Hey copier dealers. What Are You Going to Do When Print Goes Away?

Your Show Floor is Missing Something

Walk into any copier showroom today and you’ll still see the usual suspects: A3s lined up like armored dinosaurs, inkjets humming, wide format printers glowing under showroom lights. Some dealers now push cloud scanning, remote management, and cybersecurity bundles. Maybe there’s a clever pitch on water service in the corner. And yes, MpS is still alive, if you squint hard enough.

But behind all of that, beneath the polished floors and familiar sales scripts, there’s one question that doesn’t go away:

What are you going to do when print goes away?

This isn’t a debate about “if.” That ship left port a decade ago. Paper volume has been declining steadily for years. Remote work accelerated it. Digital workflow tools buried the accelerator. And younger buyers coming into decision-making roles have never printed a map, a résumé, or a boarding pass. Some of them don’t even own a printer at home. It’s not that they don’t want a better copier. They don’t want a copier at all.

So what’s next?

Look Around, Not Back

If you’re still anchoring your business to the hope that print will rebound, or that your dealership can ride out another round of hardware refresh cycles, you’re not paying attention. The industry isn’t dying. It’s evolving. But the value proposition is shifting from print to presence.

For decades, copier dealers owned the front office. They were trusted partners in office infrastructure. First through hardware, then through service, then through workflow. The smartest dealers became MSPs, expanded into VoIP, layered in document management, even dabbled in security. They learned how to sell solutions instead of speeds and feeds.

That same instinct, the one that moved you from toner to tech, is what’s needed now.

Only this time, the endpoint isn’t a copier.

It’s a humanoid.

From Print Tech to Presence Tech

Walk into a hotel lobby in Seoul or Tokyo. You’ll find a humanoid robot greeting guests, delivering towels, offering directions. Visit a hospital in Houston. A robot rolls room to room with medication and vitals. Even office parks are piloting concierge bots that take visitor information, deliver badges, and escort guests.

These aren’t sci-fi novelties anymore. They’re service nodes. They’re workflow endpoints. And just like MFPs, they need installation, configuration, maintenance, training, and trust.

Now look at your team. Who else but a copier dealer knows how to sell, service, and support a physical device that interacts with people, moves through space, and connects to the network?

You’ve already built the infrastructure. You have a field force. You understand SLAs. You understand customer uptime. You understand how to turn a lease into a solution. You’re more ready for humanoids than you realize.

What Humanoid Sales Actually Look Like

Let’s get concrete.

You're not selling a C-3PO that brews coffee and writes poetry. You’re selling a compact, responsive machine that can:

• Greet customers in a lobby or waiting area

• Deliver toner, mail, or food within a facility

• Escort visitors to appointments

• Answer common questions or give instructions

• Perform basic inspection or diagnostic tasks

• Work in hospitality, education, medical, or retail settings

Every one of those applications is already happening. Companies like Agility Robotics, Figure, Apptronik, and Sanctuary are raising billions. Their robots are being tested in warehouses, factories, malls, and offices. Some are already being pitched to end users through robot-as-a-service models. Leasing, with service agreements, field support, and monthly billing.

Sound familiar?

The Copier Dealer’s Hidden Advantage

The copier dealer channel is sitting on one of the most underleveraged distribution networks in American tech. You have boots on the ground in every city. You know how to walk into a small business and uncover pain points. You know how to bundle hardware, software, service, and finance into a clean, signed contract.

Robotics manufacturers? Most of them don’t. They’re hardware-first. They sell into innovation departments, not the real world. They don’t know how to build a territory. They don’t have trusted service networks. They don’t understand the grind of local sales.

But you do.

You’ve been through every billing fight, every lease renewal, every toner emergency on a Sunday morning. That kind of relationship doesn’t come from a webinar or an online order form. It comes from years of being the person who shows up, fixes the problem, and makes the office run again.

Robots will need that kind of support. The question is, will they get it from you?

What You Can Do Today

This isn’t about abandoning your core business. It’s about expanding it before someone else closes the window. The first dealers to add robots to the showroom floor won’t be waiting for print to die. They’ll be the ones answering new RFPs, fielding inbound interest, and building recurring revenue around presence tech.

Start with these moves:

1. Talk to manufacturers. Reach out to robotics companies with field-ready devices, open APIs, and a need for channel support.

2. Build a pilot. Find one or two local clients willing to test humanoid delivery, reception, or guest interaction. Start small, learn fast.

3. Train your team. These aren’t just printers on legs. Train sales and service teams to think in motion, interaction, and automation.

4. Write robotic SLAs. Use what you already know about copier uptime to build support frameworks for mobile, connected machines.

5. Create visibility. Demo robots in your showroom. Make videos. Walk clients through real use cases.

6. Join the conversation. Get involved in nascent industry groups, think tanks, and consortiums exploring how humanoid robotics will be sold, leased, serviced, and scaled across local markets.

Final Question

Print won’t vanish overnight. But when the next generation of buyers walks your floor and sees another copier beside another copier, they won’t say it out loud. They’ll just wonder:

Why didn’t you see it coming?

And more importantly, what are you going to do when print goes away?

You Guessed It

We're making inroads into the robotics world, we're building relationships with the current leaders in humanoid manufacturing.

Do you want to come along?

Join us.  grwalters@grwalters.com