Print Outsourcing
I just had some new business cards made up this week. I went with a friend, but the printer spoke perfect English (remember I live in Taipei right now) and was very helpful. She had a little shop in a fairly high traffic area, but told us that she almost doesn't accept walk in business any more.
If you think about it that is quite something, presumably she is paying a high rent for her shop because of its location and yet she doesn't just let people come in off of the street. We asked her why, and she explained that most of her business is repeat business and in fact much of it comes from overseas now. You can have a look at their website at www.cellay.com
Its perfectly possible to print things like business cards relatively inexpensively if you just want a few. If you need a larger order size, or something more complex than can be done with a home computer and a basic printer then you may be looking at considerable savings by outsourcing to an overseas operation. Typically there will be little or no tax on promotional materials either as they are not for re-sale in your home country (please check this with your accountant).
The key then is finding a) a reliable printer overseas, and b) people who
regularly need sizeable, or more expensive print jobs. Suggestions for doing
this might include: -
Networking
Community contacts
Direct response advertising
Website
Whilst your friends and family are unlikely to want much printing done, you may be surprised. Most of us have a few friends who have gone into business for themselves and even small businesses require all kinds of print work. Also if you are like me and belong to various entrepreneurial groups who meet and talk about their businesses and business ideas then you have a perfect place to pitch your new service. Other likely places to mention what you are doing and drum up some interest are golf clubs, tennis clubs etc. where you are likely to find a number of networkers who will be interested in cutting costs for their businesses.
Community contacts are a little different to networking as you may need to search them out. Many groups such as religious groups, amateur dramatic groups, adventure sports groups etc. require printing from time to time and when they do it is usually in significant bulk. If you can find their leaders and talk to them you may well have found a good source of ongoing business. Just ask for the right to quote when they are looking.
Direct response advertising here can be one of two approaches, direct mail in which you send a letter or better yet a letter and a sample sheet to show what you are capable of producing on spec to a list of companies. You can choose companies directly from the Yellow Pages, or better yet buy a list of companies in your area from an online directory. You should not expect a string response rate and you should test different letters to different groups of customers until you learn what works best. Typically you would expect to see about a 0.5% response rate from this kind of approach but when you work out your costs to see if this is viable bear in mind the value of repeat orders.
Direct mail is a push approach to fining customers; the other alternative is what we call a pull approach. You simply advertise in your local newspaper, or in business magazines, trade show programmes etc. Include a telephone number, website, and address so that your customers can contact you easily.
You should of course have a website but in this business it is most likely to become an ordering process or information site for your customers as opposed to your shop window. This will depend on how much you promote the website, for example will you link it to EBay? Optimise if for search engine use? I would not spend too much time and effort on this as customers who search the internet for a printer are likely to find suppliers similar to your own, who will be able to undercut your pricing.
I mentioned the printer that I use in Taipei (www.cellay.com) already. To give you an idea they charged me NT$500 for 200 business cards, which works out at US$15.29. You can look for options closer to home e.g. printing in Mexico or Canada for US customers which will have the benefit of cheaper delivery to your customers (use eastern European countries in Europe), or you could offer different pricing dependent upon delivery times and source the less urgent items from China, India etc.
Using Google I found www.chinaprinting.com.cn who specify a 5 day turnaround time but you need to write for a quote. www.delhiprinter.com is offering 1000 business cards for US$40 which is almost half of what I am paying in Taiwan (although I didn't need 1000 cards). You will want to quote for a variety of jobs but it is ok to shop around a little. Before you start taking orders try to send some test jobs to make sure of delivery times, costs, and accuracy of your chosen suppliers.
You may want to specialise, for example if you already have contacts in one industry then start by focusing there. It is highly probable you will run into people you know and this cannot hurt your chances of landing some orders.
I think the price of my new business cards is reasonable at 7.6cents a card but they can be bought with very little searching for 4 cents a card. If I were to set up shop in Taiwan and sell for 6cents a card I would be allowing a healthy 50% markup and still be undercutting the market.
Different colours add to the pricing. I found cards at ww.losangelesprintingservice.com for $75 a 1000 but not printed with 4 colours both sides. Then the price went up to $99 per 1000. You need to understand what affects prices in order to be able to quote. You may want to tell customers that you can do black and white on card for $5.99 for 250 to get them interested and then up-sell them on the colours and better quality card.