A4 and A5 leaflet printing. What type of machine and supplier of equipment?

[Chris Wool]

this subject has come up quite a bit before and is a bit of a minefield

you really need a a3+ laser colour printer + guillotine and a click payment deal but that will only do to 250 gsm to do cards 350 -400 gsm stock different story again

we have the kit but only really much use if the customer wants up to 1000 off after that cheaper to buy it in. try and find out what the local printers are charging then have a look at the likes of hello print on the net.. don’t forget to charge your design time

[Karen White]

Thank you for the reply Chris.

What is a “click payment deal?”

What type of suppliers sell these machines?

I can see that there are lots of online suppliers doing it very cheap. I am just thinking about trying to keep the customer from sourcing locally and I lose business to them for the sake of leaflets. If i can source online and time is on my side, then I may buy in for bulk.

[David Hammond]

Pay per click – you pay a set price per sheet the machine feeds, so you need a SRA3 machine to allow you to gang up jobs to allow you to trim down, increasing yield.

You’ll then need a guillotine, and you may soon find yourself needing a collector, laminator, booklet maker, creasing machine… of and umpteen choices of paper!

We have most of the gear, and buy in most print we sell, quality is better, price is better, and it can be quite time consuming depending on then job. Start buying it in, and see how it goes before committing to machines.

[Neil Davey]

Why not just sub the printing out and apply a mark-up, there are very good online trade printers out there. I know you won’t make a fortune on that work but it keeps the customer coming through your door and not the competition. Saying that, some of the work I’ve seen print shops doing round here I wouldn’t call them competitors!! 🙂

[David Hammond]

We have inhouse facilities, and can make more money outsourcing it, when you include delivery, time finishing etc, plus it’s a much better quality print than we get out of our machine, but for the reasons above it’s not worth upgrading the machine.

That said online can’t produce same day jobs for customers.

[Karen White]

Thank you for the helpful replies guys!

Typically, what sort of price would it cost me for one of these machines?

I do understand that things like a guillotine and other things would be required. But machine wise, a bog-standard decent machine, what should I be looking at paying?

Also, what sort of cost “to me” would I be looking at to print x1000 A5 leaflets full colour, single sided?

Thank you in advance for any further help. ❤

[Colin Crabb]

With all machines, click rate will depend on the machine bought.

For example we bought our Versant 80 instead of leasing, was but this was £14k, but we do 40,000 clicks per month and have a lower click rate than our other machines.

You can buy a second user Xerox C60 for £5000, but you do have media weight of 300gsm limitation.

Our you could lease a Oki Pro machine from £80 per month (and this would handle 350gsm media)

Just be aware of a few things with pay-per-click:

Make sure its for SRA3 sheets size (this applies really to the lower cost ‘office’ machines)

Check there is no monthly minimum click

Check call out response time

Example of 1000 colour A5 S/S leaflets: 4 up on SRA3 = 250 clicks @ 3.2p = £8 + media price + finishing costs.

• This reply was modified 3 years, 6 months ago by  Colin Crabb.

[David Hammond]

As a comparison:

Our Xerox 550, High capacity feeder, and finishing unit + fiery rip, cost us about £5000 and was a “refurbished” unit – It wasn’t it came out of a law firm, who had upgraded.

Our click rate is ~6-7p, minimum quarterly commitment is 7000 colour impressions. Our cost is then £25.50 + finishing, compared to R1P who will deliver them tomorrow for £27.74.

Not knocking our digital machine, but it’s not new, and the quality from the newer machines is far better than what we can produce. If you’re doing the volume like Colin, it’s a no brainer.

[Karen White]

Thanks for all the replies guys, this is very helpful.

Sorry, but I have more questions which I will reply again here on shortly. 😇