Roland, together with Kensta Group and Graphica, celebrated the opening of a new Roland demo centre in Nairobi on 13 April 2016, where the full Roland range is on display to inspire the imaginations of customers in Kenya and East Africa.
The new demo centre is located at: Discovery House, block D, unit D 1 (A), Sameer Business Park, Mombasa Road, Nairobi.
‘The opening of this centre has been six years in the making. Before this, sales people were selling equipment to customers from brochures, now they have the full range of equipment to demonstrate. Our investment in the equipment for this demo centre is over R5 million,’ said Bob Glenister, CEO, Telpro, distributor of Roland.
Priyesh Shah, CEO of Kensta Group, said, ‘People are welcome to try their hand at the different technologies showcased. You can print on many different kind of substrates, your only limit is your imagination. A huge investment has been made in order to grow the print market, to enhance an existing digital print offering. Over twenty different types of printers in different sizes, formats and speeds are on display. This is a knowledge centre, a training centre and a demo centre. One of the inspirations of this centre is to train engineers. There will be no charge for people to be inspired in this centre. We want trained technicians close to all the Roland machines.’
Kensta Group has been in the industry for 20 years and operates in five countries in East Africa and the demo centre is the first of its kind for the group. Kensta Group understands the challenges in the Kenyan region, which is why they bring world-class equipment like Roland, trained engineers and genuine spares and ink to East Africa.
Glenister said, ‘Roland has a goal to build more entrepreneurs. Many customers that start with a small vinyl cutter can make enough money each month to invest in more equipment. There are Kensta and Graphica customers who have up to eight printers that started with one small vinyl cutter. The Roland model is service focused. It is critical that customers get the service they need and that their print machines are working. Roland machines are also a good investment – machines that are 10 years old still operate at 80% capacity. Customers should choose Roland because of its industry experience, and Telpro, which looks after 47 countries in Africa, has been around for 29 years.’
Tatsunori Hoshino General Manager of Roland Japan said they are very excited about the first demo centre in Eastern Africa. He congratulated and thanked Kensta and Graphica and hopes that Discovery House inspires Kenyans.
Photos by Moné Ehlers, Telpro Marketing for Roland DG 2016.
