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Making business cards at your shop?

dirttoo

dirttoo

New Member
I see most of the sign/decal shops around here offer business cards. What machine would you use to do that? I couldn't see doing them on anything I already have. (plotter, CJV or dye sub printer). Is this worth getting into? Thanks
 
petepaz

petepaz

New Member
we used to run them on our roland XC on 10mil pvc or reg vinyl and mount it to something rigid but now we run them on our LEJ uv machine and we can print on what ever we want.
 
Marlene

Marlene

New Member
we use an actual printer, meaning a print house for cards. they will sell wholesale to you and it is just one more way to offer a one stop place to get what they need. not sure about printing off from equipment made for making signs unless you are doing no card stock like lexan or magnetic. people use a desk top pritner for cards but they always look cheap and homemade
 
Pat Whatley

Pat Whatley

New Member
Coloradosigns said:
Don't market business cards. Unless you enjoy making 40 dollars a set...
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Exactly. We started off at $120 for a box of 1000 full color cards which justified the design time we'd spend on them. Didn't take long before people wanted to nit-pick them, and add 80 lines of copy, and 17 phone numbers, and 4 pictures and then started whining that VistaPrint would print them for $20.

Nope. Very, very selectively do business cards now. Usually if I'm doing them it's only for someone I'm doing a lot of other work for and I'll make a set without getting any input from them and just surprise them with the cards as a "thank you for your business" gift.

Also, you're gonna have a hard time printing them in house and beating the price a wholesale printer will give you. The last off I got from Zoo Printing was $4 for a box of 1000 full color cards.
 
HulkSmash

HulkSmash

New Member
Pat Whatley said:
Exactly. We started off at $120 for a box of 1000 full color cards which justified the design time we'd spend on them. Didn't take long before people wanted to nit-pick them, and add 80 lines of copy, and 17 phone numbers, and 4 pictures and then started whining that VistaPrint would print them for $20.

Nope. Very, very selectively do business cards now. Usually if I'm doing them it's only for someone I'm doing a lot of other work for and I'll make a set without getting any input from them and just surprise them with the cards as a "thank you for your business" gift.

Also, you're gonna have a hard time printing them in house and beating the price a wholesale printer will give you. The last off I got from Zoo Printing was $4 for a box of 1000 full color cards.
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We "offer" them.. but heck no i would never advertise them.. ever. Waste of our time.
 
TyrantDesigner

TyrantDesigner

Art! Hot and fresh.
I wholesale them ... half the time I include 1000 for them after people buy a logo, then pay for design time for both the business cards and post cards and possibly a website. I mean hell ... they just spent somewhere close to 600 bucks ... it's an incentive at that point.
 
dirttoo

dirttoo

New Member
Ok, What machine prints them? What cuts them so perfectly? How big is the card stock? I did some of the perforated ones years ago and they looked like crap.
 
S

Salmoneye

New Member
On offset printing press or duplicator. You will also need a way to make negatives and plates and a cutter. You could get set up for maybe 8K in used equipment but it takes a lot of skill and equipment to run these machines.
 
omgsideburns

omgsideburns

New Member
Send them out. Charge $99 for 1000 if the art is ready to go, otherwise tack on setup time.

If they balk at the price, tell them to go elsewhere.
 
Marlene

Marlene

New Member
Don't market business cards. Unless you enjoy making 40 dollars a set...​
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we sell well made cards on nice card stock, not cheap Vista print crap and not for $40 bucks either. we do sell them and it is a nice way to stay in contact with your customer as ours usually will need something else when they re-order the cards
 
SignManiac

SignManiac

New Member
Not that it matters, I just sold a thousand biz cards for $250.00 but they are nice cards. Customer insisted on a classy card. I was given the name of Silk Cards from a member on this site and their stuff is dynofractomite. I always add on $100.00 for my time even if I've designed the logo/sign already to any cards I sell to my customers. I have a nice portfolio of cards I've designed and once they see what I can do, they spend the money.

A recent order was a vista print convert who liked my stuff better even if it cost more.
 
Mosh

Mosh

New Member
Full color I go to gotprint.com something nicer AWT, they have loads of great stocks...but yeah the profit is in the setup so we don't push them too hard.

NO WAY you can print them yourself, unless that is ALL you want to do.
 
401Graphics

401Graphics

New Member
Mosh said:
Full color I go to gotprint.com something nicer AWT, they have loads of great stocks...but yeah the profit is in the setup so we don't push them too hard.

NO WAY you can print them yourself, unless that is ALL you want to do.
Click to expand...
+1
 
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