Same Press...Same Paper...Same Price???

So I’ve become a regular at a local musical instrument store, and was asking advice on a piece of equipment. After much chit-chat, his final conclusion was, “You get what you pay for”. And of course…it got me thinking. The same can be said about nearly everything; including commercial printing. Often times, commercial printers have comparable material costs, but excel by having lower overhead. For example, many long-run book printers in the United States have difficulty competing against China book printers, simply based upon the premise that China book printers have lower labor and overhead costs (and it doesn’t hurt that there are a number of low-cost Asian paper mills on that corner of the globe). BUT, for the most part, Acme Printing buys the same paper as “Commercial Printer ABC” down the road, for the same price, and from the same source. So with that being said, where does the “you get what you pay for” phrase come into play? Well first, we don’t feel comfortable putting a job on our presses without having Kodak approval proofs; which is the highest quality proofing available in commercial printing and is a true representation of the color you have in your files. Unfortunately, this proofing can be costly. BUT it’s well justified when a project exceeds your expectations. We also refuse to reproduce industry “corner-cutting” standards like pushing black ink on press to thicken a (printer-made) weak 4-color image; this is a trick used to save on cyan, magenta, and yellow ink costs. Or substituting quoted paper stock with an obsolete inventory stock. We take the road less traveled by employing higher-than-standard QA policies. In fact, we estimate typically a higher make-ready when ordering materials to insure that the press-sheets we keep are acceptable (and of course, the press-sheets that don’t meet our color standards are recycled). Just some food for thought for the next time you are reviewing the menu at a fine cuisine restaurant, go car-shopping, are choosing a college education for your children, or something a bit smaller in the scope of things…like choosing where to house a commercial print project. Ask yourself, "can our commercial print be better?"