Need advice for a top notch home printer - starting a home business.

[danni]

Hello. I am starting an online home business where I am printing our scrap books for brides. Each book is about 60 pages - mostly black and white but about 10 pages are needed for color photos. I plan on selling approximately approximately 200 a month.

I am starting off in my home. I would like to buy a nice printer so I can do them myself at home. Do you think this is possible? Can you recommend a great printer that will produce quality black and white print and color photos? I obviously can't afford a 20K printer, but don't want problems or to invest in a cheap model that will produce a poor quality journal scrap book.

Any help or advice would be deeply appreciated. This is my first business venture and don't want to make expensive mistakes.

Thank you!!!

 

[jotterpinky]

Find a used Xerox Docucolor 240,250,260,242,252 printer. These were a good printer for their time and put out excellent quality for the money. If you're serious about getting good quality prints make sure you can get it put on service or you'll find yourself sacrificing quality for the sake of pinching a few pennies.

As a possibly less expensive alternative take a look at the desktop OKI 9650 series printers. These have been rebranded by several manufacturers and put out decent quality, I've never owned one but it seems as though consumables might be more than the Docucolor.

 

[bky]

Up to 12,000 photo-quality pages per month is beyond what most home-based printers can handle. The service that will require is going to be considerable. If you've got some volume now, try contacting your local copier rep (Ikon, RJ Young) and see if they have suggestions. They often have some good used machines.

If it were me just starting out, I'd throw cheap inkjets at the job and consider them disposable. Or use a web2print service and concentrate on adding value (content), not manufacturing.

 

[einstein999]

If it were me just starting out, I'd throw cheap inkjets at the job and consider them disposable. Or use a web2print service and concentrate on adding value (content), not manufacturing.

I agree, others make great books already online and in store (if you live in a major metro, digital lab will have some great options) Also, I would spend the money on software that lets you make the book look great. Not alot of people are going to buy a technically high quality book if you made it in Microsoft Word, even if it was on a 50foot long top of the line $500,000 production off set printer. try ExpressDigital , they are the leader in design, their software is designed to work directly with photoshop for edits within your workflow. I had a small book printed at my local digital lab for me to have as an example for my client (using demo shots from the lab) and it was easy a pie to get business by having just that example. Do you have a website? I would spend money there too. Production of your own books would be last on my list. The largest photographer in town in my area makes a ton of money (has a loft downtown, a crazy nice office with staffed coffee bar, has a waiting list to get work done,....) and he prints NOTHING. He does what he does best, photography. (its crazy high margin anyway, and saving on printing is not were the margin is at)

 

[rich apollo]

Hello. I am starting an online home business where I am printing our scrap books for brides. Each book is about 60 pages - mostly black and white but about 10 pages are needed for color photos. I plan on selling approximately approximately 200 a month.

I am starting off in my home. I would like to buy a nice printer so I can do them myself at home. Do you think this is possible?

No. I don't believe this will work off of any device you'd set up in your home. You'll do better contracting with a printer that has digital print capabilities. They can set you up with a web to print portal and your clients never need to know that anyone else is involved. This will give you more binding and size options at a superior price point for your clients. You'll also sleep better without that device going "chug-chug-chug" all night in the next room.