The Secret to Saving Money on Printing

Are you the person who buys printing for your company or organization? If so, we want to talk to you! Whether you are ordering business stationery, functional forms and documents, or marketing materials and sales collateral, we’d like to help you get the most from your printing budget. So keep reading to learn our secret that will help you save money on printing. Printing = manufacturing Printing is a custom manufacturing process. When we fill your order, we aren’t taking something off the shelf and shipping it to you. We start from scratch each time, with paper (either blank or preprinted for business card shells or newsletter templates), ink or toner, and a digital file containing the images to be printed (either provided by you or retrieved from our secure file storage). All printing jobs have at least two manufacturing steps: prepress and printing. The prepress step uses a digital file (usually a PDF) to create a raster image or bit map – a grid of x and y coordinates with instructions on which coordinates to illuminate to create monochrome or color values. Printing is the output and reproduction process, which may be done on an offset press or a digital printer. Depending on the requirements of the job, it may also require finishing steps such as trimming, folding, stitching, drilling, binding and assembly. Jobs being printed for the first time may need design and preflight. Like all custom manufacturing jobs, printing requires clear, unambiguous specifications to guide the manufacturing process. These include the type of paper, the ink color(s), the finished size of the printed piece, and whether finishing work is required. For each new printing project, we write the initial specifications based on the choices you make. To eliminate errors that might be caused by rewriting specifications each time the job reprints, we use a computerized print production management system to store the specifications. Custom manufacturing takes time, and haste makes waste. Recognizing this, we have developed production standards that tell us how much time to allow for each step in the manufacturing process. Our production standards aren’t arbitrary; rather, they were developed to allow our production team enough time to read and understand the job specifications, decide the best equipment to use for the job, and operate the equipment in a manner that produces quality results while ensuring operator safety. Can we speed things up when necessary? Can we pull rabbits out of hats and perform minor miracles? Of course. But that’s exceptional work, not our production standard. Actively managing your inventory of business stationery and forms is a great way to avoid the stress of last minute ordering and to stay within your printing budget. • Estimate a 3-6 months supply. We recommend you order enough to last between three and six months. More than a six-month supply could mean that you are tying up money in inventory and, in some cases, running the risk that the printed piece may become obsolete. Less than a three-month supply and you are foregoing cost savings that result from a longer print run. An easy way to estimate is to ask yourself how many of this item you use in a specific interval (per day, per week, per month). • When you order an item, ask to have it included in our reorder reminder system. We’ll check your order history, predict when you might be running low, and notify you when it is time to reorder. • When reordering, ask us to price additional quantities. Our computerized estimating and pricing system makes it easy to recall a job from history and to produce a current quotation using multiple quantities. Then you can evaluate the trade off between storing an item and the cost savings of a longer print run. Printing = partnership You need the products and services we provide, and we need the income from providing those products and services. This is the basis for a mutually beneficial relationship where both of us do our respective parts to ensure success. We learned long ago that being dependable is the most valuable thing we can offer you. Our goal is to deliver your printing on time, as ordered, and at the agreed-upon price. But we need your help to do this. • Tell us the real due date. We will have your job done at the agreed-upon time – period. That means you don’t have to pad the due date because we might be late. If you prefer to have all printed materials in-hand a week before the meeting at which they will be used, we understand and will have the job ready. If you intend to pick up the job on your way to the meeting, we also understand. Either way, we won’t let you down. • Respect the price we give you for the job. We don’t pad our prices. If you find a lower price somewhere else, it is because the specifications changed (even though you may not know it) or the other printer is more efficient at manufacturing that particular item. Can we shave the price a bit to meet your budget? Probably, especially if you are a regular customer. Will you get us to lower our price by announcing you can buy it for half as much somewhere else? Not likely. Instead, we’ll congratulate you on finding a better price for that item and suggest you take the deal. • Provide your inputs on time. Remember our production standards? They are the basis for developing the production timeline. When you are providing inputs – a PDF file, text, photographs, illustrations, mailing list, postage deposit – we will give you an interim due date for each input. The interim due date is when we must receive the input for the job to stay on schedule and be ready on time. If others in your company are responsible for some of the inputs, we suggest you share the interim due date so you won’t be late. You be on time and we’ll be on time. • Provide inputs in industry-standard format. Microsoft Word is an industry standard for a report, but not for a brochure or a mailing list. Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop are industry standards for drawings and illustration or color correction and photograph manipulation but not for page layout. Some programs can make print- ready PDFs; others cannot. A special word about design, file repair and desktop printing: our job is to make you look good in print, and we take this seriously. We want all your printed materials to represent you well and for your branding to be consistent. That is why we may suggest that you let us design your new printed piece, or redesign an older one that needs refreshing. We may suggest redrawing a pixelated logo or creating a digital file of a document that currently exists only as hard copy. We may also offer to print something that you have previously printed yourself on desktop equipment. We make these suggestions as part of our job as print professionals. We will always provide a cost estimate and will not proceed with work you have not authorized. Most of the time our suggestions are based on a short-term or one-time expense that we can demonstrate will save money in the long run. The secret to saving money on printing So what is the secret to saving money on printing? Simply this: find a printing company whose equipment and capabilities match your needs and develop a relationship based on mutual responsibility and trust. Learn about printing as a manufacturing process so you can provide inputs and evaluate suggestions. Be a key liaison between your company and the printing company and call Kimberly or Dan at 303.320.4855 to learn just why we are that printing company.