Blueprints Pricing

[PricelineNegotiator]

Hey,

We are thinking about getting into wide format printing such as blueprints and are wondering how much you guys price your blueprints for. How much for an Arch D, C, E on 20# Bond, 24# Bond and maybe some matte or gloss card stock would also be nice to know. B&W and Color. Apparently a lot of people price per the square foot or by the sheet. Thanks in advance for the information!

 

[chevalier]

Wayyyyyyyy back when I priced copies by linear inch color or linear inch b&w. There were price breaks for big orders. We had one of the first ones with a scan function and I forget what we charged for that but it was a per sheet charge.

 

[davarino]

"What the market will bear" is always the guide.

If you have competitors, get their pricing by hook or by crook. Surely you have customers (or potential customers in mind) who would share this information with you, if only by saying, "I'd NEVER have to pay that much!"

And do a search on the web for things like "blueprint price list". You can learn a lot that way.

But first of all, I'd check to see how much profitable volume there is in your neighborhood.

In my city, there are a LOAD of wide-format shops and the margins are truly pitiful in most cases... in my city I would advise against going into wide format unless there's a special customer or special reason.

The same as in all equipment purchases and business "course corrections": measure everything you can before you put any money down. (And avoid new equipment. In three years it will be the same as any used equipment you look at now. But it will have cost 2 or 3 times as much to buy.)

 

[Keith]

You can also just call the competition from your cell phone. Don't use our technical language, it's a dead give-away so make sure you use layman's terms and maybe even try sounding a little dumb. Anyway, that's how I arrived at my pricing. I don't like printing them and the only reason I do is to keep the customers that I am already printing other stuff for. I already had the wide format, just needed to buy a few rolls of 24lb which is cheap.