Another Printing Disasters—and How to Avoid Them story… third in a series of tips on how to save money on printing.
Tip #3: ask for series pricing
Photo by Darren Hester
Customers who share with their printer their plans to print a project again within a few months’ time usually save money on that entire printing series.
Why? Because every company appreciates repeat business, and printers are no exception. Most businesses know that it costs less to retain an existing customer than to land a new one.
So, for example, if you print 10,000 magazines each quarter in 2010 and award the printing for the entire series to one printer, that printer is likely to give you a great price.
Disaster avoidance tips for series pricing
- You may be tempted to have your printer purchase all of the paper for the entire series at once to save more money. However, this is not always wise, given how quickly a company’s quantity needs can change. Once you buy that paper, you own it whether you use it or not. Owning cartons of unused paper is a big pain! (Where will you store it? Under your bed?)
- Re-bid your print series once a year. Getting bids from more than one printer will give you a negotiating advantage, even if you hope to stick with the same printer.
- Ask the printer to alert you you when a paper price increase is on the horizon so that you can lock in the lower paper price for the next issue.
- Remember, th most expensive jobs are one-off, hair-on-fire ones handed to the printer at the last minute. This is especially true for printing that needs to be completed in three days flat. It never fails that these are the jobs that contain errors that require a re-do scramble for which you have allowed no time!
Planning ahead saves both money and aggravation, while increasing the odds that your printed products will be error-free.
2 comments
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February 27, 2010 at 9:03 am
Jim Munro
This is really good advice but I would ad just one thing.
Please be truthful with your printer. We have all heard the story before. The one that goes something like, “Give me a really great price because I’m going to need a lot more of these….”
Printers are professionals, tell us what you need and what you are trying to accomplish and we will help you get there.
February 27, 2010 at 10:22 am
naniprints
Hi Jim, Thank you for weighing in. I absolutely agree with you! This kind of series pricing is NOT a given, and much more possible with a vendor with whom you have a strong working relationship and a positive history.
As I tell my students, you can only get away with lying to a printer ONCE, and then it will be your tough luck the next time you need to throw yourself on his mercy. If you have burned the vendor in the past, he’s likely to say, “Too bad for you, Bucko!”