What Xerox Should Copy, and Not Copy, from Its Past

Overview: The article provides some facts that in 1982 Xerox was under siege. Japanese rivals such as Canon, Minolta and Ricoh had made devastating inroads into the company’s core market, and observers started to wonder whether the Stamford, Conn.-based giant, whose name is synonymous with photocopying, could survive. In 2000 Xerox, again, is under siege, and questions are being raised about its ability to survive. This time, though, it is not just competitors that are nipping at Xerox’s heels. Revenues are flat; earnings are plunging; and the company has been caught in such a severe cash crunch that its ability to sell commercial paper to pay its bills has been impaired. The article tries to reveal why did Xerox fail to capitalize on its invention of the laser printer. One factor may be that the company was a victim of its own success. The company had traditionally relied on direct sales by its own sales force, which was an extremely profitable undertaking. Xerox focused on businesses that had extremely high profit margins, rather than those that had rapid turns characteristic of low-margin businesses. The result, however, was that Xerox all but abandoned the laser-printer field to rivals like Hewlett-Packard until it was too late.

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Format: HTML | Date: Oct 2000 | Pages: 1