The Mexican Remanufacturing Industry: An Overview
- By Ivan Rosales
- Jul 01, 2006
If any one thing characterizes the Mexican recycled cartridge industry, it is
the lack of a consensus on names and descriptions of the activities of each business,
enterprise or company involved in the imaging industry.
Though we have organizations like the Latin American Recycled Toners Association
(ARTLA), which has the power to assemble many people and works for their benefit
and the growth of the industry, we do not have a main document containing a detailed
description of our activities. Neither the local suppliers nor vendors have been
able to put together definitions or procedures that establish the general criteria
and clarify the scheme and commercial activities of our industry.
To reach levels of competitiveness that allow us to place our products into the
consumer market and maintain ourselves as an industry for the next 10 years, it
is imperative to establish priorities that help us accomplish these objectives.
Based on this analysis, I decided to deeply study our industry to establish that
necessary order and create an initial document containing the criteria, definitions
and procedures for the Mexican recycled toner and inkjet cartridges industry.
Introduction
People outside of the industry constantly ask, “Why have so many cartridge
recyclers remained non-industrialized? If a cartridge is today what a disposable
pen was to our parents: Why have they only reached 12 or 13 percent of the marketplace?”
The answer to these two main questions includes topics such as competitive strategy,
marketing strategy, business owners’ educational level, market valuation
and understanding, users’ appreciation, and industry structures and standardization.
From these, structure and standardization must be the foundation on which every
person and organization who wants to get involved or is part of our industry build
their businesses and companies.
An organization without a solid basis (administrative structure, politics, standards
and systems) tends to suffer inevitably the following pitfalls:
1. Loss of its investment of work
2. Lack of capability to keep the qualified work force, creating direct competitors
3. Important variations in their product quality due to the lack of a quality
assurance system
4. Incongruity and inefficiency in their marketing strategies. (There is neither
an established directive nor understanding of the behavior of the market.)
5. Indebtedness
6. Loss of profits. It appears that the ancient advice that says “buy low, sell
high” is the worst phrase ever spoken, according to our industry members. Recyclers
in Mexico, normally with no previous marketing investigation, sell their products
more and more cheaply, without any significant adjustment from their suppliers
and not noticing that, in the long term, they will lose their business.
7. Finally, bankruptcy
To prevent these problems from happening on a grand scale, it is necessary to
establish industry criteria.
In my next delivery of this investigation, I will do a general sketch of the
conformation of our industry.
Contact Ivan Rosales at 011-52-33-3630-0016 or e-mail ivanr@vinet.com.mx.
This article originally appeared in the July 2006 issue of Recharger.