Ink/Toner Refill/Recycle Business

For starters, this is not a canoe but rather this is a well versed and opinionated group so I thought I would pull some of that collective knowledge...

http://www.cartridgeworld.com/home.aspx
What do you know of this company form any personal experiences?
What do you think of the business model?
Have you any experience with the products or the business owning model?

Competitors have similar model, maybe you know something of this company/products?
http://www.rapidrefill.com/

Thanks, John

Hrm... I've been to the local one a few times.

I'm just a home user, so I'm never going to account for much business... I think basically, even though I hate the wastefulness of disposable cartridges, I disliked having to make a separate errand to take care of just cartridges, and even though I don't recall having a particularly bad experience, I can't shake the feeling that I didn't trust the quality (no, I have no great trust in Canon/Epson/etc; pretty much feel I'm sure I'm getting hosed by them, but the cartridges seem to be consistent in how much or little I'm getting).

So there you have a lot of words; a sample size of one customer who just sort of gave up on going there for no particular reason after initially being enthusiastic about sticking it to Amalgamated CopyCo and keeping some plastic out of the landfills...

Worked there!

Business model works well, as long as you can train your workers well. We did more inkjet refills than toner, but toner was easier to do in some cases. Simpler products work well (black ink cartridges, Brother toner refills). Most problems we had were with the Inkjets not getting cleared out well enough. Otherwise I could have run the store with little effort. Getting a store running isn't bad, you just have to get your refill business running quick. Small Businesses are key to long term success.

If you have any other questions, ask.

Did the owner of your store have just one location of multiple?
Could he succeed off just one location?

Are the any upcoming (hidden to me) technology or product changes in the near future that would make this business uncompetitive or unsustainable?

He had two, his big problem was he ran them and his other business. His wife, who was supposed to be running them wasn't. The toner guy and I both could have managed the stores we worked at with little trouble. It's not hard to manage the store, the learning curve is learning the refill/rebuild end of the biz.

Can you succeed off one store? Hm. I think you can make it work, but I know you'll have to get the small biz/lawyer's offices on your side quick. We did most of our toner business with them.

Product Changes are constant, but Cartridge World keeps up to date. They are extremely good about having rebuild/refill info out as soon as they can figure it out. Your big problem will be chipped toner carts/inkjet refills for which there are replacements, and Lexmark. Lexmark took one of the big refill suppliers to court and after a year or two, lost big in the Supremes. Some companies are easier to deal with: HP doesn't mind refillers, just likes a "gap" before the aftermarket catches up, Brother never did mind as long as your products didn't infringe on their production, that sort of thing. Reputable parts suppliers know what's up and what's coming in the business. With a rebuild kit you can run a good old HP 4000 (very popular!) for near eternity.

Can you sustain the business? Sure. Like anything, a customer base is key. And a strong tolerance for Toner dust: that stuff requires a good surgical mask. :)

I just buy my cartridges NOS off Ebay for pennies on the dollar.

We recently switched from OEM cartridges to refills at work. Decent cost savings, but the print quality has decreased.

This board never ceases to amaze. Ask a random question on a random topic and get replies from someone with intimate details.
Doc, thanks for the reply. With a name like that I guess you might know a thing or two.
I am also interested in customer experiences so thanks much for those.
Ransom seems like a customer that could be won back.

93gsx: you mentioned lower cost with some lower quality. Has the trade-off been acceptable meaning has it been a good value?
Ebay may be good but only if you can wait the shipping time.

As someone who has worked in the office equipment business for 14-years, refilled toner cartridges are not a very cost-effective solution for SMB customers. In particular, color-laser printers often have poor quality(and many times a mess) as a result of refilled/remanufactured cartridges. Even brand-new compatible cartridges can result in an obvious degradation of print quality.

I'm sure the training and quality of work performed by the rebuilder makes a big difference, but toner composition is proprietary, and several manufactures have patents regarding the specific compound(eg: HP, Konica Minolta, Sharp, etc.). From my days as a tech, I can't begin to count the number of times I've had to fix problems, or clean up messes caused by refilled/reman toner & printer cartridges.

I will say there are finally some quality new-build aftermarket printer & toner cartridges available, and those vendors do stand behind their products with guarantees. There is a growing opportunity in that area, but in the SMB market too many people have been burned by the refilled/reman problems, and those products are on the way out.

I'm sure home/inkjet users, and small home-based businesses would still be viable customers, but in most marketplaces you will have trouble getting much of a foothold in anything larger.

If you need stats, I'm sure I could gather them for you. Feel free to PM me on here if you need more details.

On the other hand, I did have to fix Major Office Supply Company reman cartridges. It goes back to what I said before. At my CartWorld the guy who replaced me (not that swift) doing Toner carts had retired from Sperry/Vickers (Aerospace Defense) and had quite a few years building things that made Toner Carts look simple. Even he had the occasional WTF moments with some of the stuff.

Hey Doc, I've been looking for the cheapest black printer to run all things considered. Can you steer me in the right direction?

(Hopes this isn't too much of a thread-jack)

Well, I'm not Doc, but I can steer you in the right direction, as that's primarily what my job responsibilities are.

While lowest operation cost is relatively easy to find, I'm assuming purchase cost also plays into this as well? If so, how much do you expect to be printing per month/year for the next 3-5 years?

If you're only printing 100-pages per month or so, honestly your best bet would be to find the cheapest printer on clearance(like sub-$50), and when it runs out of toner/ink, get it refilled as Doc mentioned - but understand that being a low-end printer, it might not last much past the first cartridge.

The second option would be to try and find something used in the HP Laserjet 4000/4050/4100/4200 families. Some of them are getting pretty old, but as Doc mentioned above, they're damn near indestructible and can be repaired/refurbished for millions of pages of use. I've heard of wholesalers offering rebuilt printers for $200-$250, which is about the cost of the parts to rebuild it!

Any of those HP Laserjets I listed will cost approximately $0.008-$0.015 per-page(not counting paper) to operate, whereas most inkjet printers are in the $0.08-$0.15 per-page range for B&W prints.

A couple things to keep in mind though: Color printing gets very expensive, very fast. The average HP Color Laserjet is in the $0.095-$0.18 per-color page range, while inkjets can cost well over $0.25 per-page!

That may not mean much if you're just printing the occasional document at home, but at 1000-color pages per-month, that's some real money.

And another note - the HP Laserjet 1100/1200 printers, as well as the newer P2035, P4015(and most of the other "P" models) are actually much less efficient than the older models, costing $0.025-$0.045 per-page.

Yeah, I spend way too much time with this data...

My local one (Cartridge World) is a good deal. Owner/manager dude says that he gets very little walk-in business and does mostly business to business transactions.

I think they're still in business. Haven't been there in awhile (since I got a laser printer and have been too lazy to hook up wife's wireless HP).

In my experience cartridge world is an epic fail. I bought a color cartridge and a black cartridge for the printer (an old HP, it still works so I still have it, although it wasnt very old at the time this happened), and I went back about 8 times to exchange them for new ones for free when they quit working after a very short time. The employees were always very nice, but the ink cartridges didnt work. After the last time of exchanging them after they only worked for a short time I went back and told them that although I was happy with their service, their ink cartridges didnt work and they could have them back, and I bought new ones and never had any problems again. I would never buy refilled cartridges again, although I would try them if they were free.