Executive Q&A
David Zwang talks with Carsten Bruhn, the newly appointed president and CEO of Ricoh North America, about how the pandemic has affected Ricoh and its customers, as well as where the printing industry is going as we emerge from the year of COVID.
Printing News: Carsten, congratulations on the new role. This is pretty exciting, but I understand you've been with Ricoh for a while.
Carsten Bruhn: I have been with Ricoh for more than 30 years. I am originally Danish, but 23 years ago my family and myself moved to England where I was the CEO of a company here in the UK. Since then, we’ve never looked back. I worked for Lanier Worldwide at that time, an American company that Ricoh later acquired. Over the last four years, I have managed our global sales. Before that, I also lived a for a couple of years in Tokyo, where I worked for [Ricoh’s] BSG that really started off the journey of this digital services company and that direction. And that’s been fantastic. I’m excited about the future of this next job.
PN: You’re taking this role on at an interesting time. Now that we can see the beginning of the light of day—and I know if you’re in the UK now, maybe the light isn’t as bright as it is over here—do you expect any long-term changes in the way that Ricoh does business?
CB: First of all, I think it’s very important we recognize the last 12 months have been very, very tough for everyone, and especially for some families. My thoughts go out to them. And when that’s been said, I think the pandemic will transform many, many industries, and now it’s a matter of who clearly understands the opportunities ahead of us—because I think the opportunities will be big—and then who will adapt very quickly to understand what’s happening. It’s not a secret that the biggest part of our business is really working with our customers in the workplace, and when suddenly everybody sits at home, it does make a difference to the business. But we have had fantastic opportunities to work closely with our customers. The more we progressed into [the pandemic], we all started to learn to still do business together, but virtually. I think what’s more important now is to understand that this has accelerated the journey into the digital world, so I can sit anywhere and access data and information in a very secure manner. I don’t think we will hear many people talk about the “office” anymore, but much more about the “workplace,” because now suddenly we can work anywhere. Everybody talks about this hybrid office, so there's no doubt that it will change. And Ricoh is an 85-year-old company, and while sometimes change can be a little bit slow, we are very passionate about always working with our customers to make sure we transform with them. I think this pandemic actually was an opportunity for Ricoh to realize that we need to work with our employees, our customers and partners, to make sure that we transform.
PN: You’re taking over this position at a time when there are not just challenges in the world and how we do business, but in the print industry itself. Ricoh has been very strong in the enterprise and business community, and that’s one of the areas that’s probably been hardest hit and has been in decline even before the pandemic. But print is evolving, and given the way people look at it and how they’re using print and imaging technologies, where do you see Ricoh’s position in that new world?
CB: I do want to clarify one thing, as there was a bit of a misunderstanding lately about some announcement that Ricoh would maybe leave print, which definitely is not our intent. We are still very focused on print. It’s more what we are adding to print. I think print will change. You know, I heard 10 years ago, people talking about the paperless world, and we haven’t really seen it yet, but I have to say, print will change and be different. Take, for example, graphic communications. We see growth coming from that area, and that’s where I think we will also see growth with the investments we have been making, such as in software and applications. So there will be what we call transactional print, the traditional print, but we will definitely be moving into how we do the digital. How do we provide customers with the data they need, remotely or on-site, and that can be in different formats? The office print is being challenged, there’s no doubt about that, but that doesn’t mean it’s going away. It’s just a different way, again, of how we print. In the production print area, we definitely see big potential there, and we are investing to make sure we will continue to be a market leader.
PN: As I look at the market and not just Ricoh, but some of your competitors, everybody’s going through the same issues because people use what was the copier, the printing device, differently today than they did before. There’s more emails. But I also see tremendous opportunities for growth in print and print imaging in new fields, packaging, for sure, and in industrial print. Do you see Ricoh making investments in those areas?
CB: Absolutely. We are investing in label printing, supporting customers in their manufacturing to make sure it’s an integrated solution that works together with the manufacturing. Sometimes, you develop a strategy, but then customers pull you into something you were not even aware of. And that’s what’s happening right now. We see that in logistic companies and in manufacturing companies. We actually see print growing there, but in new areas. It’s not the traditional office print, but suddenly now we are part of their manufacturing process, part of the warehousing processes. So print will be different, but there's still a big, big potential. And we are investing in that together with our sensor technology, by the way, to make sure we can support clients with that kind of technology that came from print.
PN: Yeah, many people don’t recognize that print was one of the earliest industries to get involved in digital, and we did break a lot of ground, and a lot of things that we’ve developed over the years have found their way into other industries. And of course now it’s key that all these other industries and print start to work together. I’m assuming that’s one of the things that Ricoh will be working on, how do we move to this Industry 4.0…dream, if you will, which really crosses many industries, with digital technology and print.
CB: The business case that always pops up is the old camera industry where in the old days we all took pictures and we got them on paper. Not all of those companies managed to transform and become digital in that world and in that space. But when I sit at home, we still look at pictures on prints, and then you also have it electronically. I think that it’s a similar journey we see in our industry. For me now, it’s just a matter of making sure you still recognize that our core DNA was print, so what kind of services do we then wrap around that? You know, what kind of applications, what kind of software? When I lived in Japan and I traveled around the world to do an inventory, one of the things I was most impressed with was actually, within the production print area, how early we created our own software portfolio to make sure that you could get the right balance between digital and transactional print. That was a big eye-opener when we started to introduce agile development vs. waterfall development. And for me, that was just fascinating and something I have used since I saw that in our facility in Colorado.
PN: So you’re currently living in England, you’re the president and CEO of Ricoh USA and although at this point, you can’t even get out of your building, do you see yourself moving to the States?
CB: Oh, absolutely. Ricoh is one of the greatest people companies you can ever work for. And I have to tell you, the way the employees have received me and reached out to me since the announcement has been fantastic. So currently, because of the pandemic, I am not allowed to fly to the US. But working from here hasn’t really made such a big difference, because people are still working from home in North America. I just start my day a little bit later and I end it little bit later, but it’s fantastic. I just feel the energy in the way we now work with our employees, and with our partners. The other day, I was on a big virtual meeting with our dealers and it was just fantastic. We are starting to see business picking up, by the way, which is a sign that we are seeing some normality, whatever that is.
PN: I really appreciate you spending the time with me. I wish you the best of luck and I hope once you do get over here, we get a chance to meet and shake hands together. And I look forward to seeing where Ricoh North America goes under your leadership.
CB: Well, thank you very much, David. And I look forward over the next few years to share some successes with you and share with you how we are transforming Ricoh.
