Your Opinion? Trade Print or In House?

[goforit]

Ive recently got into printing and curious if it is time to look at doing it in house vs a trade printer.

My best sellers are:
Business Cards
Postcard Marketing
Letterheads
Envelopes

I am using a trade printer that does gang run printing on offset presses and I primarily sell in bulk of 1,000-5,000 pieces and average between 50-75 orders a day "nothing much".

I know nothing about the actual printing presses / digital printing however I do have the following expirence that relates to the industry itself.

CMYK Color Process
Design Skills "web+print"
Computers and Printer Repair Certification
2 Years experience as a binder, folder, saddle stitching, shrink wrapping and odd jobs for a local print company

I would need to hire on staff to maintain the presses and print jobs and unsure if I could get work done cheaper if it is done in house vs a trade printer. I get rates slightly better than 4over to give you an idea.

Ive been suggested to get an HP Indigo however curious if I should continue as a broker or do printing in house.

Looking forward to what you all have to say.

Thanks!

 

[Coolio]

If it were me I would stay the broker path. No need to tie up cash in overhead and cost savings really wouldn't be that great if you are starting out from scratch. It will take a long time to see any ROI. As long as you have a good working relationship with the trade printer and your service, quality and price needs are being met, don't upset the apple cart.

 

[goforit]

Thanks for your input, when should one start looking at doing it in house vs a trade printer "price" between all resources such as employees, printers, ink, paper etc?

 

[ondemandbindery]

If you have a relationship with a Printer and you are happy with your margins then stick to the current game plan. There is still way too much Printing capacity out there and everytime someone else opens up it does that much more damage to the bottom line profits of Printing. That is the reality of it. But if you have the guts I would say you need a shifts worth of work and the right work at that. Not trying to be discouraging just being honest. How about taking your current clients and trying to find out if there is some other service you can provide to them so you can stray away from the pack? Fulfilment and Distribution maybe? Try to think of something that is more of a vertical market and a necessary fixed cost to your customers.

Good luck,
John Weaver

 

[goforit]

Thanks for your input, im very aware of the competition, printing is about 1/5 of services we offer and not our main aspect / focus however more as a service upsell.

 

[kparker]

The margins are huge if you invest in a small "digital production unit" which most would call a copier as long as your quantities are fairly small (2500 or less ). The turn-around is great since it's in-house but the quality for some items may suffer. I recommend a Xerox 242 to get started (don't worry, I'm not a broker or salesman). Send everything else to the trade printers...

 

[raminmd]

Well, we are not a huge printer either but this is the way I look at it. If you average 50-75 jobs and average 1k - 5k pieces per job, that translates to a lot of volume. Since I don't know your exact product mixes, for the sake of doing some calculations, I am going to assume you average 55 postcard jobs a day and each job is 2,000 pieces. Unless I am looking at this wrong, you probably do a minimum of 110,000 postcards a day. Assuming you get a digital press and print them 4 up, this translates to around 27,500 sheets a day or 55,000 clicks a day. I know you are probably not printing postcards all day long but those volumes are great. If I were in your position, I would absolutely look into moving at least some of that volume in house. No matter, where you print, at those volumes, if you hire a good operator, you will make more money in house. The one caveat is the pricing and margins. If you are operating on wafer thin margins, it might not make sense to do it. If you have decent margins, it very well would make sense. You really have to put the numbers down on a spreadsheet and then decide which way you want to go.

 

[OriginalScuddy]

Another option..

Another option..

You may want to find a local "independent" dealer that will work with you.

I can always find you low meter used equipment - very low cost, then you can find wholesale suppliers for toner and consumables. Keep the dealer on a "non per click" service contract, and see how you do.

You can do all this for less then 8K, and still hire a decent graphic artist @ 12 an hour.

I make 40% on all in house products, except for my high volume clients. When i outsource the high quality UV coatings and such, i seem to make about the same, but I have a delay between orders and delivery.

Its all apples to oranges. If you live in a town that has a 4OVER production facility, that means you can pickup your own prints. I get stuck paying shipping, which can offset the profit margins.

things to stay away from, 3 year or longer contracts. Any color per click contracts that are more then 3 cents per click, including toner - but it has to be for all size pages.

PM if you want to take the plunge into self printing.

regards,