Julien Guerrand – IMPSGA Community manager: Manuel, could you present yourself and your position in M.HERMIDA?
Manuel Hermida – My name is Manuel and I represent the second generation in our family business, which was founded in 1988. 35 employees work for the company, a few kilometres from Madrid, and are focused on one goal: offering the best solution to our clients’ needs. Beside our MPS activity, we are a main dealer for the greatest office supplies brands.
JG: Thanks. Do you have any hot news to share with the Alliance?
MH: We are in the process to obtain the ISO 9001 and 20001 certifications. We have been working on it since January 2016. The ISO 20001 will be very useful for the IMPSGA activity and our business with the public sector. So, I hope to come back in September with good news!
JG: We hope so too. How can we define the MPS market in Spain? Is there any noticeable difference?
MH: Well, as everybody knows, Spain has recently suffered of a major financial crisis. Almost every company has been impacted: sales decrease, no business visibility, etc. It was not the best times to make some major deals or to innovate. Nevertheless, as we had launched our MPS activity in 2008, we were ready when the country woke up. Even if MPS have not grown as quickly as it did in some other European countries, we believe in it. We have one strong belief: MPS for the SMBs is the core market in Spain. This is maybe the main characteristic of the Spanish MPS market.
JG: And how does M.HERMIDA make the difference in its market?
MH: We noticed a strong, global trend: consumers are more and more upset by the planned obsolescence. Why are the consumers so disloyal, so volatile? Probably because they do not trust the brands as they used to do before. So we try to make our brand M.Hermida well-known, building a trust-based relationship with our clients. More services, more opportunities to catch, and we never forget that the page volume is still in crisis…
JG: Concerning the printing industry, and its future: how do you see 2020?
MH: I think we are a lot to have the same opinion: there are too many manufacturers on a market segment without growth … so we probably are going to see a gradual convergence of the manufacturers. Hardware majors are acquiring printer based companies, and this is just an example of the major changes we can wait for. Well, let’s plan another meeting in four years!