Do you bother to do clients printing anymore???

T

thomas

New Member
I speak to many many designers who do a lot of regular printing and always have, but then others that only do the odd bit here and there as many clients just want print ready files these days. Do you find this is true or do you still make a heathly profit from printing?? Is the profit worth getting involved?? Or do you build the printing in to your fee?? Intrested in your thoughts and practices??
 
I nearly always do the printing as well as the design mostly because I have a local printer who is good quality and extremely competitive but if somebody requests print-ready files then the design fee goes up a bit. I think offering the printing as well (at not stupidly inflated prices) allows you to say to the client "you don't have to worry about it, I'll organize it & have it sent to you"; one more thing off of their shoulders kinda thing.
 
I try to be one-stop-shop - but having owned a print firm a lot of my work is still print. As Sam says I also have a local printer (or three) excellent quality and competitve and I know where best to place any print I do have. I'd be on the breadline without it!
 
I tend to do mainly design & print but I'm not adverse to doing just design or just print. If it's just print someone comes to me for, the % I add on for my profit is bigger than if I were designing as well.
 
I'll happily recommend reliable, thoroughly vetted print suppliers but generally avoid associating myself with them on a formal basis, not wanting to take responsibility for other people's work. I don't take anything percentage-wise when I put work their way but do see the ability to make useful introductions as an added-value element in my overall offer.
 
We do quite a lot of printing through a few good trade printers we've used for years.
Personally speaking, I think it goes hand-in-hand with graphic design and quite a bit of our income comes from print.
In saying that, most of these are fairly low cost print jobs which means that if they go wrong, we aren't in too much poop :icon_wink:
The work that we do in-house (banners, posters, etc.) can be fairly expensive, but because we do them ourselves there's not so much to lose if something goes wrong.

If I could earn enough purely through design then I would possibly give up the print (sounds like an addiction) because no matter how careful you are, print's not an exact science and the customer can be fairly contrary and unreasonable on occasion and can turn a job down for the simplest thing.

At least design work is mostly a time based charge which won't usually cost too much to fix, unless it's because the artwork was wrong and the job got printed. Everybody makes mistakes. However, a mistake in a large print job can be a costly one to fix.

So yes, for the foreseeable future we still print our client's work. :thumb:
 
I arrange a fair amount of printing for clients who just like to pass everything to me and let me sort the whole job out for them. Naturally I add a small margin on to the print quote received to cover the time spent arranging and so on but I think many clients like to know everything is arranged.

Perhaps there are some who a little more clued up and willing to take the print-ready artwork and go off to sort out their own deals and I'm more than happy for them to do that.
 
I personally find that if you offer the whole package, even if it's rarely used, customers will take that on board and recognise that you're a diverse company; a one stop shop for their needs. It's been a tough learning curve but I've had customers honestly say to me that they'd rather go to a company that does everything rather than hop between them, which I didn't use to be. I design a variety of items especially gift ideas and I've got decent links with this place that does Calender Printing so if anything it's a good way to get your connections in the industry as well as increasing your profits a little bit.

Hope that's good enough advice! :icon_smile:
 
colourblind99 said:
I personally find that if you offer the whole package, even if it's rarely used, customers will take that on board and recognise that you're a diverse company; a one stop shop for their needs. It's been a tough learning curve but I've had customers honestly say to me that they'd rather go to a company that does everything rather than hop between them, which I didn't use to be. I design a variety of items especially gift ideas and I've got decent links with this place that does Calendar Printing so if anything it's a good way to get your connections in the industry as well as increasing your profits a little bit.

Hope that's good enough advice! :icon_smile:
Click to expand...

If anyone knows a good place for printing high quality books as well, I've got a friend in need!
 
Printing is main main source of profit along other services like web design and SEO. I think it is worth going into printing industry and offering people cheap and competitive rates while outsourcing your prints. You then charge the full amount for design and make a little margin on the top of printing as print partners always reduce prices for you if you order from them quite regularly.
 
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