This Ricoh Review includes some history of the Ricoh company. Learn more about some of Ricoh's early products and some of the success the company saw as well as some of the hard times. Ricoh continues to be a leading camera and business product producer.

Kiyoshi Ichimura, the son of a poor farmer, established the Riken Kankoshi Co, Ltd. in Tokyo, Japan on February 6, 1936. The company produced optical devices and equipment and changed its name two years later to Riken Optical Co. One of the first things the company did was produce positive sensitive paper which is used to develop film. The company quickly took the lead of Japan’s sensitive paper market. The name change was brought about after the company began to focus on producing cameras, as well; they soon introduced the Olympic 4 camera.

During World War II, Riken Optical Co. suffered the same fate as similar companies. The government restricted camera manufacture for consumers and companies had to produce goods for the military. This led to a few innovations, such as computer designed lenses, that were marketed to the public after the war. In 1950 Riken introduced another camera, the Ricohflex III.

FIve years later the company entered the copier market with the Ricopy 101. This model was followed by a handful of other business machines and the establishment of the company’s first overseas subsidiary, Ricoh Industries U.S.A. Inc., in 1962. The United States subsidiary initially imported cameras, but soon began marketing copiers when it realized the sales potential. After their success in the U.S., the name of the company was officially changed to Ricoh Company Ltd. In 1965, Ricoh entered the emerging field of office computers with the debut of their data-processing system, the Ricoh Typer Standard.

By 1970, the annual sales of Ricoh Industries U.S.A., Inc. had risen to 1.3 million dollars and was renamed Ricoh of America, Inc. A second U.S. subsidiary was established as well, called Ricoh Electronics Co., Ltd., to assemble copier supplies and parts. With the establishment of Ricoh Electronics Co., Ltd., Ricoh became the first Japanese company to produce copiers in the United States. Ricoh made other important advancements during the 1970s, such as the world’s first high speed digital facsimile machine, the Rifax 600S. The company also introduced their first plain paper copier, the Ricopy DT1200, in 1975.

In spite of these successes, Ricoh still had limited visibility as a brand in the United States as it had made an agreement to sell copy machines under the labels of Savin and Pitney Bowes, two American-owned companies. In the early 1980s, Ricoh announced its intention to market copiers under its own name. By 1984, the company had a seven percent share of the market in the United States. The company continued to grown through the 1980s, making further forays into the office automation market in particular. Ricoh also developed minicomputers in cooperation with AT&T.

By the mid-80s, Ricoh had expanded the company to other foreign countries, including Canada and France. The company consolidated its subsidiaries in the United States in 1987. This move was to create a somewhat independent Ricoh Company in North America, followed by another in Europe when subsidiaries there were consolidated. In 1988, Ricoh released a lightweight, compact 8mm camcorder in the U.S. and Japan. That same year, the company opened Ricoh Software Research in Santa Clara, California. This subsidiary was to develop custom software for existing and future three-dimensional computer-aided design and database markets.

Ricoh’s growth slowed down during the Japanese recession of the early 1990s. This forced the company to implement major cost-cutting initiatives, including halting work on several new projects. The company moved into the digital camera market in 1995 with the Ricoh DC-1, which recorded still and moving images as well as sound. In 1996 Ricoh helped develop the CD-RW platform which allowed users to read, write, and re-write computer data on compact discs. Ricoh continued to produce computer technology and items like scanners through the late 90s which helped it weather the Asian economic troubles at the time. Ricoh restructured again and today is still a global leader in business technology. Ricoh currently produces three types of digital cameras: standard, professional, and business/outdoor, which includes the Caplio 500 G model that was ruggedly built to handle the environment of a construction job site, for example.

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