This post will discuss various ways in which you can save money on paper for your next print job.
Or, to put it another way, “how can you make money grow on trees?!”
Paper selection for offset printing and/or digital printing
(unless you’re using another substrate) are important considerations.
The printing business you use to get your printing done customarily sells you the paper used for your print job at a mark-up. They probably paid wholesale prices for their paper; the profit on which is as basic a component of ROI as any other in the world of printing. The good news is that there is a way to cut down on your paper costs, which in some cases may comprise a considerable portion of the cost of your print job.
How?
Buy the paper yourself!
There are several ways to do this; most commonly by contacting a local paper merchant or by searching online. One way is to look on EBay or another online store or auction site.
Another good source is your local paper merchant; many if not most of whose customers are print and graphics professionals.They frequently offer paper at closeout prices; prices which are often sharply marked down from normal wholesale prices or as much as 75% from the retail or list price!
I once purchased about $15,000.00 worth of quality paper for only $2,000.00.
Why / How?
My local paper store was stuck with an unclaimed order consisting of various sizes, thicknesses and colors. They were almost all in parent-sheet form; a parent sheet being a larger sheet ranging in size from 17×22″ up to 28″ x 40″ that is run at full size or cut down and run at a smaller press sheet (the sheet that is actually run through the printing press) size on smaller printing presses.
The larger sizes of parent sheet, especially, take up a lot of shelf space; and can cost considerable money and labor to ship back to the warehouse if unpaid for or unclaimed by the customer.
Rather than go through the trouble and expense of restocking this order, which was taking up floor space, the paper company manager agreed to sell the whole lot to me for a few thousand dollars-well below the wholesale cost of almost $15,000.00.
In addition to unclaimed and hard-to-re-shelve paper lots, some of the biggest discounts can be had on discontinued paper lines or on unpopular colors from best-selling paper lines. These offerings are by no means cheaply made or lacking in quality. For these reasons and for other less obvious ones, your local paper merchant will offer them at a sizable discount just to clear them off the floor ASAP and make room for other / more profitable products or paper lines.
In fact, it’s quite possible that your printer might be planning to visit that very store later that day in order to snatch up some of this stock for your next print job and sell it to you at a one heck of a mark-up! It would be good business on his part because while saving money on his paper costs he can turn around and make you, the customer, happy by keeping his retail price competitive – without doing any extra work once the presses start rolling!
You, the customer, can save money on your print job by supplying the paper yourself. There are several instances, in fact, in which your printer might even prefer that you do so. One such instance is a desire on the printer’s part to avoid adding to his bill with the paper company. If he is paying cash in advance for the paper or increasing the balance owed to his paper supplier while waiting for you, the customer, to pay 10 or 30 days after the job is delivered, he might very well prefer that the customer take care of paying for and providing the paper.
If the paper is expensive, that is all the more reason for him not to object or for him to actually
prefer that the customer provide the paper. A word of caution here…to ensure a quality print job, your printer needs to inspect the paper that you provide to make sure that it is “up to snuff.” To avoid any problems in this area, it is best to buy only from reputable sources and avoid a situation where you end up losing money rather than saving it by buying paper which is defective. Make sure that your online source has a proven track record.
Established paper merchants, since they are “B2B” or business-to-business, are on the whole more reliable than private party vendors in this matter. Since the former receive much of their paper already boxed and sealed from their warehouse or mill, however, it is possible that even with the best intentions on your paper merchant’s part your purchase may contain defective sheets or merchandise without their (your paper store) knowing about it.
Although this happens rarely, it is not unknown. The only solution is to inspect the paper as soon as you buy it. If you are buying envelopes or some other paper stock which comes in an easy-to-open container inspect a sample from various places within the box or paper lot in order to get an idea of the general quality of the contents. Save your receipt, of course, so if informed by your printer that the paper is not behaving correctly while going through the press you can get a refund or exchange from your source.
Also – and this is very important – ask your printer if by reducing the cut size or finished size of your printed piece you will save a whole lot of money on paper by allowing him to get a much better yield out of the parent sheet used for your job. Sometimes, by reducing the size of the finished piece by as little as a few percentage points you may actually get 15% – or more – paper for the same price!