MAKING A STINK OVER INK.

Byline: Joe Mosley The Register-Guard

A battle over the hearts and minds of inkjet printer users is quietly raging in the Eugene-Springfield area.

Computer printer manufacturers - who by some estimates earn up to half of their profits from the sale of printer cartridges - claim the ink aftermarket as their rightful territory. Take your dry cartridges back to the store and buy new ones, the manufacturers urge.

But a growing insurgency by cartridge refillers and recyclers has made inroads into the replacement market, and has drawn support from consumers irked by new-cartridge prices as high as a quarter the price of a new printer.

"We're getting more and more people coming in, because they don't want to pay the high prices," says Nick Waggoner, whose Redundant Cartridge Inc. in Eugene has been remanufacturing and refilling name-brand ink cartridges for 15 years. "It's getting more widely accepted."

The Eugene area has become one of the latest hotspots in a revolt against the high cost of original-equipment cartridges.

Waggoner's well-established stores in Eugene and Springfield have built a base of customers since the company's inception in 1989, while outlets of rival Rapid Refill, Inc., have exploded onto the local and national scene since it was founded 17 months ago.

In addition to his original spot in downtown Eugene and a store in Salem, Rapid Refill owner Dan White has added stores of his own in Idaho, California and Colorado, has plans for more in Oregon and has sold 250 franchises nationwide.

"For years, the printable consumables (such as cartridges) have been the moneymakers of the industry," says Jared Seigel, kicker for the University of Oregon football team and business student who is doing market studies for Rapid Refill.

Seigel says ink cartridges and printers have a "razor and blade" relationship, in which the greatest profit comes from the aftermarket product.

"The printer is sold at cost, and all the money is made in consumables," Seigel says. "That's presented an opportunity for remanufacturers to come in with a more reasonable price ... and they're stealing a significant market share."

Both of the main players in the local cartridge refilling game say their customers save 30 percent to 50 percent buying remanufactured and refilled cartridges rather than new brand-name products.

A common printer cartridge - a Hewlett-Packard 51645, which contains only black ink - sells for $29.49 new. But the refilled, remanufactured version sells for $16.50 at Rapid Refill and $15.95 at Redundant Cartridge, if an empty cartridge is exchanged for the refilled one.

A color Hewlett-Packard C6578 goes for $34.75 new, while the refilled versions go for $19.50 at Rapid Refill and $19.95 at Redundant Cartridge, with the trade of an empty "core." Refills cost about $5 more if no core cartridge is returned.

Global proportions

The potential market for cartridges - locally and globally - is huge.

About $19 billion was spent worldwide on inkjet cartridges in 2002, the most recent year for which data is available, according to Seigel's research.

About 153 million refilled cartridges were sold in 2002 - about 12 percent of all inkjet cartridges sold. Sales of refilled cartridges was growing at 12 percent a year - almost double the rate of new brand-name cartridges.

"So far, there aren't any cartridges that are impossible for us (to refill)," says White, the Rapid Refill owner. "It just sometimes comes down to what's economical for us to do, and what product you get as a result of that. But every customer that does walk in the door with a core (cartridge), they do save money with us."

That kind of assertion is challenged by printer manufacturers, who argue their original-equipment products are superior to -and as cost-efficient as - the remanufactured equivalents. New cartridges have higher reliability, print quality and ink durability, the industry argues.

"These are very complex, sophisticated technical products that over their lifetime fire about a billion drops of ink," says Boris Elisman, vice president of marketing and sales for Hewlett-Packard's supplies business. "There's just a lot of use on the print heads.

Cartridges "are designed for a single use, and refilling it - which is what (remanufacturers) do - generates print of an inferior quality," Elisman says. "Even from a pricing standpoint, consumers are not really getting a good deal."

That contention is echoed in the May edition of Consumer Reports magazine.

The magazine's staff tested name-brand cartridges manufactured by Hewlett-Packard, Canon and Epson against generic and remanufactured cartridges available from sources over the Internet.

Consumer Reports compared print quality, ink fading and cost-per-page, and found name-brand products superior in the first two categories and comparable in the third, after the reliability of cartridges was factored in.

"When you can get high-quality output from an inkjet printer that costs as little as $80, it's hard to abide spending more than that each year on ink cartridges," the magazine said. "But our tests show that even though brand-name inks are expensive, they are a better value overall."

The owners of Eugene's main inkjet cartridge remanufacturers maintain the Consumer Reports findings don't apply to them.

They point out that locally-based cartridge refillers can stand behind their products more easily than Internet retailers, and that Redundant Cartridge and Rapid Refill use higher-quality inks than the mail-order outfits.

In the refill industry "not everyone knows what they're doing," says Waggoner, of Redundant Cartridge. "There are a number of suppliers that buy inks that aren't as good as other inks. In my industry, there are probably 15 or 20 places you can buy ink from. Some doesn't dry as fast, and some just do not have the quality."

At Rapid Refill, White says his stores pick the best ink to suit the characteristics of each make and model of cartridge.

"The technology has come a long way, and I think that's what makes it work so much better for us," says White, who boasts $200,000 worth of refilling and remanufacturing equipment in each of his shops.

Both local businessmen say the reliability of their rebuilt cartridges is far better than that of Internet off-brands. Return rates range from fewer than two in 100 to just over five out of 100, they say.

The Consumer Reports article cited failure rates with the off-brands as high as 83 percent.

White and Waggoner also point out that their enterprises operate under the principles of recycling and reuse, and produce less overall waste than brand-name manufacturers.

Elisman, at Hewlett-Packard, says his company last fall began offering a free, prepaid return envelope with each new cartridge sold. Returned cartridges are dismantled at a facility in Tennessee, where the metal and plastic are separated, chipped and sold for use in other products.

The local firms question how many brand-name cartridges are actually returned, point out that their businesses produce local jobs - 10 at Redundant Cartridge and 27 at Rapid Refill - and maintain that their process lies closer to the heart of recycling ideals.

"We don't save the landfills as much as BRING Recycling does," Waggoner says. "But in 15 years, we've done thousands of cartridges."

CAPTION(S):

Dan White, working at his downtown Rapid Refill store, says his printer ink refills are comparable to new, more expensive cartridges. Tyler Childs cleans empty inkjet cartridges at Rapid Refill. Printer manufacturers say the quality of refills can't match original cartridges.