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Most products in your Company Store, whether
an Extranet Supply Depot or an Ecommerce Retail Operation, will
bear the branding graphics of your organization. Here's what
you need to know about the process and cost of imprinting them
- an explanation of how product printing is done and how you
can avoid traps and save money by knowing the basics.
1) Your art is probably not
product-ready: almost all logos are developed
by designers whose primary experience is producing art and layout
to be printed on paper. Printing on products is quite different.
2) Here is what will be done
to make it ready: modest adjustments to customer
graphics are often made before imprinting the art on products.
This step makes the logo better adapted to the requirements
of the imprint process selected for the surface characteristics
of the product to which it is being applied. The changes are
not likely to be apparent and the result will comply with graphic
standards.
3)
Before printing there is a pre-production stage:
each printing process (screenprinting, pad printing, embroidery,
debossing, embossing, etching, faux etching, and several more)
has individual preparation requirements that precede a production
run. Varying in accordance with factors like printing technique
and number of colors used, pre-production charges usually range
between $25 and $50 or so. (But they can run into hundreds of
dollars on some jobs. To celebrate the 10th anniversary of NPR's
Morning Edition, and introduce the program's new 6-color logo
we spent $1200 on prototype mugs!)
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Cost
Control Tip - Ask your vendor to work with a single factory for
each product category. That means your stock will come from one
ceramics factory, one personal electronics supplier, one leather
goods purveyor, one apparel embroiderer, etc. As long as the imprint
is the same size and (sometimes) uses the same colors, your pre-production
cost should occur only once, no matter how many different products
you imprint. |
Not
so with embroidery. That process is charged by the number
of stitches required to apply the logo. Usually you can build
in six or eight colors without extra charge. But you are going
to pay a large pre-production charge to digitize the logo
so the computers can read the stitch by stitch instructions
and direct the needles.
Coffee
mugs are about the most effective imprinted products when
measured by how frequently the logo will be seen and the cost
of each visual impression. But it's pretty tricky to print
on ceramics and then send them through a kiln at 1100 degrees.
This is one area of printing where you will be well served
if you take a few minutes to acquire a little deeper understanding.