Mention discount printing and a person may think twice about quality, especially with something as critical as working on your marketing materials. Rest assured though that most of these fears are baseless, and larger printing companies with more professional machinery provide prints cheaper.

In printing, a change in the way prints are done can spell the difference of as much as 50% of the price cost. Just compare the printing cost of online printing as against a small local printing company to get a clear picture of the price difference. There are several factors that affect the price of your printing.

Here are a few tidbits about how big companies can afford to sell cheap:
Economies of Scale:

In simple terms, an increase in the scale of production brings down the cost to produce individual units. There are several reasons why the overall cost per print goes down as the output of a printer increases.

1) Printing companies order their supplies like paper and ink from third party suppliers. The large volume can be used as leverage to get bigger wholesale discounts from these third party suppliers.

2) Large businesses have to maintain an efficient work flow to keep up with the printing demands. They have to train their employees, and with repetitive work, they gain more experience and skill in their specialized area. This minimizes wastage and maximizes productivity.

3) Fixed overhead costs are spread over a larger volume of print jobs. Overhead costs are sometimes unrelated to the print job itself, but should nonetheless be recovered by the business. The rent of the factory for instance, or the cost to hire management is spread over more print jobs.

New Technology:

4) Investing in new equipment allows printing companies to automate many tedious and laborious processes that cut additional costs. The computer to plate technology for instance cuts a big portion of the prepress process that used to involve manually developing plates, stripping the negative to plate, etc.

5) With the lighter plastic parts, the printing equipment is easier to manage and to set up cutting down related fixed costs.

6) Globalization allows a faster transport of goods and services across borders. Printers can simply outsource their customer service to call centers, or their design templates to graphic artists in other countries.

Gang Run Printing:

7) Gang-run printing combines different print jobs into a large plate and is run as one job so that the setup and plating costs is shared. And because a big part of the printing process is taken up by plating and setup costs, it gives customers bigger savings.

Competition:

8) As the prices of printing companies become more accessible and easy to compare, printing companies make sure they keep their prices competitive. They keep their overhead costs low, streamline their production line, and keep their profit margins minimal.

The small profit margin on each printing project is made up for in volume. These discount printing companies rely on providing the cheapest services to get the best value for customers. Next time you hear discount, be sure to take advantage of the cheaper costs.