Business printing

[Traffic]

Hello

I am working with a car dealership and they have asked me a question that's a little outside of my area of knowledge.

Basically they have leaflets A4 and A3 that they print that sit inside each vehicle and in different places inside their showrooms. Right now, they use local printing companies who are not cheap and much of the material gets binned as it goes out of date very quickly.

The idea is to buy a decent printer to sit inside the showroom to do small printing runs. They have a graphic designer inhouse too so it seems better to just print as and when things are needed rather than buying and wasting larger batches with a local company.

So the question is, what kind of machine would give us acceptable quality and economy to hand A3 and A4 printing? anyone got any experience of this or any ideas?

Thanks

[Doofus]

A3 or A5? A3 printers aren't easy to find.

[Ean218]

We've had two of these for a few years now:

https://www.printerland.co.uk/product/hp-officejet...

We use them for engineering drawings but it is great that you can scan A3 too.

[illmonkey]

Find a cheaper printer service. Inkjet is a no go it'll look so poor compared to professional print. Same goes for cheap laser

Add the 50p per leaflet to the price of a car.

[Traffic]

illmonkey said:

Find a cheaper printer service. Inkjet is a no go it'll look so poor compared to professional print. Same goes for cheap laser

Add the 50p per leaflet to the price of a car.

We are in Sweden, so using other companies is stupidly expensive due to tax and labour costs, so we are thinking DIY is probably going to be much cheaper, quicker and less wasteful if we can find the right machine.

[Simpo Two]

Doofus said:

A3 or A5? A3 printers aren't easy to find.

You can of course print A5 on an A4 printer

Plenty of A3 printers on Amazon: https://www.amazon.co.uk/s?k=a3+printer&crid=F...

I'd have thought that if it's just stuff like 'Now only £59,995! 3% finance until April!' etc then inkjet would be fine. Or did you mean litho?

A car dealer with an 'in-house graphic designer' sounds rather grand... you'll be an ad agency soon

Edited by Simpo Two on Wednesday 16th November 10:47

[RicksAlfas]

Do you have a photocopier/printer in the office?
Why not look at upgrading that to an A3 colour laser printer/copier and then it will do everything you need.
Konica/Canon/Samsung etc.

[ReverendCounter]

If you have to go ahead and do this you need a printer with a RIP and make sure its a laser.

The in house graphic designer should really be tasked with getting the right quotes for the right printer tbh. Buy a st printer for them and you'll have to buy twice, or get the repro outsourced again.

[ReverendCounter]

Traffic said:

We are in Sweden, so using other companies is stupidly expensive due to tax and labour costs, so we are thinking DIY is probably going to be much cheaper, quicker and less wasteful if we can find the right machine.

Have you looked at the cost of getting an overseas outfit to do the prints and send them to you?

Are you familiar with Boots in the UK? Basically they used to process people's digital images and either print them, burn them to DC/DVD etc. When printing, they outsourced to an Australian outfit and there would be a week or two turnaround.

I used to use this process to have high quality graphic design retail packaging mock ups printed.

As long as I used the highest quality options when uploading my artwork and I made sure it was inside the print area, I got some fantastic results in the post and over multiple uploads I didn't have any contact from them to state I was misusing the service etc.

I'm basically saying you might be able to find a solution if you look a little further afield.

Boots largt print size is 29.5x19.5 inches which larger than your requirements. Not sure on cost. Why not try a test run?

[Traffic]

Simpo Two said:

You can of course print A5 on an A4 printer

Plenty of A3 printers on Amazon: https://www.amazon.co.uk/s?k=a3+printer&crid=F...

I'd have thought that if it's just stuff like 'Now only £59,995! 3% finance until April!' etc then inkjet would be fine. Or did you mean litho?

A car dealer with an 'in-house graphic designer' sounds rather grand... you'll be an ad agency soon

Edited by Simpo Two on Wednesday 16th November 10:47

It's basically the vehicle specifications, finance offers etc.

They actually have 4 in house marketers as it a multi-branch business almost an in house agency ;-)

[Doofus]

Simpo Two said:

Doofus said:

A3 or A5? A3 printers aren't easy to find.

You can of course print A5 on an A4 printer

Yes. I know. But for A3 you need an A3 printer.

Simpo Two said:

Plenty of A3 printers on Amazon: https://www.amazon.co.uk/s?k=a3+printer&crid=F...

I should have said A3 laser printers aren't easy to find.

Inkjets are for childrens' homework, IMO.

[Mr Pointy]

Traffic said:

So the question is, what kind of machine would give us acceptable quality and economy to hand A3 and A4 printing? anyone got any experience of this or any ideas?

Given that you are in Sweden it's probably difficult to recommend particular models but there are plenty of A3 laser printers available (ignoring inkjet printers) :
https://www.printerland.co.uk/printers/laser/colou...

You probably need to ask a few more questions though.
Are they happy with matte, non-glossy prints?
Is A3 really needed - it's a big bump up in running costs
Do they need full-bleed (printing right to the edge of the paper) - I'm not sure if any laser printers do full-bleed
Be very careful about the running costs - the "standard" when calculating pages per toner cartridge is 5% coverage. if you are printing full blocks of A3 colour you will eat through the toner & that is the expensive part.
How concerned are they about colour accuracy? They might need Pantone support.

It's a tricky area & they might want to start with a cheap laser to see if it's adequate: it certainly won't look as good as the output of a print shop though.

[Mr Pointy]

Doofus said:

I should have said A3 laser printers aren't easy to find.

Inkjets are for childrens' homework, IMO.

Printerland have 91 results if you filter by A3 & laser.

[Tom8]

Lease a decent MFD. Work out your volumes and then size accordingly. Then go to a leasing reseller or direct to manufacturer and see what they can offer. Should be fairly cheap and you have a maintenance agreement should it fall over.

[rpguk]

Can you get a large print run done like a letter head with all the branding, colour artwork etc and then just overprint the specific information for that car as and when you need it?

[Simpo Two]

rpguk said:

Can you get a large print run done like a letter head with all the branding, colour artwork etc and then just overprint the specific information for that car as and when you need it?

That's a good plan.

[ReverendCounter]

As mentioned MAKE SURE it has a RIP!

[Traffic]

ReverendCounter said:

As mentioned MAKE SURE it has a RIP!

RIP?

[RicksAlfas]

Raster Image Processor.

It's a piece of software (sometimes on another PC or on the printer itself) which controls the print output. It's good for repetitive work where you want to maintain colour quality. A typical office laser printer won't have one but a machine in a printers or copyshop would.

Do you rent or lease a copier/printer in the office? Speak to that supplier and ask them how much it would be to upgrade to an A3 colour device. I can't imagine your output volume is going to be huge so one device handling the office as well as the graphics should be fine.

These sort of things:
https://www.konicaminolta.co.uk/en-gb/hardware/off...

[Traffic]

Ah - thanks for that.

We have a few smaller printers dotted around but nothing that can do better quality stuff.