Printing

ballisticbrian

Has anyone got any tips on finding local print shops who will do small runs of afew hundred labels affordably?

I have been using staples to print to my own label sheets, and the guy in there was charging me 57p a sheet which does 16 labels, with a colour laser), but the other day they started charging me a file handling fee of 3 quid for, well nothing really.

paddyrg

Is each sheet different? If not, pay the fee once to create a master then just colour photocopy?

ballisticbrian

Well, you know, batch numbers change. Sometimes you don't want to print a huge run if it's a new un market tested product.

paddyrg

Yep, so if a sheet is all for a batch, you could play the £3 once, get 20 master sheets, with a blank batch number, then each time it updates you full it in on one sheet by hand, then photocopy that onto as many sheets of stickers as are in the batch. You could even do the same with the new products if you really didn't think they were worth a £3 punt.

Or buy your own printer? If it's small runs it might not be uneconomical and is very flexible.

Slinky

How about buying a Dymo label printer and printing your own?

phill99

If you mean the Avery type labels, you can download the software from Avery for free and do them on your own printer.

martindow

What about a company like Able Labels? I use them for small self adhesive return address labels. They print 500 quite cheaply - or is this too many for you?

http://www.able-labels.co.uk/

paulwf

The problem you might find is that all the local small run print guys are going, there are now none in my area. All the big jobs have gone online for example the internet based print companies knocking out 5,000 flyers with next day delivery for very little money. The high st based small print run businesses (prontaprint, kall kwik etc) are left with the little jobs that don't make them any real money so have closed down. Hopefully your area is different though.

A £35 b&w laser printer has served me well, I would suggest getting a large print run of colour labels then overprint the batch number using the laser. The quality should be better than using a photocopier.