold at a slight
loss to get people into the store, in hopes that they will buy
something else that is much higher-priced and make up for the loss.
It's also an important part of the printer/ink business model - the
printer part. Do you really think they could make the printers they do
for the price they're getting if they weren't making the money on the
ink?

TJ
Click to expand...


Stop looking at the industry with blinders on. The printers like the
IP4300 and Epson R340 may be sold at lower prices that may be close to
their costs but look at the prices of the Canon i9900, Pro9000, Pro9500,
Epson R800, R1800, R2400 and R3800 and also the $2,000 Canon IPF ProGraf
5000. These are way above the cost. And a set of ink can cost $900 for
the 5000.

It is time to grow some more beets.
 
TJ said:
Obviously, you've never heard of a loss leader. That's something too
often used in retail food stores. Something popular sold at a slight
loss to get people into the store, in hopes that they will buy something
else that is much higher-priced and make up for the loss. It's also an
important part of the printer/ink business model - the printer part. Do
you really think they could make the printers they do for the price
they're getting if they weren't making the money on the ink?

TJ
Click to expand...

Sure I know about loss leaders.
You'd *never* put your main revenue earning product out on the floor as
a loss leader.
 
Arthur said:
I wasn't aware Epson had regionalized their chips, as apparently, HP
has, as well. HP told me they were doing it "to control for gray market
and currency differences", but I suspect it may have more to do with EU
laws which will shortly require the cartridges to be refillable.

Is the differential that great with the larger cartridges? I hadn't
looked at that factor. Obviously, Epson being a Japanese company would
compete most heavily in their own country to maintain market share. Do
HP or Lexmark cartridges show the same differential in Japan? I wonder
about Canon ink cartridges.

The whole thing is pretty annoying. Could it be worthwhile to buy
larger ink cartridges in Japan and having them shipped, and then either
resetting or replacing and resetting the chips, if one wanted to stick
with Epson inks?

Art
Click to expand...

Differential is similar with the larger cartridges - ie 50% more in the
USA, double in UK.
The large cartridges are region chipped too.
It looks like the smaller epson cartridges, chips could be swapped over
fairly easily, then reset with a hardware resetter. The SSC service
utility doesn't work too well with recent epson printers. It now
monitors ink levels okay and can "freeze" them for people using CIS, but
can neither reset cartridges, nor reset the printers internal waste
counters.
It would be nice to know how to change the Epson printer region code
rather than the cartridges. I suspect that the coding is on a
replaceable ROM chip on the main board. Replacement ROM chips are
available, but getting hold of the right chip for the Japanese model may
not be so easy - and I don't even know if that would work.
Possibly to aid obfuscation, Epson name printers differently for
different markets, and supply different drivers. But, you can use the
Japanese windows XP driver for the "PX-G5000" for the R1800, it will
install in english, and even adds some features not on the R1800 driver.
AFAIK, it's not so easy to swap chips with the large cartridges. Some
people buy the 220ml carts and use them to feed CIS on smaller printers,
others use them to refill cartridges - but as I understand it, the ink
is packed in a plastic bag inside the cartridges, and successfully
refilling them isn't simple.
HP have region coding - to their credit price differentials are less
blatant - but OTOH the new inks are just outrageously expensive
everywhere. Perhaps they learned with the Design Jet 130 that a
reasonably economical printer didn't make them as much $$$!. They are
moving slowly but surely over to pigment inks for higher end amateur and
pro level photo printers - as is Canon.
I haven't looked at Canon price differentials. I'd expect that they may
be similar to Epson.
 
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