And How To Avoid It (You Should Be Asking These Questions)
Choosing your printing companies can be overwhelming. After all, you’re entrusting your hard-earned customer base, advertising, and brand to one crucial process. What if it goes wrong? What if instead of the vibrant, beautiful branding you envisioned, you get faded and low-quality signage?
At Printulu, we always value quality and work with our clients to create their printed vision. But before you take that leap of faith with your printer, there are six questions you need to ask them. Or risk losing time, money, credibility, and maybe even clients.
Whether it’s digital printing companies in Midrand, a litho printing company in Johannesburg, or online printing companies in snazzy Rosebank (that’s us), these five questions will guide you into making your best business-savvy printing choice!
1. How long is this going to take?
From the moment you submit a query and wait for a quote, you are losing money and time. In our fast-paced world, the two concepts are synonymous. That’s why it’s essential to get an upfront timeline for your printing project. One of the biggest hold-ups in project lead times is waiting for quotes.
2. Are these printing companies prepared to print in batches?
As a business owner, you know that bulk equals cheaper. This simple fact is made undeniable by the theory of economy of scale. Simply put, the more you print at once will generally mean the more affordable each printed piece costs the producer. Printulu hacks this to minimise costs by using a method called gang-run printing.
It’s hard to provide a rule of thumb on batching prices, but ask your printing company during your research if they are prepared to cut costs, regardless if they get enough orders to batch or not. Printulu does! That’s right – even if we do not get the number of projects to batch your work, we’ll cop the loss rather than pass it on to you!
3. Are they offering a reprint guarantee if things go wrong?
Sometimes things go wrong. Perhaps your artwork didn’t fit the quality specifications for your printer, or a human error occurred, and something is not quite right. In this case, you need to ask what your printer will do to work with you to fix the issue.
For example, Printulu offers a reprint guarantee. If we botched it, we’ll fix it – free of charge! Here’s our quick checklist to make sure your artwork is print-ready before uploading it to your order: Print-ready Artwork Checklist.
Finding a printing company that will reprint is essential for peace of mind (and to protect your budget)!
4. Are you being kept in the loop 100% of the time?
Transparency, we think, should be at the forefront of every business. We know that our clients trust us, and we want to keep it that way!
You’re entrusting your printer with your livelihood. It’s a big deal, so you should know what’s happening with your order every step of the way. Are they keeping you updated? Did you know how long everything would take, what the final cost would be, and who to contact if you had questions? If there is an issue with your artwork, are they ignoring it and putting it through to print as is? Or are they explaining the problem to you to avoid disappointment in the future?
Save yourself valuable time and money and make sure you’re choosing a company that is up-front with you about all of the requirements.
5. Do they have a reputation?
Within any industry, building trust and researching reviews are essential. So, do your research! Try to find some testaments, print samples, or notable work by the printing company.
For example, if you were to search for Printulu South Africa, you’d find CNBC Africa interviews testifying to our legitimacy, over 150 Facebook recommendations, great testaments and notable work samples from business giants like Starbucks.
Assuming everything goes well, you’d probably want to move your entire portfolio to one printing company. That’s a lot of business and a lot of value you are adding as a client. So make sure you’re not misplacing your trust in the wrong company.
We always strive to deliver on our printing projects and can provide resoundingly positive answers to all five of these questions. However, regardless of where you end up taking your business, remember to check and research the best printing companies for your project.
