You probably have an inexpensive inkjet printer in your office right now. You might think running labels through it can help you save money.
There is, however, a hidden (and high) print cost to this. Printer manufacturers often sell these printers below cost, which sounds like a bad deal for them. It might, instead, be a bad deal for you.
Black Ink is One of the Top 10 Most Expensive Liquids
You can get a brand new ink jet printer with great print quality for an incredibly low price. However, replacing the cartridges for that printer will cost you almost as much as the printer itself, and sometimes more.
People consistently rate black inkjet ink as one of the most expensive liquids in the world, right up there with insulin and human blood. In 2018, you could buy a lot more gallons of gas or milk than printer ink for the same price. One gallon of printer ink cost $6,400, while you could buy 2,250 gallons of gas or 2,254 gallons of milk.
A Sales Strategy
King C. Gillette invented the disposable razor while working as a traveling salesman in the late 1890s. Now his last name is on grooming products worldwide.
His plan was to craft a razor handle of good quality, and to sell the handle at a small loss. Customers would love the handle, and buy replacement blades to keep using it. The blades could be sold at a profit to these customers, who returned on a regular basis.
This type of sales strategy became known as the “razor and blades” business model, and many companies have employed it. Standard Oil gave away 8 million lamps in China to create a market for their lamp oil. Apple didn’t make much money from iPod sales; they profited when consumers bought music from iTunes. And, of course, there are the printer companies, whose use of this tactic is notorious.
Cut This High Print Cost
As business owners can quickly find out, when you print color labels and tags on a regular basis, the cost of ink can really add up. This makes a do-it-yourself solution only feasible when printing is done infrequently or uses little ink. You could save ink by printing at lower quality, but do you really want to do that for product labels or other items?
Identifying what you print over and over again on regular basis allows you to outsource those printing jobs. Need to determine how much you can save? A number of printing cost calculators are available online. You might determine that it makes sense to order from a professional label printer rather than try to do it yourself.
Let Us Print the Expensive Part
We can print custom labels for you and save money by printing some of your shipping, integrated, or product labels. We print your logo, artwork, and other fixed information. You save money by only printing the addresses, ingredient list, or other changing data. If you still want blank roll labels to print yourself, you can get those from us as well!
Our products have low minimums and high quality. You don’t need to worry about not using them all.
