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what would you price this at?
I have to quote for 1000 x clear stickers 300mm x 200mm basic corporate logo and black text, digitally printed to go right onto the sides of vehicles.
I found this hard to quote for, basically a 50m roll of clear vinyl at 137cm wide would do the job, thrown in inks and I reckon my cadet can do this cost for about £500.
The sticker will be used on vehicles this got me thinking if someone asked for vehicle graphics I’m sure I would have priced a fair bit higher.
Im thinking of around £2-2.50 per sticker, in effect someone will have their vans branded for £5 per van, doesn’t sound right eh?
would appreciate feedback re pricing here, i don’t want to take the pi55 but equally I cant help thinking I might be underpricing this?
cheers
graeme -
36 Replies
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Would have thought it would be cheaper and easier to get a quote for screenprinting these and add a mark up on, say 100% 😕
It will also free your machine for higher mark up work, say a one off van 😕
Dave
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Have you tried digitally printing onto clear vinyl. I think you will find the inks are translucent and it will not work unless you can print white with your cadet.
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if the vans are white printing onto clear should be ok. not the most vibrant but does work.
as for the price… FAR TOO CHEAP MATE…
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Yeah. Too cheap.
Also, if they are going to be on the vehicles for any length of time I would laminate them.
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robert, I know you do this kind of work, I couldnt help think its too cheap but the mark up is already marked up 5x if £2.50 so still a huge profit for a job that is pretty straight forward
yes, going onto white vehicles. Showed the a sample which they are delighted with.
Sigsurfer, I’ve done these on my own van and the quality is still great after 1 year. This was a reason i bought my cadet for such jobs.
What ballpark figure you would do these for rob? no worries if you cant say 🙂
cheers
graeme -
Graeme,
The prints might have been alright on your van, and I have to say that I am constantly amazed by the durability of prints done on our Mimaki, but………
On your own van, or on a one off local customer’s vehicle, if it goes wrong you can always take it back in and re-do it with no great harm done. However, a thousand of them is a different matter, especially if the customer insists that you drive around the country replacing them, at your expense. The cost of getting it wrong is too high
I would laminate and sell them at £4.80 each. That’s our standard price for print, laminate and cut at £80 per square metre.
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update, the "client" has just called to say they have another price of £1050 (vat included!!!) = 83p plus vat per sticker
jeez, and I thought £2.50 was cheap. She thinks they have made a mistake and she will call me tomorrow after she speaks to her boss, I want the work but ffs 83p per sticker !!!!!!!!!!
This means this company will have there vans branded x 2 for £1.66!!!!!!!!!!!
As I said there is still £500 profit in this for someone so I suppose there will be folk out there doing this.
ah well!
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Hi All,
If its just 1 colour i’d get them screenprinted.300mm x 200mm stickers on clear probably cost you just over 20p per each sticker + screen + delivery + vat on qty of 1000.
Cheers John
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quote John Gregson:Hi All,
If its just 1 colour i’d get them screenprinted.300mm x 200mm stickers on clear probably cost you just over 20p per each sticker + screen + delivery + vat on qty of 1000.
Cheers John
are you sure john? that sounds less than the clear clear vinyl alone.
10 per metre @610 £2 per m ?
or am I completley wrong?
Peter
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it may sound cheap but after all you are competing against a screenprinter,
to print on an gerber edge, 1 colour on clear they would stand you approx 28p each,
that still leaves about £600 for your time and wear on print head ( all in all less than a days work )if you remember that you will probably be doing something else whilst it is printing it leave a fairly profitable day
For 1 man if every day was a profitable you would be happy.
Pricing is a minefield but sometime a quick job like that is worth it
this is only my 2 cents.
usually like John said we try to get £80sq/m supplied or £125 applied for prints but this is not always possible.the prices above are based on printing single colours on an edge,
£1050 inc vat works out at £14.89 sq/m. i dont know the running cost of you machine but for a 35% print it should be approx £2.85sq /m on a 3-5 year vinyl -
quote Ian Johnston:it may sound cheap but after all you are competing against a screenprinter,
to print on an gerber edge, 1 colour on clear they would stand you approx 28p each,
that still leaves about £600 for your time and wear on print head ( all in all less than a days work )if you remember that you will probably be doing something else whilst it is printing it leave a fairly profitable day
For 1 man if every day was a profitable you would be happy.
Pricing is a minefield but sometime a quick job like that is worth it
this is only my 2 cents.
usually like John said we try to get £80sq/m supplied or £125 applied for prints but this is not always possible.the prices above are based on printing single colours on an edge,
£1050 inc vat works out at £14.89 sq/m. i dont know the running cost of you machine but for a 35% print it should be approx £2.85sq /m on a 3-5 year vinylNot sure where these figures are coming from. an edge one, colour would do 4.5 pre linear metre, allowing for cutting waste. if the vinyl is £1 a meter, and the foil about the same so £2 per mtre materials / 4.5 = 45p each so to make a profit you would need to charge at least £2.oo per decal
The advantage with the edge though, no need to laminate. ?
I woudnt say that the customer is branding his vehicles with two small stickers, at this size they are not much bigger than bumper stickers..
Peter
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avery 600 sprokected 67p/m
Duracoat black 64p/m
allow a 10mm per sticker of vinyl for wastage,works out at 28p if your for 300mm x 200mm sticker bare cost of materials
this isn’t allowing for labour or wear and tear,
but still a tidy earner for 1 day -
Edge costs would be about £176 for the black foils (gerber) and £136 for a monomeric calendered vinyl (mactac 8300), so about 31.2 pence each in material costs.
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great stuff guys…..a healthy discussion.
I’m running a cadet plus 54" as someone asked by the way.
cheers
graeme -
graeme
are we looking at Full colour? the edge would probably do the job better and faster for one colour and a tint or two, but full colour forget it,
Ian/geoz
It just goes to show, for a thousand stickers A penny on each adds a tenner to the job, 5p £50 so it is a competetive market, the buyer will always look at the bottom line.
Peter
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had another look and i had my sizes wrong in my head, for some reason i was thinking you were talking 24inch by 18inch!!! i know i know… how? 😳
anyway, that said, i still would say too cheap. as a standard price i work it out at £3.30 each. however, like john has said i would advise laminating them. which would of course increase the cost. fair enough if you are only printing black onto clear or something like that, then you can save here and there…
unless they have a fleet of white vans i would question them on why they want it onto clear? customers sometimes just don’t get the bit about "we don’t print the white bits" :lol1:having just priced this job it has me questioning pricing of printing again… as a rule of thumb i charge a 4inch cut vinyl letter at £1.10 and here i am offering a digital printing on top of an area of vinyl much larger for £3.30 🙄 🙄
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Print & Cut on my Resolve £2.18 each. Set and forget.
Peter
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As an exercise:
On this job my Edge trade price would be exactly £1000 and retail would be £1500 (50% markup).
On the Grenadier trade would be 1800 and retail 2700 (unlaminated) and 2400 & 3600 laminated.
Vinyl cut (depending on complexity) would be a minimum of 2400.
Rob, as you say, we charge more for cut vinyl than for digital prints – doesn’t make sense does it?
Regards,
George Z.
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some more info
each sticker only has approx 10-15% coverage, of that 10% is black text and a small mainly blue logo so hardly any ink should be used.
Good thing is I gave her a sample wthin an hour of her requesting the quote so they were very impressed, also its based less than 2 minutes away.
I was also up front with her when I mentioned this was a hard one to price. Therefore having re-visited this and given it more thought I’m sure I can drop her a line tomorrow. The fact I have approx 60m of clear which is gathering dust in stock also makes this more appealing.
I will explain the laminated and unlamited routes.
Based on unlaminated I can still clear near £500-600 for a no brainer job ie: set it up (which took me 2 mins) rip and print (2 mins) the let the cadet print away.
Supply them on the roll and get it out the door.. what do you reckon?
cheers
graeme -
On a cadet?
If you’re not going to laminate it forget the job as uniform black carts just scratch off if you walk past them, thermal is best for this job, we wont print anything that involves black for outdoor use (unless with lamination) as the solvent black is useless, if you aint going to laminate I wouldn’t do it, it will come back and haunt you, I promise.
Supply them on the roll unlaminated? the black will scratch off throughout the roll with the abrasion from the backing paper!
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quote geoz:Rob, as you say, we charge more for cut vinyl than for digital prints – doesn’t make sense does it?
It makes sense to me George.
Print involves a lot less labour than cutting, and labour is my biggest overhead.
That’s why, since we bought our printer, we now print a lot of jobs that we used to cut.
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quote derek longhaven:On a cadet?
If you’re not going to laminate it forget the job as uniform black carts just scratch off if you walk past them, thermal is best for this job, we wont print anything that involves black for outdoor use (unless with lamination) as the solvent black is useless, if you aint going to laminate I wouldn’t do it, it will come back and haunt you, I promise.Supply them on the roll unlaminated? the black will scratch off with the abrasion!
i didnt know that…will have to test that for myself 😀
nik
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derek we do allot of stuff unlamented and dont have anything close to that problem. doesn’t make sense to me mate… not saying you arent getting the problem, just cant see how its your inks.
contradicting myself time again… a few months back we were printing something and i was freaking out because when i was trimming up multiple prints i kept scratching the ink from the media as i slid my straight edge gently over it. i remember saying this is hopeless, either activasol inks have been weakened in some way or we have to give these a couple of hours to dry better. they already had a couple of hours by this time. anyway, since then i cant say i have ever noticed this happening again and we have our machine nearly 3 years now. im using grenadier but same inks as you…
george, i think it comes back down to how printing has already been undervalued by desperate or inexperienced sign makers mate.
here we are left to make a living from it while they are out trying their hand at another trade… 🙄 -
Robert,
Exactly my way of thinking.John,
That’s right, but does not account for the fact that the printer costs way more than the plotter, still… -
john,
I agree with robert, I have found that by leaving the print to "gas" (i think this is the right term) in a heated environment for anything between 12-24 hours then the durability really helps and have carried out various tests on this, maybe depends on the material. FYI pretty much use orocal products exclusively from europoint. For much larger stickers say 2ft x 3ft then yes I would have my concerns but for 20cm x 30cm I cant see this being a major issue.
will be explaining all the pro’s & cons to the client so they know.
cheers
graeme -
derek do you have either a cadet or grenadier? I only ask as it would be good to know if you are talking from experience or linking this to a similar machine you have?
would be good to know how you can back this up mate?
cheers
graeme -
quote geoz:That’s right, but does not account for the fact that the printer costs way more than the plotter, still…
You’re absolutely right George, the cost of the printer needs to be taken into account, but they aren’t that expensive in terms of the work they can pump out.
A narrow JV3 costs somewhere around £7,000 and, even if written off over a single year, is about half the gross pay of one employee. And that’s not counting ancilliary employment costs like NHI contributions, holiday pay, sick pay, admin etc, etc, etc. Those additional costs could easily more than cover the cost of all the ink the printer consumes.
I’d rather have a printer than an employee. Much more cost effective. 😀
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We read this thread in amazement! Oh that we could command such prices!
We sell [& make money on] 200 x 300 4 colour prints 2000 off at £1460.00 + v.a.t. ex works Peterhead.
The trick is they are screenprinted.
(mod-edit)
If we could get the sort of pricing being discussed here Bill and I would be in big bonus land
😀 😀 -
Hi All,
Peter asked was my estimate too cheap @ just over 20p each for screen printed stickers 1 colour.1 packet – 100 sheets of 1000mm x 700mm value clear perm vinyl @ £50
10 out of each sheet makes them 5p each for the vinyl.Ink/thinners @ 2p per print
Screen set up @ £20.00 – £25.00
1 – 2 hours graftSell them at 24p each. Profit £170.00
Cheers John
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just an update, the client wants to use me for the job. 1000 clear stickers @ 89p each. They know the pros and cons of lamination but are happy to go unlaminated as these are temporary.
This has been a great disussion though guys and has certainly given a cross section of prices when looking at screenprinting vs machine printing.
All in all this is still a nice revenue earner with at least £500-600 profit and its a new client too and it means the machine is working away for a fair few days when not much else is on the go.
again thanks to all.
cheers
graeme -
Graeme, glad to hear that they still want to use you for the work, just goes to show that not everyone buys on price alone and with it being a new customer there may be other work to follow once you have done this. Will you be able to send the job to print and come back some time latter to a completed job or will you have to babysit the printer.
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i will initially run 50 at a time and monitor them, don’t trust the machine enough to run 1000 in one go..no chance, no real need to either.
I only like to run a print and cut job to a max of says 2 metres. I didnt buy the take unit which was an additional £2k im sure..cash was tight at the time!
As you say, still good profit and could lead to more work, they are only along the road also which makes it even better.
thanks
graeme -
quote smedia:I didnt buy the take unit which was an additional £2k im sure..cash was tight at the time!
nearly 3 years we have had our machine, i dont think we have used our take up roll system even once! 🙄
just make sure you have a good spill out area and you will be fine.
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quote Robert Lambie:nearly 3 years we have had our machine, i dont think we have used our take up roll system even once!
It’s funny how we all work in different ways. We use our take-up roll all the time and couldn’t manage without it.
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quote John Childs:quote Robert Lambie:nearly 3 years we have had our machine, i dont think we have used our take up roll system even once!It’s funny how we all work in different ways. We use our take-up roll all the time and couldn’t manage without it.
Same here – every job! Got 12 rolls of banner running now roll to roll couldn’t manage without it.
Just bought a HP5500 and used the take up on that every day since it was installed too.
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we also use ours other wise we would have to walk all over the work 🙄 not got much room 🙄
Lynn
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