When Clicks Die and Robots Walk In

Remember when paper was king and every copier was a cash machine? Yeah. That party’s over. And now, it’s not just about fewer prints. It’s about dealers asking themselves what’s left when the pages vanish.

I just wrapped a full read of Celeste Dame’s latest deep-dive: Beyond the Page: Reinventing the Copier Channel in a Less-Print World. And let me tell you, this isn’t your average vendor-padded puff piece or PR-massaged forecast. This thing is loaded with actual numbers, actual insights, and one brutal truth: the clicks are drying up—and they’re not coming back.

We’re talking a nearly 50% drop in U.S. paper usage since 2011. Copier/MFP unit sales? Down 20%. Post-COVID? Even worse. Hybrid work hit print volumes like a freight train, and they’re not bouncing back. Service contracts are thinning out, meter reads are tanking, and even the diehard lease-renewal crowd is pushing back.

But here’s the kicker. This report isn’t mourning the death of the copier. It’s lighting a torch under what comes next. And surprisingly? That next thing has legs. Wheels. LiDAR. 

A name tag.

Robots. Actual business-use, dealer-supported, field-serviceable machines that deliver, greet, clean, scan, and get billed like your average A3. Celeste breaks it down clean: robotics isn’t a fad, it’s the logical next stop on the dealership evolution track.

The players making this shift possible? A little outfit called CricketsUS. Yeah, I thought it was a band too. Turns out, it’s a channel-centric consortium that’s bringing vetted robotic vendors into the dealer world without stomping on what’s left of your MPS base. No channel conflict. No sci-fi vaporware. Just a clear path to new recurring revenue on top of your existing infrastructure.

You place a bot, you service it, maybe you lease it. Same sales cycle. Different deliverable.

Now, if you’re a Death of the Copier reader, none of this should shock you. We’ve been talking about the fade-out of page volume since fax machines were still getting plugged in. But what Celeste has done here is stack the receipts. IDC, AF&PA, ENX data, actual dealer quotes—it’s all in there. And she doesn’t sell you some happy ending. She lays out what’s dying, what’s next, and what it’ll take to survive the shift.

The bottom line? The five-year refresh model is broken. A3 isn’t sacred. Your clients aren’t nostalgic about your floorplans. But they might want a robot that runs front desk duty and never takes PTO. They might need one that shuttles documents from HR to finance without getting lost or sick. That’s what Crickets is lining up.

So yeah, the copier’s not just dying. It’s evolving. And if you squint, you’ll see something new walking in from the wings. It doesn’t use toner, but it might just save your margins.

You can read the full report, or you can keep pitching volume commitments in a paperless world. Your call. Email me and I will send to you.

gwalters@cricketus.com

— Greg