5 Common Mistakes People Make in Choosing Printers
During the
past fifteen years, I have operated on-demand printing presses and large color
electrostatic printers. I have seen a wide range of print jobs from clients
that had well prepared files to clients that needed a little help to make their
files print ready.
In this
article I will not talk about client files instead I will focus on how people
often choose their print shops.
The five most common mistakes I found people make
with their print shops are:
1. People
pick a printer based only on price.
You really do get only what you pay for.
You really do get only what you pay for.
Good
printers cost more because they give you added value. They give you file
pre-flight, consistent output, they have better quality control, they check
proofs against final pages, they usually have more skillful workers and more.
2. People
think all printers are the same.
Print shops use different equipment, they have different people running the equipment, they use different materials and they have different levels of expertise.
Print shops use different equipment, they have different people running the equipment, they use different materials and they have different levels of expertise.
Good print
shops use the same suppliers, they stock the paper they prefer to use, and they
train their operators.
3. People
think that all a printer needs is to have the right equipment.
If a printer has good equipment but is inexperienced in running the equipment, the output quality can’t be consistent. It could even be bad.
If a printer has good equipment but is inexperienced in running the equipment, the output quality can’t be consistent. It could even be bad.
Guess what,
equipment from the same manufacturer can produce different output.
I worked at
a company that had two same model Heidelberg presses. We ran into a problem
matching color on a prior print job.
We
discovered the two printers produced colors slightly different. The printers were
calibrated, the room environment was the same, the materials were the same and
the operator was the same. We discovered like people printers have their own
personality.
Our solution
was to note which device a job was run on and if the client ran the same job
later we ran that new job on the same device. The color matched and everyone
was happy. An inexperienced shop might never have figured out the problem on-time,
passing on a bad print job and losing the client.
4. People
always shop around for three or more bids on a job.
If a good printer bids on jobs that he never gets, he will stop bidding or bid really high.
If a good printer bids on jobs that he never gets, he will stop bidding or bid really high.
If
you have a tight deadline, being loyal to a print shop can sometimes be the
difference between getting the job done and missing a deadline.
5. People
don’t give the print shop enough time.
The printing process takes time. To do the job right you can’t cut corners.
The printing process takes time. To do the job right you can’t cut corners.
If the
materials are present and the press is free it still takes a fixed amount of time
to print the job and a fixed amount of time to finish the job.
If you do
try to rush the process, quality will suffer.
Under promise over deliver, get Cliff when you need help.
Contact Cliff at cliff@cliffping.com web site: cliffping.com
No comments:
Post a Comment