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Economical Posters

V

vinylobsessed

New Member
Hey guys,

Picked up a new client and they will be ordering posters often, looking at 3-6 24x36 inch posters per week.. Typically i have in the past for a client who sends artwork print ready i have been charging $30 each using FiberMark Endura Light 150 paper however they are looking to get the cost down to about 1/2 of that which I can't do using this paper, i picked up another roll of economical stuff from a local supplier who said it was for eco solvent printing and the ink ran, tried both sides good thing it was a cheap sample roll. So my question is does anyone do smaller runs of posters, and if you do what do you use.. Something thinner for sticking into the 24x36 snap frames, not need huge life spans as they are changed out often.

Thanks in advance,
 
V

vinylobsessed

New Member
its the thickness, I took out the old print and its on like a glossy 80 pound flyer paper.. really thing stuff.. clearly it was done via off set printing from there head office, however they don't want to run the head office ads, they want them customized to there location which is fine. but the space is tight and its something i would drop off the prints on the friday and there staff will change them out through the week last thing i need is them scratching the print or worse peeling the backing and trying to stick it on.. lol
 
Z SIGNS

Z SIGNS

New Member
Can't help you finding cheap stuff.

Don't understand people trying to figure out how to provide customers with prints for $2.50 a s/f
Can't be much profit in that.

I would focus my effort in the opposite direction.

Instead of consuming time trying to figure out how to do it cheap

I would be trying to find out where I can sell these for double the $30 not cut it in half.
 
ddarlak

ddarlak

Go Bills!
Why???

why are you spinning your wheels for dirt cheap profit... the idea is to make money, not save money for your client...
 
V

vinylobsessed

New Member
ddarlak said:
Why???

why are you spinning your wheels for dirt cheap profit... the idea is to make money, not save money for your client...
Click to expand...

Sorry I make on others, these posters i was seeing as a loss leader for me. I do there storefront maintenance actually just quoting out changing the current sign over to LED lighting, I also do there monthly window displays and the road sign display every 3 months. it was just something i was trying to keep in house and help them out with and figured if i a line on some cheaper materials i would keep them where they want to be one that, and also save me in the long run on all the coloring murals i do for my own kids. lol

Was just a thought, Is all.
 
C

CrAkD

New Member
how do you guys even charge $30 for a poster? I charge $20 and still get complaints. I use trisolv 3686 its like $80 for 165 feet. costs about $5 per 24x36 factoring in ink and paper.
 
A

AF

New Member
Just tell them the truth. You have the price as low as possible. Then outline how they hope to save less than 100 dollars a week for what could be a disaster. Shouldn't be hard to keep them from making that mistake.
 
bob

bob

It's better to have two hands than one glove.
If the cost of the media is anything but a trivial factor in your pricing then you're working orders of magnitude too cheap. As noted previously, a gross of $2.50/ft^2 isn't worth powering up your printer. It matters not a dollop of smoked rhinoceros snot that the client says it wants other stuff, don't work at a loss. Ever. At $2.50/ft^2 you might be covering media and ink but it's certain the you're not even amortizing your equipment let alone working nothing.

Each and every job should be discrete (as in not related to any other job), and profitable. Always.
 
P

player

New Member
Farm them out to Staples and make nothing... You won't use up your materials and ink, plus you won't be wearing out your printer.

Better yet get a job at Staples. Then you will get paid. :smile:
 
P

player

New Member
player said:
How much does Staples charge?

Here you go:
http://www.staples.com/sbd/content/copyandprint/posters.html


1 $39.99 $24.99
2 $83.99 $51.99
3 $125.99 $77.99
4 $167.99 $103.99
5 $209.99 $129.99
6 $251.99 $155.99
7 $293.99 $182.49
8 $335.99 $208.49
9 $377.99 $234.49
10 $419.99 $260.49
25 $1,049.99 $650.99
50 $2,099.99 $1,301.99
100 $4,199.99 $2,603.99
Click to expand...

I just noticed that as the volume goes up, the price doesn't go down.

Regular price:
1=$39.99
10=$37.80
100=$42.00

Discount price:
1= $24.99
10= $26.05
100= $26.04
 
dypinc

dypinc

New Member
I quote these kind of posters occasionally usually 50 to 500 volume, usually with pretty aggressive pricing but there is a limit to how far I will go. I figure let someone else lose money.

I all most never see these jobs. Makes you wonder if some failing business with a government grant (yours and my tax dollars) isn't low balling this stuff. We had some jacka$$es on here bragging about their government grants before.
 
Gino

Gino

Premium Subscriber
I don't quite understand the negativity on this one. When we're doing paper posters, that size, our costs are well below 50 cents. We get around $22. a pop and everyone's happy. We did an order recently of about 540 pcs @ 35" × 45" for I think it was $38.ea. that was after a 10% discount for volume. Took not quite a week, they had 8 posters per store and we were paid the following Thursday.
 
P

player

New Member
I think it's because the OP said he wants to make them for half of what he would normally charge, which would make them sell at $15 each on 3 per week. Then he said he would make them at a loss.
 
N

NateF

New Member
We struggled with posters also - it seemed like most customers needed them immediately and they didn't want to spend enough to make it worth our time. In the end, we found a few things that have worked well for us.

First, we have a regular print shop in addition to our wide-format and sign work. We've been able to steer some of these customers to digitally-printed 12x18 or 13x19 posters, which we can print quickly and affordable. It's good money for us and a good value for them. For those who still need larger posters...

Then we split our poster pricing into two tiers. The first (higher) price is for those customers who need their posters quickly. The exact price we charge doesn't matter - you'll have to feel out your market. But it's comparable to what they'll pay at Staples, but on a thicker paper. As we take the order for these posters, we are always sure to mention our more affordable poster printing option:

The second (lower) price is quoted with an average turnaround of 5 business days. This allows us to pile up several days' worth of poster orders and then run them all at once. We run more efficiently and we can usually squeeze the job in on a slower day. It's easy for the customer to understand the value when we explain the time it takes to set up the machine and run the job. We have a few customer who will order the cheap option and then call the next day to see if it's done yet. That's okay - even if they're done we let them sit a couple days lol! If files need to be resized, we're sure to charge for that, too.

If you're going to drop the price for your customer, you should ask them for something in return. For instance - "I can print these posters for $xx IF you can plan ahead so we can print a month's worth of posters at once" You don't want to drop the price "just because" since they might expect you to do the same on everything else they order.

FWIW, we're using a cheap poster paper from Fellers. Even with ink, the cost is very low.
 
Gino

Gino

Premium Subscriber
:help Now what happened ?? Why are someone true colors gone ?? This is totally deceiving now.
 
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