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Setting Up to Printing Flyers, Business Cards etc
We are looking to bring printing of business cards and flyers upto a quantity of 500 in house and would welcome advice on what sort of equipment we need and what is the best make / model.
I have done a first assesment and belive an SRA3 laser printer would be the most cost effective, it seems most favour the Oki models as being able to handle thicker media.
Also some form of guliotine, i do not even know how to spell that one let alone what would be a good or bad model but the wut width must be 450 + if using SRA3.
I have also seen things like business card cutters, are these any good ?
Also advice on media suppliers would be most helpful.
Many thanks
Russell.
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22 Replies
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a lot of pitfalls give me a ring and i will fill you in as they say
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Why?
Outsource, people wanting a 100 quickly in general don’t want to pay.
Give Quinns of Belfast a go.
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it’s so cheap to outsource print these days that there’s no money in it except for the desperate / clueless customer….anf they are normally skinflints!
I’m presently buying 5000 (quality) double sided glossy flyers in for £63 inc VAT & delivery…on my doorstep 4-5 days from order…and 500 satin 400gsm satin cards for £30.
Fire them over my artwork / drop it off as they are local and Bob’s your uncle…
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Reasonable quality single sided, one colour A5s are £10 a 1000 down our way. That includes the layout, but in fairness the layouts are not good so I tend to forward one. How much time can you expect someone to spend when the whole jobs a tenner.
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quote DavidRogers:it’s so cheap to outsource print these days that there’s no money in it except for the desperate / clueless customer….anf they are normally skinflints!I’m presently buying 5000 (quality) double sided glossy flyers in for £63 inc VAT & delivery…on my doorstep 4-5 days from order…and 500 satin 400gsm satin cards for £30.
Fire them over my artwork / drop it off as they are local and Bob’s your uncle…
what do you consider "quality"? i get 5000 300g Semi-gloss Artboard Double Sided flyers for about £165 (for me, not so much the customers), is that waaaay over the odds then?
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Hugh
you must be paying retail prices then!Peter
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Going to agree with the other guys here. There are endless amounts of printers that will be more than happy to strike up a deal with you. It is an extremely competitive business now and small printers are finding it tough. My advice – outsource it.
Nick
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I would say outsource to a local printer – we have received more work in return than we have actually subbed to them win win 😀
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quote Hugh Potter:quote DavidRogers:it’s so cheap to outsource print these days that there’s no money in it except for the desperate / clueless customer….anf they are normally skinflints!
I’m presently buying 5000 (quality) double sided glossy flyers in for £63 inc VAT & delivery…on my doorstep 4-5 days from order…and 500 satin 400gsm satin cards for £30.
Fire them over my artwork / drop it off as they are local and Bob’s your uncle…
what do you consider “quality”? i get 5000 300g Semi-gloss Artboard Double Sided flyers for about £165 (for me, not so much the customers), is that waaaay over the odds then?
I’d be £120 for 5000 A5 on 300gsm. Inc VAT & DEL
I’m buying A5 flyers at 130gsm and business cards on 400gsm artboard…do you not think flyers on 300gsm is overkill? i know at A6 it’s much more appealing and it could be said that "the customer appreciates the added quality", but do they really. Flyers are for all intent and purpose a mass market / disposable tool with typically a 0.5% hit rate.
Our business itself normally does around 1 million pieces of print per year (flyers, cards, menus that we supply artwork for, have printed & then hand deliver to the client)…and to be honets, the print & paper quality is around the best out there without going for ‘super premium paper’….that nobody wants to pay for. We do tend to avoid single colour, single sided as it’s just a bit too ‘student / budget’ and the cost savings are negligible at these volumes.
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David, please tell us where your getting:
5000 (quality) double sided glossy flyers in for £63 inc VAT & delivery
i’ll be very interested in that price if its litho and not digital.Cheers John
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quote DavidRogers:quote Hugh Potter:quote DavidRogers:it’s so cheap to outsource print these days that there’s no money in it except for the desperate / clueless customer….anf they are normally skinflints!
I’m presently buying 5000 (quality) double sided glossy flyers in for £63 inc VAT & delivery…on my doorstep 4-5 days from order…and 500 satin 400gsm satin cards for £30.
Fire them over my artwork / drop it off as they are local and Bob’s your uncle…
what do you consider “quality”? i get 5000 300g Semi-gloss Artboard Double Sided flyers for about £165 (for me, not so much the customers), is that waaaay over the odds then?
I’d be £120 for 5000 A5 on 300gsm. Inc VAT & DEL
I’m buying A5 flyers at 130gsm and business cards on 400gsm artboard…do you not think flyers on 300gsm is overkill? i know at A6 it’s much more appealing and it could be said that “the customer appreciates the added quality”, but do they really. Flyers are for all intent and purpose a mass market / disposable tool with typically a 0.5% hit rate.
Our business itself normally does around 1 million pieces of print per year (flyers, cards, menus that we supply artwork for, have printed & then hand deliver to the client)…and to be honets, the print & paper quality is around the best out there without going for ‘super premium paper’….that nobody wants to pay for. We do tend to avoid single colour, single sided as it’s just a bit too ‘student / budget’ and the cost savings are negligible at these volumes.
thank you David, guess i need to look farther afield!
re quality, customers might not care much but when i did / do my own, i like the potential customer to see and feel the quality, if they throw them then fine, they’re ten a penny (or more!) but, if they stick em on a notice board, a shop puts one in the window, or even in a drawer, i know that it’s not gonna end up a dog eared screwed up piece of tat whichm will be thrown!
i tend to do walkabouts and hand people the flyers to peruse, not often i thrown them anonymously through peoples doors!
quote Peter Normington:Hugh
you must be paying retail prices then!Peter
that’s possible, to be honest, it’s more a ‘service’ to existing customers, i charge for the artwork (which is usually 90% just shuffling existing art files about to fit) but do the print at cost.
most of my customers who have print are happy to pay for the quality bt, assuming i can get it cheaper for the same quality, i should!
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didn’t think there was vat on flyers
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Hi Chris, Just copied and pasted prices that David quoted – shouldn’t be vat on flyers unless you have charged for extra’s such as design or delivery.
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Right enough lads – no VAT on the flyers (advertising media) – only the business cars, letterheads etc.
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Actually depends on the weight of stock if there is or isn’t VAT.
Above a certain weight and VAT should be added.Also flat A3 is VAT rated but fold to A4 and it’s not.
Also if details are to be filled in like a form and returned.
It’s not totally clear cut ( excuse the pun ) details can be found by doing a search on ‘VAT on printed matter’.
As for the 5K A5 Double sided – I also can buy in @ £64 delivered.
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Thanks for all your replys, I now know that I pay about the right price for my leaflets etc, however I am not looking for a new supplier, i have 2 already 1 local and 1 not so local.
We want to look at the possability of printing the smaller volumes in house not so much to make more money altough we should see increase if we can match our suppliers set up, but we want the control of the timing of this work as most is very quick turn around and we as a company waste hours and lots of fuel picking up small quantitys from the suppliers.
Also a lot of our customers seem to belive they have a better deal with work odne in house.
What i want to do first is get an idea of the equipment needed, i belive initially a printer and a gulitine also need to know Media supplier then once i have this i can work out some aprox printing costs and decide if to go further.
I am after feedback on people who have bought this type of equipment how good it perfomred and how reliable as i say i am told the Oki printers are good but does anyone know of a better make that is happy with thicker media ?
I thankyou all again for your inputs
Kind regards
Russell.
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quote John Gregson:David, please tell us where your getting:
5000 (quality) double sided glossy flyers in for £63 inc VAT & delivery
i’ll be very interested in that price if its litho and not digital.Cheers John
Where on earth are you getting them done at this price?
We all would love to know, lol
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I do alot of flyers for businesses. I can get them done for about £59 inc delivery. I would use my local supplier but they just cant compete and in the current economic climate the amount in difference does matter.
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What company do you use for your leaflets?
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I’m the same, got someone local for small quick runs and someone not so local for larger orders…. but the larger orders I need to wait about 7-10 days for and pay roughly the same as David said there
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I’d like to know if anyone can answer the posters original question? lol
Actually I would be extremely interested in this also, and Russell, what did you end up doing in the end?
I get lots of enquiries too and i would like to keep them in house also, even if it means only making a small amount, some people don’t like to shop around when it comes to a few hundred postcards, they just want them yesterday.
I could do 300 A6 flyers all day long for £30-50 a pop my customers trust me and want to keep it all in one place
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My dad owns a xerox DC-250 with finishing unit. There alone is at minimum a couple of grand. Maintenance contract so when things do play up it’s a phone call and a couple of hours, or maximum a day before the engineers arrive, covers all consumables too.
Printing flyers, business cards, letterheads, we’ve got a guillotine, again a reasonable one will set you back a couple of grand there too. Then there’s the stock of papers. We carry about 4 different types, and it’s like it or lump it, unless they’re going to pay for it.
Single sided is fantastic, but printing double sided digitally is a pain, as things never line up perfectly. A professional design, with ample bleed, and empty space around the edges it isn’t so much of a problem.
We’ve had ours in since November, and not only does it allow us to print the jobs we used to outsource, it’s increased profit, but allows us to do jobs we didn’t use to do because of outsourcing.
People who want invitations printing, it’s not a problem now, it’s an hour in front on the computer, print and chop and some cash in the bank! We’ve 1000 a4 leaflets, again it was cheaper to run them digitally (2 up on A3), than outsource them. Job was done in a day… and customers do come back because of that.
We cannot match the quality of the business cards we get printed Litho. 400gsm card, 4/4 matt laminated, our laminate peels off after we’ve chopped them.
I think if like us you are outsourcing digital work, receiving plenty of requests for short run print jobs, then give it some serious thought… We did have a digital machine, but that was owned by another company that got sold, and was relocated. So we knew from previous experience that it was viable.
From speaking with my dad… it’s not making a ‘small amount’… pm me and I will give you a prime example with some figures.
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