Pricing for Stickers, how?

[Robert Lambie]

missed this…

you should know what you charge for a square metre of full colour printed photo on regular digital vinyl. just divide the stickers up to see how many you will get on a metre square.
we do not price per sticker… we basically say its £50 a square metre… you can have whatever size sticker you want, but based on the metre square that will determine how many you will get for your £50. so the smaller the sticker the more stickers they get…

stickers generally come in a couple of colours only so you don’t use much ink at all. so pricing as a full colour digital print should cover your cutting time. so in effect, your maximizing your profit on outputting a square metre of printed vinyl without any extra overheads.

however, lets say the stickers ARE full colour and the contour cutting is more intricate than a simple rectangle or oval. well here you charge slightly more for your same square metre of stickers. still no more over heads but again, maximising profit.

if the customer screws their face up on why, give them the options, but of they insist on a short run of a metre square of stickers at photo quality then they need to pay for the luxury.

explain to the customer there is a digitising setup for the contour cut.

printing will have to take longer as the print quality will be higher.

also that because its full colour, the machine will have to be set to incur a cutting delay to allow for contour cutting.

contour cut delay is easy set on your machine, you simply tell it to print, waite 5 minutes, then proceed to contour cut. doing it this way prevents knife drag and snagging in the soft fresh printed vinyl.

also remember that IF you have a heavy saturated sticker you really should leave 1mm or better 2mm outwith the printed sticker to prevent curling of the sticker due to solvent effecting the vinyl.

hope this helps…

[Martin Oxenham]

Rob What would you charge then if they were laminated and then cut ?

[Robert Lambie]

ill be honest martin, i dont think we have ever did laminated stickers as such, but we do do contour cut graphics…. but large and normally for vehicles, buses etc

again though, like i said with the stickers… you will know what you charge for printing a square metre of vinyl, and you will have an idea of same laminated. so your starting point should be the same as a full colour printed square metre with lamination.
however, there IS more labour and risk involved in contour cutting small laminated stickers because alignment is obviously an issue here.
so its worth while clearing this with the customer, what is and isnt acceptable to them. if they are being very fussy then you should reflect this in your pricing. but as a general guide, maybe the following will help.

i.e.
Printed square metre = £50
lamination of same, 30% markup = £15
shaped contour cutting, 10% markup = £5

3" sticker
approximate amount per square metre = 130
price per sticker = 30p
price per sticker laminated = 54p

dependent on customer i would try and sell-up on this and probably look for 60p per sticker if laminated. so you would be making £78 for your square metre of laminated countour cut stickers.

unlike digital prints of pictures, a big benefit of stickers is also that you can nest the stickers within the width of your machine. but still giving the same metre sqaure coverage, but zero waste. if you see what i mean?