A new player is challenging the status quo in the consumables and printer market in South Africa.
The G&G brand is Ninestar Corporations longest standing brands since 2000. Ninestar has an express aim to become the third-biggest printer manufacturer in the world. Ecoteq Imaging has partnered with Ninestar as the sole South African distributor for the G&G brand.
Ecoteq was founded four years ago by well-known industry veteran David Coutinho, who set up the new distributor to offer Ninestar’s compatible and remanufactured laser toner and inkjet cartridges to South African resellers.
Four years on, and the products have proved themselves to be top quality, reliable and cost-effective, and are making waves in the very competitive consumables landscape. Indeed, Ecoteq has enjoyed 100% growth every year for the last four years
Now, Ninestar is expanding its operations – and ambitions – to the printer market with its G&G brand, so Ecoteq will be adding exciting new hardware products to their offerings from August 2022.
“Ninestar has set a target of being the third-largest printer OEM in the world within the next three to five years,” Coutinho says. “The company is already the biggest manufacturer of inks and toner in the world – by a large margin.
“A big advantage is that they own their entire supply chain, including the chip manufacturer company Apex, so Ninestar is always first to market with new products, testament to their extensive R&D and manufacturing ability.”
The focus on the printer hardware market is not new: the range of Pantum and Lexmark laser printers are form the Ninestar stable and have proved extremely successful in the market.
“Ninestar has put a lot of R&D and investment into developing printer technology,” Coutinho explains. “The start was the purchase of Lexmark, then the launch of Pantum and now the new G&G brand.”
The investment can be seen in the extensive high-tech campus that Ninestar has built for its printer manufacturing. “This plays into their ambition to become not only the world’s third-largest printer manufacturer, but the most cost-effective as well.”
Coutinho is excited about the new products. “G&G are premium products, made with top-quality materials in a state-of-the-art factory – with the big advantage that there is no price premium.
“This will allow us to position the products alongside the mid-market segment in terms of price but competing with the top-tier products in terms of quality.
“This put us in a good position to be extremely competitive in both the consumables and printer market.”
As Coutinho points out, there is a lot more to launching a new product than just bringing it in: warehousing, marketing, distribution, channel enablement, help desk and services all need to be in place.
To this end, Ecoteq will initially launch with niche-market printers.
“The one thing I don’t want to do is rush the market,” Coutinho says. “I have a long background in the industry and, if I’m going to do something, I’m going to do it properly.
“We have got services in place for the consumables business, and now we need to expand that to include the devices.
“I can’t stress enough how important these services are: if a customer buys something and it goes wrong, there needs to be a repair and exchange process in place. For me, this is critical.”
“This gives our reseller partners peace of mind too. They know that when they sell one of our products, they know they have the support.”
Ecoteq has been selling the G&G inks and toners and will be bringing in some of the more conventional printers in August 2022 onwards.
“We are making some big investments behind the scenes to support our objectives,” Coutinho says. “Our aim is to get the brand established and build the market’s confidence in it.”
Ecoteq has the full support of Ninestar in establishing and growing the South African market. “They want to grow the G&G brand globally and are very committed to the South African market.”
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Ecoteq is actively recruiting resellers to partner with for the G&G brand.
“We want to grow our partner base,” says Coutinho, “But we want to partner with resellers, which is why we are offering them an opportunity to expand into new markets with our niche products.”
G&G is on a mission in South Africa
The Ninestar Group was founded in June 2000 in Zhuhai, China and has since accelerated the business through strategic acquisitions as well as organic growth.
In 2014, the company was listed on the Shenzhen Stock Exchange.
It is now a world-leading innovator and solutions provider in the printer and imaging supplies market.
Channelwise asked Eric Zhang, General Manager of the Printing Consumables business unit, about the company, its setup, philosophy and future plans.
Q: Please tell us a bit about Ninestar as it stands today.
A: Sure. Ninestar have over 18 000 employees, operates in 60 countries, and provides a high-quality, environmentally friendly, and cost-saving user experience for some 200-million customers.
Our annual revenues are now in the region of $3 billion.
Q: With G&G being launched worldwide, can you share with us the original intention in establishing the brand? What can partners and users expect from G&G? And what can the market expect from the products?
A: We established the G&G brand right back when Ninestar was founded. Our vision is to become the pre-eminent high-tech service provider in the printing industry and to build a globally renowned and trusted brand.
Thus G&G was born to offer high-quality and affordable alternatives.
When you look at the G&G logo, you see a pair of hands grasped tightly together. This represents the firm and the everlasting relationship Ninestar has built with its partners.
That’s because we value every partner. In our genes, we know that product quality is for life, and a customer is for a lifetime.
Many asked why we chose a penguin as our branding image. Well, penguins live in the Antarctic. The climate has been changing and bringing challenges to the survival of these lively creatures. We hope the image of the emperor penguin reminds people to be environmentally friendly.
Being friendly to the environment and aiming to reduce our carbon footprint are also the reasons why we offer a reliable, safe, premium range of remanufactured alternatives to customers, coupled with our “going green” recycling program.
So far, G&G has brought the best images to over 200-million end users worldwide with an OEM-like printing experience.
We set out on a mission to help people work for their best image by making printing simple, reliable, affordable, and sustainable through innovation, efficiency and respect towards people.
Adam Miao, branding director of Ninestar Image Tech Limited, talks about the G&G branding strategy in South Africa:
Q: G&G has earned a good reputation around the world. Please give us more details about your strategy in serving the South African market.
A: Our vision is to build a worldwide, well-known brand with our partners, providing value and trust to global partners and consumers.
South Africa is one of the key markets for G&G. We’re very excited about building and developing G&G in the South African market with our strategic partner Ecoteq.
Both G&G and Ecoteq are very young and dynamic companies. Each captures many strengths. We see multiple values that we could deliver to our partners together.
G&G is hoping to utilise its technology and innovation capabilities to provide premium quality, and a full range of affordable and sustainable printing solutions to the South African market.
G&G printers launch in South Africa
When Ecoteq launches the G&G printer brand in South Africa in August, it will be following with three portable products.
G&G Photo Printers
The mini G&G Go, at just 153,5g and 118mm x 85mm x20 mm in size, fits comfortably into a user’s pocket or wallet to provide instant photo printing anywhere and anytime.
The G&G Go App enables any picture to be captured and printed instantly from a smartphone.
And it goes beyond photo printing: users can turn their pictures into creative stickers using sticky-backed photo paper for G&G Go. They can also use the G&G GO to print a single image from a video; and scan the picture with their phone to change it back into a video.
The G&G Go has a 550mAh internal rechargeable battery. It connects via Bluetooth 4.1 at a print resolution of 314dpi x 600dpi on media up to 50mm x 76mm.
G&G Portable label printers
Designed with durability and productivity in mind, G&G’s industrial label printers, with a flexible print width up to 108mm, with built-in keyboards can be used indoors or outdoors, being resistant under all conditions like extreme temperatures.
The desktop label and ticket printers produce easy-to-read texts and barcodes suited for the use in office, retail, and logistics. They feature wireless and NFC connectivity and enable smart printing from PC, Mac, smartphones, and tablets.
With a lightweight design, G&G’s portable label printers allow users to print on the move and on demand. They are simple to use and easy to manage, making them convenient for personal use at home, school, and hospitals. A wide range of accessories lets users customize labels.
G&G Handheld inkjet printers
The G&G Handheld Inkjet Printer is a mobile and portable printing solution for business and industry.
It can print alphabets, text, numbers, symbols, QR codes, barcodes, consecutive numbers and data on multiple surfaces with various inks available to suit the user’s requirements.
It provides outstanding mono printing with professional waterproof, quick-drying ink cartridges, with five colours currently available.
A printing speed of up to 60 meters per minute, combined with a 300dpi print quality and font sizes up to 12,7mm makes this a versatile workhorse.
Product upgrades
Distributors all over the world have to carefully balance their stock levels to ensure they don’t get caught with shelves of “old” products when new upgrades come out.
In the printer market, these upgrades are most usually in the form of firmware upgrades to the chips inside the products.
Traditionally, distributors would have to open all the stock on their shelves, remove the products from the packaging, expose the chip and run the firmware updates.
This is obviously not an ideal solution, so Ninestar and chip manufacturer Apex have come up with a better way of doing things.
Every distributor receives a device called a Unismart that connects directly to the upgrade software developed by Apex.
The Product, still sealed in its packaging, is placed the in the device’s cradle and the firmware is automatically and wirelessly upgraded.
“This immeasurably speeds the upgrade cycle as you don’t have to replace the chips or physically download firmware updates” says Ecoteq founder and MD David Coutinho. “It completely eliminates the need to open products, so you can hold stock for longer.
“It’s a quick solution to an age-old problem; and it’s the kind of technology that Ninestar is constantly bringing to market.” Showing how technologically advanced Ninestar are.
www.ecoteq.co.za