Do you know that the 1964 Tokyo Olympics are partly responsible for using Epson printers at work or at home today? You probably don’t, but this corporation, which now delivers printing solutions to customers worldwide, has started its journey in a completely different way.
Kintaro Hattori, known as the ‘king of timepieces’ founded Seiko. They started as a small clock repair shop. The next Hattori generations, with Shoji Hattori as one of them, were responsible for Seiko being the first-ever manufacturer of quartz watches in the world. That lead to Seiko being selected to serve as the official timekeeper of the Tokyo Olympics. After that, their leadership position was strengthened, and they had room to dedicate themselves to creating other innovations. The result came in 1975 when Epson (Son of EP or Electronic Printer) was formally established as the next generation of printers based on the EP-101.
Today, Epson is a multinational manufacturer of electronic devices, but their main focus has remained on printers.
However, new companies have become more competitive. Also, another problem are the resellers who do not protect their brand image and lower the prices of Epson products too much. It has become difficult to view how their products are doing in all markets.
Since they started their work in the production of watches, it would be unusual for them not to be able to recognize when it is the right time to ask for help, right?
So, the right time to get more familiar with Price2Spy has come.
Key challenges
Maintaining the image of one of the largest printer manufacturers that Epson has held up since 1942, it’s far from being an easy task. Their products are available worldwide, so they have to keep a close eye on all the markets.
Let’s explain the main challenges a bit better:
- Tracking multiple markets
- Having a large amount of product information, and many product variants
- Providing the data to each country/market manager only for their country (the need to have User management in Price2Spy)
- Keeping up with the competition which is becoming more fierce
As you can see, maintaining the brand image comes across as the main “pain point” for this corporation. Another very common issue with such big companies is that they usually have many product variations. That means that providing precise data is the most important thing.
All these obstacles started to affect the company’s leading position which resulted in much-needed help from a price monitoring tool such as Price2Spy.
Price2Spy’s given solutions
Since the global market is not easy to cover, our Price2Spys’ team had to think about what would be the best approach. The following solutions appeared as the most suitable ones:
- The premium account has User management so every manager has their own dashboard and can set up their own reports;
- They use the reporting section to the maximum, especially the “save” and “automate” functions;
- Split products across countries so they can monitor different markets;
- To have RRP in the account to check if the websites sell below it.
By doing so, Price2Spy allowed Epson to have all data in one place, and still be able to filter it out and view the markets, countries, categories, sub-categories they’re interested in at any point. The end result has been a simple and straightforward way to extract any reports from Price2Spy. They got an automatic tool that can monitor both their competition and how they are doing on the market. Price2Spy has allowed them to view the pricing trends on the market over longer periods, so it helps them make their yearly reports as well.
The implementation started in December 2019 and is still ongoing, since Epson added a new set of products which was matched recently. So, they are practically always updating their assortment.
“Epson introduced Price2Spy in December 2019 to track both our own and our competitors’ pricing across a range of different product categories and countries. Price2Spy has allowed us to share reports in a simple and functional format. Setting up dashboards has been easy and efficient and the ability to see live and historical pricing on one screen been invaluable. The Excel extraction function allows us to manipulate the data derived from the Price2Spy system easily and quickly. We are continually expanding the coverage and looking for new applications for Price2Spy across the business. “ – Douglas Noble, Data Insight Analyst
One of the reasons why Price2Spy was the best fit for Epson is due to our experience. Over the years we had many big clients, so we could perfectly understand what maintaining the leading market position requires. The needs of such a big client can not be fulfilled by one or two simple reports. Therefore, the whole set of different reports that Price2Spy has to offer was a logical solution.
Whenever you’re faced with such a huge client, it’s inevitable to feel even more responsible than usual. Since Price2Spy doesn’t shay away from the challenge, we also saw this offer as an opportunity for our own growth.
For dedicated work, there is always a reward, and the reward that Price2Spy loves the most are satisfied and successful clients.
Do you also struggle with staying on top of the market? Don’t waste any more time and start your 30 days free trial period with Price2Spy.
