Well, this was the official line, correct. However, nobody was able to tell me which patents exactly would serve as a backup, so I gave upThanks for the info Mario. I had thought the official line with Sawgrass was whilst certain patents were expiring, they still had enough to cause trouble. Haven't looked up recent info though so good to be updated.
Not sure why other inks have not filtered into the regular suppliers beyond the Sawgrass brands.
asking for that and went down my own route.
Other inks eventually infringe the current "Ricoh" patent due to their formulation.
We will concentrate on our job, I always hated to spend lots of time with this legal stuff.
Regards,
Mario
Hi Mario,
Are you considering supplying the ink in bottles for use in CISS systems at any point?
My understanding is that Sawgrass won't supply SubliJet or any other Sawgrass products if a supplier stocks a non-sawgrass ink. For that reason I suspect many regular suppliers won't risk loosing the supply chain of Sawgrass inks and related products.Thanks for the info Mario. I had thought the official line with Sawgrass was whilst certain patents were expiring, they still had enough to cause trouble. Haven't looked up recent info though so good to be updated.
Not sure why other inks have not filtered into the regular suppliers beyond the Sawgrass brands.
Hi Matzy,
not for the moment. Providing the ink in closed carts is the only way to control quality and make sure
the inks are always fresh and will not be diluted by fellows adding distilled water or mix several inks together.
We used to sell CIS systems in the past and had to deal with LOTS of trouble, you can`t imagine..
Almost 100% of those problems were gone after we stopped selling CIS systems and switched to closed carts.
Regards,
Mario
Under EU law (I know you will like this ) this would be restraint of trade, clearly illegal.
There is no way to tie up a dealer in order to only sell a particular ink if there is no fair
compensation in return, such as an exclusivity for example. So dealers are free to sell
whatever brand they like, it`s only up to them. Apart from that situation, I strongly believe
in free trade. It has never been a good idea for a long-term successful business to base it
on threatening the dealers with unfair restrictions.
Bottom line is:
If there is a better product available on the market, delivering way better colours, black black,
more capacity in the cartridge and all that at a significantly better price, what do you guess
customers will do ? I assume that dealers need to follow the market and sell the products
their customers demand.
Give me two more months and you will see what I mean.
Regards,
Mario
Not wanting to turn the thread down a different route, but there are other good inks out there at a far lower cost. I use Inktec and they give great colours and have used others like Lyson before. These don't seem to be targeted to the smaller user still. They all moved up to being 1ltr bottles after previously being supplied in smaller volumes which I believe was due to Sawgrass. Might be they no longer see the value in targeting the smaller user.
If you can get the job done with the Ricoh as well, then that is where I would think you will do well and hope it works. I did think Ricoh gel inks is where Sawgrass were going to their weight (lawyers) behind. Will be interesting to see how you get on.
Right Andrew,
there have been a number of inks available in the past, but from my point of view none of them took it serious.
We are totally convinced about the Sublisplash product and this is why we support the full range of Ricoh printers
plus Epson, not to forget. So every printer that has ever been on the market used for sublimation can be driven
with Sublisplash carts.
It is one thing to simply use a bottle of ink, to pour it in a CIS or refillable carts and keep fingers crossed that it will
behave well. But it`s a completely different story to do proper testing, having the inks produced in a controlled environment
under repeatable conditions, incl. batch tracking etc. etc. and get it from a vendor with savvy tech support.
In nice packaging, sold openly by official dealer and not under the counter hoping to stay under the radar.
In other words, we stand 100% behind our product and will prove that Sublisplash came to last.
Regards,
Mario
By the way: No intention from my end to offend anybody. As you know English isn`t my mother tongue so please be generous if I´m using strange words sometimes
Last edited by Mario Panter; 24-05-2017 at 11:07 AM. Reason: Addition
Printequipment are my main supplier for subli products here in Germany and are probably one of the biggest suppliers of Sublimation products in Europe. I do know that before they will sell a product they test the life out of it to ensure it is up to standard.
Mario, we currently use SG ink but if we wanted to trial Sublisplash would we have to flush out all the SG ink first and install four new SS carts and then get a new profile done? Or could we just replace empty SG carts as and when with SS ones? Olly