Start a print shop in order: one proof before each spend

What to take away

Six commitments, one proof before each

Work through six gates and do not pass one until the thing that has to be true at it is actually true. Each gate sits in front of a spend, so the table reads from the first dollar committed to the last machine added.

The permit names a first-year shop is asked to produce are listed in the print shop license requirements. This page is about the order in which you commit.

Before any spend: count the buyers

Nothing is committed here, and everything depends on it. Count the businesses within a realistic travel distance by type, work out which of them buy print repeatedly, and speak to twenty of them about what they buy, how often, and what goes wrong.

Write down the quantity range that comes back and the services that keep being mentioned. Pass this gate when you can state, in one sentence, which customer type you intend to serve and in what quantity range. Not before.

Before you buy a machine: own the process or send it out

The process decision is the first irreversible one, because it decides the machines and the machines decide the building. It forces an explicit choice between owning a process and sending it out.

Setup is the cost in this trade and the run is comparatively cheap. That means a short run and a long run are not the same job at different sizes; they belong on different machines with different economics. Look at the quantity range from the count and decide which end you will own.

Then decide, explicitly, what you will send out. A trade partner covering the other end of the range costs no capital and carries no minimum commitment, and the arrangement is ordinary rather than an admission of anything. Price ten representative jobs both ways before deciding.

Pass this gate when you can say which processes are in-house, which are partnered, and why, with the arithmetic written down. What each machine then commits you to is covered in the presses and finishing lines themselves.

Before you sign a lease: the written answers

The premises are the second irreversible decision. Two questions have to be answered in writing before anything is signed, and a physical check comes after them.

The first is zoning. Take the address to the city or county planning and zoning office and describe the real operation: the equipment, the solvent storage, the hours, the delivery vehicles, whether the public visits. Ask whether the use is permitted and what any fit-out would need. A lease signed on an assumption here is the most expensive error available.

The second is environmental. Describe your intended process, inks and solvents to your state environmental agency, and ask whether you need a permit or registration at those volumes. Ask how waste ink and solvent must be handled, and whether a local district adds anything. A small sheetfed or digital shop is unlikely to be a major air source, but the state agency will tell you which state permit, if any, applies at your volumes.

In the United States, if spent solvent or waste ink is hazardous waste, its monthly quantity sets your federal generator category. Under the EPA's hazardous waste generator categories, Very Small Quantity Generators generate 100 kilograms or less per month, Small Quantity Generators more than 100 but less than 1,000 kilograms, and Large Quantity Generators 1,000 kilograms per month or more. Each category carries its own accumulation and shipping duties.

Ask before ordering equipment: a permit condition can dictate ventilation or containment, and retrofitting costs several times what building it in does.

Then check the physical facts: floor loading, power supply and phase, compressed air, extraction, the route a pallet takes from the door to the press, and where printed work waits before finishing.

Before the first invoice: registration, terms and safety duties

The administrative layer is largely jurisdictional and should be asked rather than assumed. It is easy to postpone and expensive to postpone.

Register the entity, open the tax accounts your jurisdiction requires, and confirm how printed work is taxed where you are, which differs. In the United States the first federal account for most shops is an employer identification number. Elsewhere the equivalent revenue authority is the source, and a qualified accountant is the route for anything consequential.

Terms of sale come next, drafted by a qualified adviser. They cover what a proof is, what approval covers, what color tolerance you hold and against which standard, for example ISO 12647-2 for offset or a G7 calibration. They also cover how overruns are handled and who pays for a reprint per case.

A printer cannot tell from a file whether a customer holds rights to artwork they supply, so the warranty must come from them.

Standing safety duties are the ones nobody issues a certificate for: guarding, interlocks, energy isolation before maintenance, and chemical information reaching the people who handle it. OSHA's printing industry pages are the starting point in the United States; elsewhere the national workplace safety authority is, and the machine manufacturer's own documentation applies everywhere.

Before the second machine: repeat customers first

This gate is where shops most often go wrong, by buying capacity ahead of demand. Open with the smallest kit that can produce your chosen work reliably, and sell.

Twenty repeat customers with a predictable rhythm is a business. One large occasional customer is a risk with a good month attached to it. Pass this gate when repeat orders arrive without being sold, and judge it on rhythm rather than on one big month.

Two habits from day one. Preflight every incoming file before the job enters the schedule, because wrong color space, missing bleed and unsupplied fonts are the standard three and they are cheapest to catch in the first hour. And record the approved proof with every job, because it is the only defense when a finished job is disputed.

How the work then moves, and where it waits, is set out in how a job travels through the shop.

Before more capacity: find the queue

Only after a few months of real jobs is there anything worth deciding from. Add capacity at the stage with the queue. Adding it anywhere else builds the queue faster. Keep the job records from the first month, because they are the only way to see where work stands.

When the answer becomes a second shift, more space or a second site, that is a different decision entirely, worked through in what expansion actually demands.

If the measured constraint justifies a machine you cannot pay for from cash, the SBA microloan program provides loans up to $50,000 to help small businesses start up and expand, and the average microloan is about $13,000. Most countries have an equivalent small business agency worth finding early.

Two decisions cannot be undone cheaply: the premises and the process. Both are made before a single invoice exists.

What differs by country, and what does not

The physics does not travel. Setup dominates short runs everywhere, paper is bought by the parent sheet everywhere, imposition decides waste everywhere, and finishing is the hidden constraint everywhere.

Almost everything else does travel badly. Permits, taxes, employment obligations, workers' compensation, waste rules, access requirements and contract law are all local, and their thresholds change. Outside the United States, treat each of the federal rules named here as a prompt to ask the body that sets the equivalent rule where you are.

Common questions

How small can a print shop start?

Small enough that one process is done well and everything else is partnered. Shops fail from buying breadth before they have depth far more often than from being too narrow.

Should I buy an existing shop?

It is a reasonable route that brings customers, staff and equipment of unknown condition. Assess it as a count: repeat customers, the state of the constrained machine, and the reprint history.

How long before a new shop is busy?

It depends on your market, so measure it rather than guess it. Track each month how many jobs come from customers who have ordered before and how many arrive without being sold. Repeat customers accumulate slowly and then hold, which is why the first-customers gate is passed on rhythm rather than volume.

What is the most common early mistake?

Buying press capacity and no finishing capacity, then discovering that the folder decides every delivery date.