HP Printers: update on back orders and future stock
Friday, January 22, 2010 14:01
After 8 or 9 months, the HP IPG (Imaging and Printing Group) is about to have full stock on their LaserJet printers and multifunction units. It has been a very difficult 9 months (heck, one could have had a baby in the amount of time they were waiting on a P4015x) but from what I am being told, HP has a very large shipment coming in at the end of this month. That shipment should take care of leftover backorders, which were in the thousands for a number of units. As an HP reseller, I would like to thank all of my customers who have been very patient during the past 9 months. I know it has been frustrating, but it should be much better now.
That is the good news. Unfortunately there is a little bad news, or maybe not-so-good-news, coming as well. Prior to the HP dry spell of 2009, the HP IPG stocking model was to keep a very large supply available across the entire country. It was held in distribution and with HP themselves. This made for high availability to resellers and distribution, however, stocking that much hardware comes at a cost to HP. In an attempt to cut out the extra stock of printers that are sitting in a warehouse for weeks or months at a time, HP is now going to limit stock a bit. The stock limit will obviously not be as sever as May 09-today, however stock will not be as plentiful as it was in the pre-2009 days. My suspicion is that margins have gotten so thin on the IPG side (I can concur, there is little profit there) that HP needs to find more ways to cut pricing. While inconvenient for the resellers and customers, I think this is a very efficient strategy for HP.
What does this all mean for customers? My guess is that we are going to start seeing 5-10 business day lead times for printers. The models that have the quickest turnover may stay in stock, but the rest of the units will need to be ordered a week or two in advance. This is definitely a change from the norm, but I think customers will adjust quickly and printers will be ordered more strategically. In turn, I think this new stocking model by HP will save HP money and they typically do a good job of passing the savings along to the customer… so expect a small break when it comes to pricing.
