Web 3.0
Color Variable Data Business Cards with a UV Printer
I’m tired of business cards. They’re dull, they’re boring, they haven’t changed in nearly 100 years.
Oh sure, you get the occasional creative type that has a uniquely die-cut card, like a round card, a thin half-size card, or even the double-sized card that’s folded over to normal size (although to be honest, I tear off the half that doesn’t have the person’s name on it).
But these cards all look the same. They’re on white stock, have different colored inks, and have the same information on it.
Yawn.
Look people, we live in an amazing technological age: we’ve put a man on the moon, we can transplant hearts and livers into people, and we have special printers that will actually print photographs inexpensively. Why do you insist on printing one-sided, two-color business cards on white stock when you can print double-sided full-color cards for the same price?
Why not print a card with a photo on the back, full-color logo and color background on the front? All you need is the right kind of printer, like the Legend 72HUV UV curable inkjet printer. We have one of these in our shop here in Indianapolis. I’m always amazed by what it can do.
This printer is basically a huge version of your typical desktop inkjet printer. Think of all the color documents, fancy graphs, and even photographs you’re able to print on something the size of a VCR. Now imagine being able to do that on a 4 foot wide substrate. Although the Legend 72HUV is often used by sign shops and poster printers, it can also be used as a way for cut sheet printers to save costs and increase revenue. And it can be used to print some of the coolest business cards I’ve seen in a looooong time.
Photo: PhotoOneGang
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Tax Incentives to Buy Printing Equipment like the Wide Format Printer
Did you know you can get a wide format printer, like the Wide Format Legend 72HUV, for $55,000 instead of $85,000? With the 2009 rollover of the Economic Stimulus Act of 2008, it’s possible. Here’s how it works:
According to Section 179 of the Act, if a print shop purchases a wide format printer like the Legend 72HUV, they can deduct up to the full purchase amount in the first year - $85,000. In fact, those businesses investing less than $800,000 in qualifying equipment can immediately deduct up to $250,000 (that’s way up from the previous amount of $128,000). Spend over $250,000 that year on equipment and you get an additional 50% deprecation bonus.
That’s big news and the kind of tax incentive that equals real, tangible savings. Based on an average print shop tax rate of about 30%, that $85,000 deduction on a wide format printer works out to a total, real dollar tax savings of $30,000. And guess what? That brings your financing price down to $55,000.
You can use our free Do the Math tax calculator spreadsheet to figure out exactly how much you’ll be able to deduct on your taxes and what you’ll save, in real dollars, on a wide format printer purchase. Click here [link: http://sugar.lloydsofindiana.com/2009_Tax_Incentive_Worksheet.xls] to download the worksheet.
These types of generous government tax incentives don’t stay around forever, they usually dry up and disappear as the economy improves, the budget changes or the government moves in a new direction. So, if you’ve been thinking about going wide or investing in a new piece of equipment, now is the time to do it.
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Low-Cost Posters for Theatre Troupes
Here in Indianapolis, we have a vibrant, thriving independent theatre community (so vibrant, in fact, that I spelled “theatre” the fancy way, with “re” at the end).
Each summer is the Indy Fringe Festival, an independent theatre festival, held just a couple miles from our office is Massachusetts Avenue. Mass Ave, as it’s known to the locals, has a cluster of independent theaters, and for 10 days, it’s overrun with theatre goers, buskers, and the actors themselves who visit each others’ shows and hang out at the bars and restaurants along 5-block district northeast of downtown Indy.
So what do theatre troupes have to do with a printing blog? A lot, actually.
As I travel up and down Mass Ave, there’s one theater — Theater on the Square — which has some of the best posters promoting their plays I’ve seen in town.
Sadly, I can’t walk anywhere without casting my printer’s eye on any printed material, so I’m always impressed by these posters. They’re bright, they’re colorful, they’re well-designed.
And they’re huge.
I would love to see more theaters (and theatres) use poster printing technology like TOTS uses. Most people have the mistaken belief that posters are expensive, or that you need to order thousands of posters to get a decent price break.
Not at all. Thanks to wide-format printing technology, like the Legend 72HUV UV curable ink jet printer. We have one of these in our shop, and I’m continually impressed by what it can do.
First, it prints to nearly any surface or substrate — we once printed to a full-size door, another time we printed to a 3′ x 6′ piece of 1/2″ plywood. Second, it’s like a giant inkjet printer (okay, it is a giant inkjet printer), which means it does full-color printing, including photos and funky poster designs. Third, it’s UV ink, which means it’s environmentally friendly and non-toxic. And fourth, you can print out short runs of full-color pages for a fraction of the cost of a traditional offset printer.
So what does that mean to theatre troupes?
Imagine printing giant posters promoting your play on vinyl, Gator board, or even a door. Imagine printing rehearsal photos, cast photos, and all kinds of great colors and backgrounds for your posters. Imagine printing only a few hundred full-color flyers on glossy paper, not several thousand.
Even if you’re not a theatre troupe in Central Indiana, there are still ways to find this technology in your area. Contact us at (877) 626-6848, and we’ll be happy to locate a Legend 72HUV sign shop in your area.
Photo: Kevin Burkett
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How a Wide Format Printer Can Increase Print Shop Profitability
As a distributor and fan of wide format printers like the Legend 72HUV UV curable printer/a>, I can’t help but be excited about all the different things this printer can do.
For one thing, it can make a print shop more profitable. Not just because it’s a new piece of equipment with some great benefits and cool features, like printing with ultraviolet curable ink, or specialty sign printing.
We’re actually seeing a lot of cut sheet/sheet-fed printers switch to wide format printing, because they can offer their customers so much more.
For one thing, you can run small signs on the Legend 72HUV. Rather than turning away large print formats, you can now accept poster print jobs for theaters and bands, signs for special events, and even specialty projects like 11×17 brochures.
We have a customer in Ohio who said that as a sheet-fed printer, he has to run $10,000 of sheet fed paper just to make $1,000 in profit. That’s because his margins are already so low, and he’s losing a lot of profit in labor and production costs.
But if he were to switch over to a wide format printer, he would only need to do $2,000 in printing to make $1,000 profit.
Because the wide format printer is so new, and is very inexpensive compared to other printing equipment, if you can add a 20% - 30% margin, you can pay for the machine in a year. (And 40% margins are not unheard of with this printer either.)
If you’re interested in more information on the Legend 72HUV wide format printer, visit us at WideFormatRevolution.com, or call us at (877) 626-6848.
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Trade Printers Holding Steady in Economy
Despite all of the doomsday reporting about our economy on the nightly news, some small business sectors are still doing well. Take, for example, trade printing. The trade printing industry is actually still growing (albeit slowly) as more printers and brokers start to outsource their printing.
On A Printing Office: A Blog for Small and Medium Printers, they sum up the phenomenon nicely along with a reference to the original research published in Print Solutions magazine. What’s interesting to note, and the blog entry mentions it too, is that 70% of the top 144 trade printing companies employed less than 100 people!
So, yes, small printers and small business can survive in what the media’s calling a cutthroat economy. In fact, small printers are usually better able to cut costs, be flexible, move quickly and weather the storm (provided they have the resources to get them through it).
But why trade printing specifically? I think it comes down to cash flow and equipment acquisition. A small, local printer may not have the reserves on hand to invest in a new piece of equipment or a down payment on a new lease, but that doesn’t mean he’s not going to offer those services. Instead, he’ll broker a relationship with a trade printer. Because for some small businesses, it doesn’t make sense to have all that equipment on hand if you’re only running those kinds of jobs a few times a year. So, the demand for trade printing goes up.
After being inundated with end-of-the-world reporting about our supposedly collapsing economy, it’s nice to read some good news for once. Yes, small business can succeed. Yes, it can grow and yes, it can be innovative. So, kudos to Print Solutions and Printing Office for reminding us.
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5 Tree-Free Papers
The Sustainable Printing blog hosted on Today.com recently posted a great piece covering the five most popular, tree-free green printing papers available today.
Not all of them are widely available or cost-effective, but a few are catching on in the green printing industry as viable alternatives to traditional tree-fiber.
Hemp PaperIt grows fast, has incredibly high yields and it’s durable — making hemp an incredibly versatile material. For most commercial applications, hemp is combined (usually in a 1:3 ratio) with recycled tree-derived paper stock.
Unfortunately, this process of recycling, washing and bleaching recycled stock and then combining it with hemp fiber uses a lot of water, electricity and resources. If your goal is sustainable printing, I recommend investigating both how this particular paper was manufactured and the size of the manufcaturer’s ecological footprint.
Cotton PaperCotton paper is bright, white and beautiful to work with. It feels amazing between your fingertips and it actually lasts much longer than traditional tree paper. However, cotton paper is also exceptionally expensive.
There’s also the sustainable printing argument that growing that much cotton to sustain a paper industry would require an epic amount of farmland and more resources (watering, maintaining, processing) than tree-derived papers. So, while cotton may be green paper in small amounts, it doesn’t scale well into mass production.
Kenaf PaperLike hemp, kenaf grows quickly and produces a high yield. And because kenaf is naturally white, it requires significantly less bleaching than paper made from tree fibers. Today, kenaf is poised to be the next big green paper in the sustainable printing industry.
Bamboo PaperI’ve heard of bamboo socks, but did you know they also make bamboo paper? Though not widely available, bamboo paper is being developed and marketed as a green paper. It’s expensive, but if it catches on, the price could come down.
Rock PaperNo, not Rock Paper Scissors. Rock paper is essentially made from limestone and will eventually break down over time, particularly when exposed to the elements. There’s no bleaching involved, but don’t expect long term durability with this green paper choice.
Photo: Joi (bamboo)
Photo: Ingermaaike2 (hemp yarn)
Categories: Web 3.0
Four Alternatives to Layoffs in Your Print Shop
I try to stay optimistic about the economy, seeking out the positive stories like new businesses and growth opportunities, but sometimes the reality is that, yes, small businesses can be hit hard.
Small printers may be looking around their print shop and wondering how they’re going to afford things like lease payments and payroll with ever-dwindling cash reserves. The easy answer might be layoffs, but there are alternatives. If all you need to stay in the black is a little extra cash flow, full scale layoffs may not only be extreme, they could end up pushing you further down. If you can, consider one of the following:
Eliminate OvertimeIf you can’t afford to pay someone’s regular salary, what makes you think you can afford to pay someone time-and-a-half? Eliminate overtime at your print shop now by releasing a clear statement that says no overtime will be approved until further notice. Alternatively, you could draft a new policy offering employees flex time in lieu if overtime is worked (remember to set limits).
If an existing overtime policy is in place, you may need to get employees to sign off on a new policy. Check with HR, your lawyer, or an HR adviser before you make sweeping changes to existing employee contracts.
Limit Travel and ExpensesIt’s true that you need to spend money to make money, but sometimes you need to save money to survive. If things are feeling tight, it may be time to cut your small business staff’s travel and expense budgets, especially if it means saving someone’s job.
Today, video conferencing, instant file delivery and quick communication make face-to-face meetings seem like a luxury. Yes, you can often score more points with a person-to-person sales call, but it may be time to start looking for clients locally.
Reduce Total HoursWhether voluntary or not, hour reductions can be a way to save jobs while reducing pay. Some employees may welcome the opportunity to work less, but have more flexible hours, while others may resist the idea.
Remember though, reducing hours may reduce your hourly payroll, but it may not have a huge impact on your health insurance costs, unemployment costs or worker’s compensation insurance premiums unless you’re dealing with already part-time print shop employees. Take this into consideration when weighing the pros and cons of hour reductions.
Pay FreezesEmployees aren’t going to like a year without pay raises or bonuses, but they’ll accept it if the alternative is potential job loss. Explain to your staff clearly why you’re implementing a temporary pay freeze and what it means for them. Done right, this move should be accepted with understanding rather than backlash.
What about you? What are you doing at your small business or print job to whether this economy without cutting jobs?
Photo: ChurchHatesTucker
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Meat Cards a Big Hit with the No-Carb Dieters
According to the printing experts, your business cards have to stand out to be effective. You don’t have to tell that to Meat Cards, the company behind a new process that actually laser prints on to beef jerky, making what are, essentially, edible business cards.
Personally, I think this is taking novelty printing to a whole new (and very strange) level. How do you transport them? Do you end up smelling like jerky all day? Do dogs follow you around? Where does the recipient store your card? Certainly not in a Rolodex, because according to the Meat Cards website, “MEAT CARDS do not fit in a Rolodex, because their deliciousness CANNOT BE CONTAINED in a Rolodex.”
Okay, that’s pretty funny, but I’m still wondering about the practical side of these cards. According to Meat Cards, they’re working on a sealing method to avoid pocket lint contamination. There is one thing I like about these cards, you can eat them after a business relationship has gone sour.
You can check out a video clip of the cards in action, along with an explanation of how they’re made on G4’s Attack of the Show [link: http://g4tv.com/attackoftheshow/comedy/66753/Business-Cards-Made-of-Meat.html].
Video embed link:
Video Game - E3 2009 - Attack of the Show Related Posts from The Print Finish Blog
Categories: Web 3.0
Recycled Paper Quality Same as Virgin Paper
A process that has been around for many years, but is still relatively new to the public is paper recycling. It’s an important process in green printing and in keeping the environment healthy.
So just what is paper recycling?
It’s a process of recovering waste paper and remaking it into new paper products. Almost any household paper can be recycled, including used newspapers, cardboard, packaging, stationery, direct mail, magazines, catalogues, greeting cards and wrapping paper.
Waste paper can be disposed of in three ways. It can be buried, burned, or recycled, and it goes without saying that recycling is the preferred method of “disposal.” There are three categories of paper that can be used as feedstocks for making recycled paper. These are mill broke, pre-consumer waste, and post-consumer waste.
Mill broke is paper trimmings and other paper scrap from the manufacture of paper, and is recycled internally in a paper mill. Pre-consumer waste is material that was discarded before it was ready for consumer use and post-consumer waste is material discarded after consumer use such as old magazines, old telephone directories, and residential mixed paper. Paper that is suitable for recycling is called scrap.
And it makes a lot of sense to buy recycled paper. Paper purchasers can protect the environment, save money, and purchase the best papers available just by buying recycled paper.
A few reasons to buy recycled paperIt’s true that as late as the 80s, recycled paper was often of uneven quality, sometimes appearing dark and spotted. Throughout the years, the quality has improved immensely. Today’s recycled paper is available in all colors, including the brightest whites, and meets the highest technical standards, sometimes even exceeding comparable virgin papers. Commercial printers and copier machine manufacturers today agree that recycled paper is suitable for all their machines. They only require good quality paper, whether recycled or virgin.
According to an interview in the Epoch times, Bernd Krause of the Federal Envirnmental Office, there’s no question recycled paper is of high quality.
“Quality recycled paper is very similar to that of virgin paper,” Krause replied, “and certain criteria must be met before we approve of the eco-label, including that standards be met for the intended end-use of the product. The product produced from recycled fibers must be of at least the same quality as the product produced from virgin fibers.”
A ringing endorsement like that can only encourage more printers to use recycled paper and also to encourage more people to recycle their waste paper.
Photo: Jetalone
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UV Printing in Plain English
UV curable screen printing is still a relatively new technology and some print and sign shop owners are just starting to investigate what we think will be the future of large-scale printing. To answer many of the questions we’ve received here at Lloyds of Indiana, here’s a short list of common answers on UV printing.
UV curable ink is not solvent-based, so no VOCs.UV curable screen printing is a solid system, meaning there are no solvents involved in the process. Instead, a strong ultraviolet (UV) light source interacts with the ink ingredients in what is called a “UV cure reactor” to create the printed image.
The lack of solvents means there are no volatile organic compounds (VOCs), making curable inks more environmentally-friendly than traditional solvent-based printing methods. This means you spend less time and money dealing with the safety requirements and equipment to handle solvents. That means higher profit margins, fewer risks and accidents, and more time spent on growing your business, not cleaning up.
UV cure reactors run very quickly.UV cure reactors can mass-produce print jobs very quickly thanks to their rapid curing speeds. Essentially, the ink reaction process takes between 1 and 3 seconds and doesn’t require a lengthy drying time.
The best part is that colors can be printed in succession without having to stop for dry time – a major labor and time savings for a screen and print shop. Instead of keeping a constant eye on your job, you can be working on other print jobs and helping your clients.
UV ink won’t clog the screen.Because UV ink won’t dry in the screen, it won’t clog the mesh. That means less time spent changing or cleaning the screen throughout a print job.
UV ink has great color value and range.If you’re doing a lot of four-color process graphic printing, UV curable ink is the way to go. The inks range in opacity from transparent to translucent, giving you an incredible color gamut and range. This, combined with the fact that the ink won’t dry in the screen, means you can do UV ink printing through screens with incredibly high mesh counts, often as high as 420 threads per inch.
UV printing greatly reduces sign printing costs.Most sign printers who use thermal methods or stick-on vinyl to make vinyl banners can’t do double-sided signs. The only way to print a double-sided sign is to print two pieces of vinyl, and then sew them back-to-back. With UV printing, it’s possible to print one side of a sign, flip it over, and run it through again. Material costs are cut in half, labor costs are reduced, and you’re left with a beautiful full-color sign that’s resistant to outdoor elements.
UV ink does have its drawbacks.Solvents tend to be more flexible (you can print on more substrates) and more durable when exposed to the elements (although UV is more durable than vinyl). But, if you’re doing predominantly sign, poster and banner printing, you’ll find that UV curable printing is the best way to go for graphic screen printing. It’s cleaner, safer, cheaper and faster.
Photo: evoo73
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Copyright 2008, Mike Seidle.
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