What's New, Copycat?

The biggest copycats in U.S. business are the manufacturers of copying machines, which are proliferating faster than paperwork in the nation's offices.

Since Xerox brought out the first electrostatic copier in 1960, more than 40 companies have elbowed into the increasingly profitable but competitive business, whose sales of $600 million are rising 20% annually. Into the field last week came another major manufacturer: Los Angeles' huge Litton Industries (fiscal 1965 sales: $916 million). As the first of what will ultimately become a whole family of copiers, Litton introduced the desktop Roy fax 7, which spins out seven dry copies a minute, reproduces documents as varied as 51-in. invoices and 362-ft. seismographic tapes. Introducing a tantalizing gimmick, Litton plans to install the machines for nothing, make its money by selling zinc oxide-coated paper for them at 4-c- per letter-size sheet.

Follow the Leader. Quicker, cheaper, lighter, more versatile copiers--that is what all the manufacturers are rushing out. At last week's annual Business Equipment Exposition in Manhattan's massive Coliseum, Dennison Manufacturing Co. showed off a new coin-operated copier for use in banks, libraries or other places where people will pay for reproductions (probable price per letter-size copy: 100). Long Island's Viewlex displayed a 20-lb. copier that retails for $249.50. Such competitors as A. B. Dick, Copease, Bell & Ho well's Ditto subsidiary and Addressograph's Bruning Division introduced new models that transpose almost all colors and shadings--whose lines in the past have been difficult for the machines to reproduce--into clear black-and-white copies.

Everyone aims to duplicate the success of Xerox, whose sales since 1960 have multiplied from $40 million to almost $400 million, and are expanding 50% yearly. Many competitors pay tribute to Xerox--in dollars. Xerox collects an enviable but undisclosed sum in royalties from such companies as Apeco, SCM and Bruning, which lease and sell their own machines and market the zinc oxide-coated paper that Xerox has patented. Meanwhile, Xerox has discarded the coated-paper means of copying, now uses plain paper. While competitors argue that their copies are cheaper--about 310 each v. Xerox's 50 --Xerox remains more popular because its plain paper is more convenient, does not have the slippery feel of the coated paper.

Almost Like Typewriters. Though Xerox is sometimes considered vulnerable because it has only one product, the future seems promising for almost everyone in the industry. The copying machines will turn out 10 billion or more copies in 300,000 U.S. offices this year; by 1970, they will be producing 25 billion copies, and the industry's sales will top $1 billion. SCM President Emerson Mead predicts that desktop copiers will eventually become so compact and inexpensive that many a secretary will have one right next to her typewriter. His confidence in the future market for such time-savers is one reason that SCM has dropped out of the carbon-paper business.

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