How Important Should Price be in Choosing A Printer?

A blog hosted by a well-known print periodical recently included a posting on why price should not be the sole criteria for choosing a printer. The author was a professional print buyer, presumably with years of experience in the field.

One really can’t argue with his major points. He likened print procurement to buying a cell phone, in that one may choose to pay more for a cell phone with extra features. He did not buy his phone based on cost; rather he paid a little more for a phone that had the features he wanted.

The author listed three features he thought were worth considering in selecting a printer. Good printers, he opined:

• Are financially stable.
• Can reduce your costs.
• Have a development plan.

One would be hard pressed to argue with that logic—and I’m not arguing with these points. In fact, I embrace them whole-heartedly. There is more to buying print than price.

I spent a good deal of time buying printing in a public sector environment where we were required to take at least three bids and place the job with the lowest bidder. Believe me, we learned first hand that the low bid was not always the best one.

What did we do? We developed strategies to avoid the losers and direct requests for bids to the print companies that were reputable, did good work, met all of the job specifications, and delivered on time. So, in a sense, we were shopping for features as well, even though at the end of the day we had to go with the low-cost bid. And sometimes we got burned.

The responses and comments to the blog posting were overwhelmingly positive. No surprise there, since most of the people that commented appeared to come from the commercial printing industry.

What’s the big deal? What if the print buyer is upper management, and the printer is the organization’s in-plant?

Don’t these criteria apply to most in-plants, too? When the commercial printing companies and facilities management guys call on our bosses, what do they tell them? Do the outsourcing proponents say, “Gee, you should really send all of your business to us because we are financially stable?” Or, “Send your business to us because we have a development plan?” Of course not.

They argue that our parent organization should send its business to commercial printers because it’s CHEAPER, although there may be some legitimate debate on that point as well. Still, that’s the claim.

What I heard in this blog was validation of what a lot of us have been saying for years. If upper management followed the advice of this print broker, it would look past the price claims and think seriously about all of the other contributions (i.e. features) in-plants are expected to provide, but can’t charge for. Things like catching mistakes that might embarrass the organization if printed and distributed or, even worse, cause an expensive re-run. Or making decisions that line up with the parent organization’s mission, vision, goals and values. Or protecting the brand. Or helping designers plan a mail piece that avoids postal penalties. Or helping customers set up a job. Or recommending a less expensive paper. Or...you get the idea. It’s what you do everyday.

Did you ever meet an in-plant manager that didn’t have a pocket full of good ideas on ways to help the organization save on printing costs? Most of the ones I’ve talked to over the years could cut print costs dramatically while increasing productivity, if given the chance.

It looks to me like the commercial print sector wants to play by two sets of rules. On the one hand, organizations should shut down their in-plants and outsource printing because it’s cheaper, or so they claim. But when dealing with corporate print buyers, price shouldn’t be the main criteria. Which is it?

Maybe our management should think about in-plants as having value in ways other than being the low-cost provider, and realize that selecting a printer—including an in-plant—based on cost alone is a bad idea.

But you know what? It’s up to us to tell that story.