Susan Wilson Solovic: The internet has transformed many industries including printing. Online printers are competing with established local printers, but do they offer the same benefits and service to business owners? Our guest today has experience in local print shops and online operations. Andrew Field founded printingforless.com. , quickly made it one of the nation’s fastest growing companies. His company has also been recognized as one of the best on the web. Welcome to the program Andrew.
Andrew Field: Thank you. Glad to be here.
Susan Wilson Solovic: First of all, what are some of the advantages of using an online printer?
Andrew Field: One of the advantages of an online printer is of course is the hours of operation. We are opening 24/7, 365 on the web. And many of our customers are small businesses who maybe busy with their customers throughout the course of the day and their only chance to attend to their own marketing needs and marketing materials and stationery might be evenings or weekends and that sort of things, so one of the advantages is the hours. Another big advantage of an online printer at least the better ones is you can get instant pricing.
Susan Wilson Solovic: That’s great. Are there any red flags that you should look for when choosing an online printer?
Andrew Field: I think one is related to that pricing. If they make you fill out a form to get a price on the most commonly available items like postcards, and brochures, they probably aren’t a real E-commerce printer and probably won’t have the systems in place that will allow them to serve your needs and make sure that you get your job and right the first time.
Susan Wilson Solovic: When you’re using online printer though, do you get actually get proofs via the internet and all of that so you can look at them before they’re printed?
Andrew Field: We do it both ways. You can either get an online proof or we take your file, we process it and get it ready for print. And then we show you an online proof or you can request a hard proof which will overnight out to you and sometimes for the most accurate type of proof, we’ll actually take a little segment of your job and put it on a press sheet so you can see exactly what it’s going to look like on the real paper that you’re going to use.
Susan Wilson Solovic: Well that’s great. Especially for people like me who just have to see hardcore paper here. Are there any advantages and disadvantages to working with an online printer as a post to a traditional bricks of modern printer?
Andrew Field: Absolutely. There’s times when we’ll tell our customers or perspective customers who talk to us that they really need to use a local printer. The biggest times would be if you’re doing very large jobs $50,000.00 to $100,000.00 or more, you really want to be at the end of the press. You’re going to have a little bit more control and you’re going to be able to make those fine-tune adjustments on the color. If you’re doing something that is what we called critical color match for instance a lipstick catalog or a jewelry catalog or something where the color component of is very critical, we suggest people work with a printer that they can be close to and be right there at the end of the press and see the results that are coming off.
Susan Wilson Solovic: Let’s say that I’m that I’m in a small business. Just getting started and I’ve got this great opportunity to go to big trade show and I need maybe fifty business cards, can you turn that around quickly for me? Or how does that work?
Andrew Field: Absolutely. We do as short as a two day turn around but it’s not much of a trade show if you’re only getting fifty business cards. Get at least five hundred Susan.
Susan Wilson Solovic: Okay. I’ll mind that. Well, maybe this one wasn’t such a big one but well, Andrew, thank you so much. I appreciate you being here and sharing those tips with us.
Andrew Field: Thank you.
Susan Wilson Solovic: Andrew Field is the President and CEO. Printingforless.com. We thanks him for being here and of course you can learn more about Andrew and his company by going to printingforless.com. I’m Susan Wilson Solovic, and you’re watching SBTV.com, small business is our only business.
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