01732 759725 20 adaptation of technology, particularly in print – bringing print and digitisation together, really, I think sometimes they are still a bit further apart than they should be. PITR: What has been your proudest moment of the past 10 years? GP: My proudest moment would be moving away from a hardware-focussed speeds and feeds approach to sales and building a software and professional services-first solution for the two biggest accounts we had. As an OEM, leading with software and professional services was a real graduation for us in the industry, and it transformed us from being a printer supplier to a true technology solutions provider. Also getting the finance department to recognise and separate out software and services revenue (a seven-figure sum!) for the first time was a great step, because it shifted the mentality in the whole organisation. PITR: Sum up the decade in three words. GP: Technology. Behaviour. Pivot. really significant role in every business, so it was a natural move for me to make. PITR: What was your first job? GP: I think my very first job must have been a paper boy. Do they even exist anymore? PITR: What has been the high point of the decade? GP: For me, personally, it has to be Manchester City winning the treble two years ago. PITR: And the low point? GP: Again, this is another personal moment. Losing both of my parents on the same day. PITR: What (or who) has had the greatest impact in the sector in the last 10 years? GP: COVID without a doubt. We can’t ignore the cultural and societal impact it has had globally on people’s behaviours in and out of work, and what it’s done to our industry in particular. There’s been a lot of good things – flexibility of working hours and working locations, but at the same time, it’s put an enormous focus on the print industry. I would say it has sharpened our focus on where value is, print vendors now need to meet people where they are. That’s one of the reasons I’m at Canon, the company has a strategy, a strength of vision and clarity of position, we are in a great place to exploit opportunity in this new world. PITR: If you could change one thing about the last decade, what would it be? GP: Obviously, we can’t change what COVID did to the world, but I would say, business has been faced with a number of existential threats over the years, if you think about Y2K or digital transformation, and now AI. I think if I could change something, I’d like to see a more universal PrintIT Reseller (PITR): You’ve been working in the print and IT industry for more than ten years. What led you to enter the sector? Gareth Pearce (GP): After graduating, I moved to the US. In my mid-20s, I met some people who were about to start a dot.com. We had to set it up from scratch and we sank all our money into it. It was quite radical at the time. That was my first foray into technology and it was a great experience. Then venture capital pulled the funding right across what they call Silicon Alley in New York to Silicon Valley in California. So, I moved back to the UK in 2005 and started doing some consulting for Ricoh, a few years later I joined Konica Minolta and more recently I worked at PaperCut, before joining Canon earlier this year. I had a technology background from my dot.com days, and the commerciality of technology and how it was changing people’s lives, that’s sort of in your bones. In the early 2000s, print played a Gareth Pearce, Head of Channel Sales, Canon shares his experiences over the past decade, what he’s learned, and the highs and the lows of our unique and challenging industry A decade in print INTERVIEW Gareth Pearce
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