EPSON SA terminates distribution agreement with Tarsus

October 7, 1999 - EPSON SA today announced the termination of its distribution agreements with Tarsus Technologies. The announcement follows the decision by EPSON SA to rationalise and restructure its local distribution channel.

Commenting on the termination, EPSON SA`s general manager, Hans Dummer says, "Tarsus has not met expectations with regard to meeting sales forecasts over the last few months."

Tarsus has been distributing EPSON products for the last two and a half years. Dummer goes on to say that EPSON has made the decision not to replace Tarsus Technologies with another distributor at this point in time. "This is largely due to the fact that our volume expectations are being adequately met by our other two distributors, namely Mustek and SDD who have been contributing over 90% of our overall monthly sales figures."

Dummer believes that with Tarsus Technologies ceasing to distribute EPSON products, EPSON SA will be able to put more focus into its other two mainline distributors to even further increase local market shares.

According to the latest Printer Market BMI report, EPSON SA has 14.8% of the local ink jet market, 39.5% of the dot matrix arena and 1.1% of the laser market.

"We are also focusing heavily on our restructured specialised distribution following the recent simultaneous appointment of Solution Technologies as our direct value added reseller for EPSON`s range of projectors and the appointment of Colour Corporate as our local graphics distributor," he adds.