Epson Shakes Off Printer-Only Image with New Tech Products

For decades, the name Epson has been synonymous with printing. The Suwa, Japan–based company, formally known as Seiko Epson Corp., has sneaked its way into customers’ lives in some other ways — retail point-of-sale machines and quartz watches, for example — but many consumers don’t realize Epson’s reach into nonprinting industries. Company president Minoru Usui is hoping to change that, and change how the world works, communicates and manufactures while he’s at it.

“We are trying to change Epson’s image,” Usui said through a interpreter earlier this month. He was sitting in a low-slung chair in a small temporary room set up in an art gallery in Manhattan’s Chelsea neighborhood that Epson had taken over for the day to showcase some of its newest products. Attractions included a demonstration of the company’s projection mapping technology, which casts interactive images onto 3-D surfaces; a presentation of how Epson uses robots to operate a machine that prints on fabric, creating designs for New York Fashion Week; and a pair of Epson’s Moverio smart glasses, which are marketed to businesses for use in tasks such as remote repairs.

Usui’s plan for Epson, which includes the eventual widespread use of Epson-maderobots在装配线上，这是一个雄心勃勃的人，因为公司在资产负债表上经过多年的动荡而试图重新发明。由于Usui于2008年成为总裁，他已经为扩大了一项依赖消费者在越来越无纸化的世界中使用纸张的业务进行了多次计算风险。第一个风险是重新焦点对喷墨印刷的能量，到目前为止似乎还会得到偿还。截至5月份，经过近十年的UPS和拖延，该公司连续两年内完成创纪录的利润，总计1110亿日元（9.16亿美元），截至6月30日截至上一季度的收入增长了6％。这种改进的性能是部分介绍了Ecotank打印机系列，一系列用于家庭和办公室的喷墨模型，旨在绕过消费者最大的磨石：更换墨盒的费用和麻烦。With EcoTank, which has done well for months in Europe and Japan and was announced last month in the U.S., getting started is more expensive — the cheapest consumer model costs about $380 — but ink lasts about two years, or about 4,000 pages in black and white and 6,500 pages in color. The printers will be available in stores by the end of September.

“Within two to five years, we think these printers will represent 25 percent of the ink-jet printer market,” says Epson America CEO John Lang. “It will take a while to educate people, because they’re not used to the price point, but it will be useful for home offices and small businesses.”

这种持久的墨水策略是对客户投诉的直接响应，以及竞争激光打印机企业的增长。作为竞争对手的竞争对手，它是由爱普生的陶瓷打印头组成的陶瓷打印头尽可能用压力而不是沸腾。这允许更经济地使用墨水，并且还可以用除油墨以外的材料打印。

但公司的真正的公关oprietary asset, and the thing it is counting on for the success of its newer products, is the sensor. Seiko Epson, founded in 1942, built the first quartz watch in 1969. That crystal technology ended up being the basis for the print head and sensor technology that made Epson an office- and household name long after Americans had been wearing watches made possible by the company. It’s also the technology that has grownwearablesand industrial products, including robotics, to about 16 percent of consolidated revenue for the fiscal year ended March 31.

Usui说，Epson已经有一段时间了，但现在正在追求更紧迫的能力。“我们拥有所有产品中的核心技术，所以我们可以更好地改进和使它们更好，”他解释道。“许多公司，包括我们在印刷中的主要竞争对手，并不拥有自己的工厂。我们的目标是创造不存在的东西，所以我们控制整个过程并创造一个良性的圈子。“

But not everyone is convinced by the flashy new products or business plan. Tetsuya Wadaki, an analyst with Tokyo-based Nomura Holdings who covers Epson, notes that the introduction of these new businesses comes after several years of restructuring and the elimination of less profitable parts of the company.

“We assume the objective of some of these product developments was maintaining the motivation of the engineers,” Wadaki wrote in an e-mail. “Therefore, we suppose wearables, 3-D projection, textiles and robotics won’t have a significant impact on the performance of Seiko Epson in the future.”

瓦达基说，他也不相信新业务周围的范围将对公司的股价产生很大影响。EPSON股票在东京证券交易所交易，每年亏损约15％，周一至2,129日元（17.11美元）。

Epson may have something even bigger in store, however. Usui and Lang say the company is researching ways to incorporate 3-D printing into its business, and not in the consumer-facing way many other companies have approached the technology. Instead of selling in-home 3-D printers, a business that has lagged after an initial flurry of excitement several years ago, Epson plans to use3-D printingon its production lines. First, the company has to iron out issues of durability, precision and speed.

“Epson is planning to conquer all of these [issues] and have a world-beating 3-D printer,” says Usui.

Once this technology is perfected, Usui believes Epson will help usher in “a new Industrial Revolution,” staffing production lines with robots assembling 3-D-printed parts, leaving workers free to dream up the next big thing.

Follow Kaitlin Ugolik on Twitter at@kaitlinugolik.