Ricoh 1998 Annual Report Download - page 5

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Once upon a time, you could label our office machines as peripherals. But our multifunctional
systems are central paper and data management tools.
Ricoh is now the No. 1 player in many markets around the world. That didn’t happen by accident.
We’ve come a long way in recent years because we realized from the mid-1980s that we needed to
go local—in sales, service, and in manufacturing where appropriate—to be global.
And in fiscal 1998, we finally captured top spot in digital monochrome copiers in Europe and
North America. We also ranked highly in our other business areas. They are real feathers in the
cap because we’ve also led the Japanese digital copier market since its inception.
Just as telling, 40.8% of our net sales were overseas. That’s a significant jump over fiscal 1994,
for example, when they were 25.7%. The international market will become even more important
to us in the years ahead.
We have accelerated localization throughout the 1990s because of the nature of our offerings.
Keeping our digital products and systems as simple as their analog predecessors means that we
must make larger investments of human and capital resources.
We now maintain five headquarters to coordinate our international sales and customer sup-
port—the Americas; Europe, Africa, and the Middle East; Asia and Oceania; China; and Japan.
Each region is managed autonomously and has genuine decision-making clout. We are extremely
proud of what our people overseas have achieved to date, and we will continue to
provide them with whatever they need to keep serving customers well.
H
IROSHI H AMADA (right), chairman, and
M ASAMITSU S AKURAI , president