Below is a recent enquiry that we received today, one of many similar over the past 12 months…

Dear Sir/Madam

I am Rev Richard and I would like to order some flyers, details below:

FULL COLOUR ONE SIDE
135GSM GLOSS
PAPER A5 (148X210mm)

Please provide a quote on 100,000 copies, can you also get back to me with your method of payment so that we can proceed with this order, thank you.

Hope to hear from you soon.

Best Regards

Rev Richard

Don’t know what the scam is or how it works but if I remember rightly the leaflets/flyers are to be dispatched to Africa in the end. Save yourself some time working out a quote and delete the e-mail.

EDIT: Just received another

Hello

I am Reverend Paul and I would like to know if you can print a flyer 8.5″ x 11″ on a 80 Gloss stock.

What I need on the item is (GIVE A HAND TO THE NEEDY), the background should be in yellow and the writing black.

Let me know the total cost of 60,000 copies and 80,000 copies and also the form of payment you accept.

Please advise

Reverend Paul Johnson

One of our print resellers contacted us as they had sourced a cheaper supplier of A6 Flyers, 5000 x A6 Flyers for £60, £20 cheaper than us. Can you match or beat this they asked? The answer was no, unfortunately we cannot match/beat every single price/offer out there, all we can do is be consistently competitive.

The print reseller in question regularly placed orders with us, however, we received no orders from them for over 3 weeks, obviously the cheaper prices were important to them (so they thought) and they went elsewhere. Week 4 they start placing orders with us again, so I asked them what had happened, their response was that in the 3 week period where they used the cheaper supplier they had received 3 complaints of poor quality print, an order that was not dispatched or lost and unfortunately bad customer service with a slow response to rectifying these issues.

To sum up, price isn’t everything, far from it! At £80 the print reseller was still making a substantial profit, however, the lure of an extra £20 was too much for them. They now have 4 of their large customers that are unhappy that will probably go elsewhere in the future, these 4 customers may have spent upwards of £2000 a year each on print, now possibly with someone else!

As you can see competitive prices are important but high quality products and good customer service are key to growing your customer base.

What print resellers forget is that they shouldn’t be looking to solely compete against online printers who will no doubt offer good prices similar or cheaper than them, but concentrate on putting all their effort into targetting businesses local to them that still use Joe Bloggs Printing Services up the road. Local printers prices are very high, this enables the print reseller to substantially undercut them, as long as the product and service is on a par or better then you will be successful in securing these companies future orders.

And to the print reseller in this example, you know who you are, welcome back!

NOTE: This post was written with kind permission of our customer.

Print Reseller Schemes, Print Reseller and Print Reselling are relatively new terms being used more and more in design industry circles.

1) Print Reseller Schemes are basically another name for trade price lists offered by some printers, this discounted price list will not be available to the general public.

2) A Print Reseller is usually a graphic or website designer, or somebody with a flair for design that has a good understanding of professional graphic design software in order to produce print ready artwork.

3) Print Reselling is the art of marketing and selling printed products to businesses and the general public, substantially undercutting local printers.

There are many Print Reseller Schemes available online, a large number of very bad ones and a handful of good ones so ensure the one you pick is the latter. If you find a good Print Reseller Scheme with competitive prices, high quality products and fantastic customer service then you have the potential to make a lot of money.

The prices on offer to you will be much much lower than you could source locally, this means that you can mark up the print product and still substantially undercut local print companies. Price is very important, however, high quality products are key to being successful. Once you are confident that you have found a good Print Reseller Scheme, all you have to do now is market your print products and design services to local businesses.

If you are already an established Graphic Design company, you will find that offering competitive prices on print will draw customers to your business, dramatically increasing the amount of design jobs that you do. For example, you advertise some Business Cards in your local paper at a very good price, substantially undercutting local print companies. Customers without print ready artwork will also want to take advantage of this, your design services can then be offered.