newbie advice

[doz]

Hi, I’d be really grateful if anyone on this forum can give me advice.
The Background. I run an art gallery and have occasionally done design work for other businesses which have been outsourced to printers. I have decided to incorporate printing into the gallery activities, and figure the most effective entry point at this time would be digital.
I intend to do gallery material for sale to the public - art books (we have two at concept stage already) , picture notepads and diaries etc
For outside clients we intend to do brochures and other printed material. Our early activity will be channelled towards brochures for the art community.
We also intend to do photobooks for weddings, schools etc

I was at the recent IPEX and thought the Xerox 700 would be ideal.
Here’s where the difficulty starts. We’re based in Africa and it appears the press manufacturers don’t have a lease arrangement here – like the pay per click available in most countries. It’s basically you buy the machine and, I suspect, good luck to you. I have spoken with a Minolta rep but I haven’t gotten specifics yet about their maintenance and pricing. I’m still waiting to hear back from Xerox.
Here are my questions
1)How do I get a clear fix on the cost per page of these machines? The only way I can determine clearly if I can compete using digital presses is if I know how much it costs for each page I print.
2) How crucial is maintenance for these presses. Sounds dumb, I suppose. Maintenance is always important. I’m trying to look at worst case scenarios. If maintenance from the manufacturer is poor, can I get away with using the press for a few years without hassle?
3) What are the challenges to expect?
4)How risky is it to buy used? In a perfect world I’d rather buy used than pay the 50,000 pounds or so it costs to get a 700
5) Which is better - Minolta or Xerox?
Thanks for bothering to wade through this
Doz

 

[JustPrint!]

I think your first goal is to find someone who can service your machine. Maintenance is CRUCIAL. If you can't get maintenance then forget it.

 

[msaeger]

You need to know how many pages you will print a month.

 

[GusG]

I'm in Africa too and started with Konica but I was treated absolutely appalingly by the local agent, went to Xerox and that was infinitely worse. I don't really want to go into all the sordid details here but at the very least none understood the demands of a production environment and neither did they want to learn, make a quick buck today and forget about tomorrow was the name of the game.

It is absolutely crucial that you choose according to which machine you can get serviced. I'm now running some old Xerox DC12s and have a DC2060 that I'm trying to get back up and running after the local Xerox agent took me for a ride on that. We have some independent techs who are doing a decent job and that's why I'm running the Xerox machines, also because the market here is in love with the glossy fuser oil finish they give, I can't get that from Konica.

Which country are you in?

 

[doz]

I'm in Lagos, Nigeria. Thanks for the advice. I'll have to talk to the reps here to see what sort of support they have. Somehow I doubt there'll be much by way of support available. I'm also thinking of investigating alternative support sources.
I'll see how that goes.

 

[Mark]

Without good service a digital machine is useless

 

[Mark H]

Without good service a digital machine is useless

I couldn't give much better advice myself. Service is at least 50% of the issue when selecting a print engine. If you don't trust the vendor's service techs and supply chain then you have a very expensive boat anchor sitting on your production floor.

Mark H

 

[JasonFF]

My advice would be to start small as a way of hedging your bet. Even still, you must have a service agreement, and know that you will be able to get at the very least next day service until it is fixed.

It wouldn't take too many instances of not being able to print brochures or flyers for a specific event before your print customers never wanted to talk to you again.

Once you have an agreement for service that you believe will work, I would still start small to make it easier to abort should the service arangement turn out to be a failure. I would far rather have a smaller machine running 14-20 hours a day before moving to anything larger. If there isn't enough work to do 14 hours a day of print (including maintenence and other time costs associated directly with the printer) then I'm not sure I'd want to get into it.

Good luck and let us know what you decide.

 

[hleiva]

WHY i didn't found this forum before.

I Bought the cheaper machine Konica minolta c500 and the worst provider with the worst service.

Well The next time i'm going to check The service first.