By Zsarlene B. Chua, Reporter

AFTER clocking in another double-digit growth year in 2018, Epson Philippines Corp. (EPC) remains bullish on its prospects as the company focuses on growing their business-to-business (B2B) segment, according to a company executive.

“We have a very wide portfolio of products, so we’ve been there but now we’re really pushing our B2B because we are putting our core technology like the printheads and we’re putting them into machines of a different form factor for larger, more commercial and industrial use,” Eduardo Bonoan, general manager of the marketing division of EPC told BusinessWorld on the sidelines of the Epson Fusion event held in Discovery Shores, Boracay island on May 20.

During his presentation, Mr. Bonoan said the company’s sales grew by 23% during the 2018 fiscal year compared to the prior year’s 14% growth. For the last five years, he said the company posted 20% growth year-on-year on average.

The growth was attributed to “the very promising performance posted by select strategic products” like their copiers, scanners, label machines, large format printers and mobile point-of-sale systems.

Majority of last year’s sales come from printers and scanners (both consumer and business), contributing 70% to the total, while business systems contributed 14%, visual instruments at 11% and commercial and industrial machines at 5%.

This year, the company will focus on promoting their Replaceable Ink Pack System (RIPS), LIJ printers (large format printers), scanners, label printers, mobile point-of-sale, computer-aided design (CAD) printers, signage and textile printers, as well as its high brightness projectors.

The official however noted that their push towards B2B does not mean they will be sidelining their consumer market.

“We’re still going to be defending whatever we’ve done here but of course, we have to take a look at other avenues and other pastures already,” Mr. Bonoan said.

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