November 7th, 2007
Is It Easy To Do Business With You?
A couple of weeks ago, I noticed I was running low on business cards. When I first started my business, I threw together a simple card design and went with the cheapest printer I could find on the Internet. (VistaPrint is what I found, if you’re curious.) My business has grown quite a bit since I started out of the gates. I felt like now was the time to consider a higher quality printing job.
I ended up working with a local company. (Rowland Printing, again for the curious.) The experience was totally different. With VistaPrint I had to do most of the legwork. I followed their instructions on formatting my design to meet their specifications. I spent far too long doing minor tweaks that probably would have taken a professional a few minutes. With Rowland on the other hand, I sent them a file that had my design. They sent me back a file that had been formatted appropriately and asked if that’s what I meant.
The whole experience was delightful for me as the customer. Now VistaPrint offers a very good service at what seems to me to be a good price, but I’ll be working with my local company in the future. I’m willing to pay more money because it required so little effort on my part to get the result that I wanted. If you wish you were making more money, a good question to ask yourself might be, “How easy am I to work with?”
Nov 9th, 2007
12:51 am
My experience with online printers has been a bit different. Yes, local printers can offer better service no doubt. A local Minuteman Press is a dream to work with. However, the advantage of online printers kicks in when you have to repeatedly print something and want to save money.
For example, I work with a political action committee and get business cards printed at Overnight Prints. It takes time to figure out their specs, and granted their service isn’t the best, but once you have a file that prints well, re-ordering is a snap. And the time I save not having to leave my office is nice too. You upload, order, and forget it.
In addition to Overnight Prints for cards and brochures, I’ve used Colormax Digital for banners, PensXpress for pens, and Pin Depot for lapel pins.
It all depends on what kind of easy you want.
Nov 12th, 2007
4:13 pm
Dean, good point. I’m certainly not qualified to make an assessment of online versus local printers in a broad context. (I just don’t do enough printing to have a good frame of reference.) The example you described, though, illustrates the same point: if you are easy to work with, then people will want to do business with you.