Epson campaign focuses on SME market

Yunyong Muneemongkoltorn, general manager of Epson (Thailand), said the campaign offered 10-month instalments with minus-5-per-cent interest for SMEs buying any of three printer models: the Stylus TX500W, Stylus Office T40W and Stylus Office TX600FW.

Under the campaign, Epson has joined hands with credit-card providers KTC, Aeon, First Choice and Citibank to allow customers to pay by monthly instalments with a 5-per-cent discount for each payment, which is cheaper than zero-interest offers.

"For example, the Epson Stylus Office TX600FX is Bt8,350. If a customer pays zero interest for 10 months the cost will be Bt835 per month, whereas with minus-5-per-cent interest, its cost is only Bt793.25 per month," said Yunyong.

The initial campaign offer runs from tomorrow through to the end of September. Epson expects to sell about 800 to 1,000 units per month of the three models combined during this period, which is the first phase of the campaign.

Yunyong said the company's gearing to the SME market was a strategic move this year in response to the economic downturn, in which the consumer market is slowing down, while the corporate market - especially for SMEs - is growing. This is because currently only a small percentage of the country's 700,000 SMEs have invested in technology, but many of the rest are looking for technology to help them improve business efficiency.

He said Epson aimed to increase both its total unit sales and revenue by 10 per cent from last year.

Unit sales last year amounted to 350,000 across all printer categories - ink-jet multifunction and single function, dot matrix and laser - while revenue was Bt2.1 billion.