Guides
Print shop services: what to offer and when to say no
A practical way to decide which print shop services to offer: the four commitments each one makes, how to package repeat work, and when to decline or send out.
Print shop services belong on the menu only when the shop can produce them twice in a row. A menu built that way is a promise about the presses, the finishing equipment, and the people who run them, and it is the only kind a shop can keep.
What to take away
- A service menu is a list of promises about machines, materials and skills. Add nothing you cannot produce twice in a row without drama.
- Every service has a hidden second requirement, and it is almost always in finishing.
- Packages work when they remove decisions for the customer, not when they bundle a discount.
- Some work should be declined or sent out. A trade partner is a strategy, not a confession.
- What you advertise about a package has to be what the invoice delivers.
A service is a capability, not a listing
Adding a line to the menu is not a marketing decision. It commits four things at once.
Four commitments of a service
- Processwhich press, what quantity, crossover
- Substratewhich stocks, presses run them, availability
- Finishing routecutting, folding, scoring, stitching, drilling
- Skillquoted accurately, problems recognized early
A process: which press it runs on, at what quantity, and whether it sits above or below the crossover where setup stops dominating. Substrate: which stocks the job needs, whether your presses run them, and whether they are reliably available.
Finishing route: the cutting, folding, scoring, stitching, and drilling the finished piece requires. It may also need laminating or hand work.
Skill: someone who has done it enough to quote it accurately and spot when it is going wrong.
Miss any one of the four and the service still appears on the website, gets sold, and then becomes an expensive education. The most common gap is the third: shops add work they can print and cannot finish.
What common work actually demands
| Service family | Press demand | The hidden requirement | Where it goes wrong |
|---|---|---|---|
| Business cards and stationery | Short runs, frequent changeovers, tight color expectations | Cutting accuracy and consistent stock supply | Reprints on color between orders from different lots |
| Booklets and multi-page work | Imposition skill, sheet ordering, longer runs | Folding, collating and stitching, plus creep allowance | Underquoted bindery time on anything beyond a few sections |
| Folded work: brochures, mailers | Straightforward on the press | Grain direction, scoring on heavy or coated stock, folder setup | Cracked folds on stock bought without regard to grain |
| Large format and display | Different machine entirely | Substrate handling, finishing and mounting, storage of bulky output | Space, and delivery of items that do not fit in a car |
| Variable data and direct mail | Data handling and proofing complexity | Address data quality, postal requirements, matching and inserting | Data problems discovered after printing |
| Short-run packaging and specialty | Substrate range and coverage | Cutting formes, gluing, sample approval, and long material lead times | Promising a finish nobody in the building has produced before |
Two general rules fall out of the table. Anything with a folding or binding step needs the bindery costed before the press, and anything with customer data attached needs the data checked before anything is printed.
What common work demands
Service family
- Business cards
- Short runs, tight color
- Booklets
- Imposition, sheet order
- Folded work
- Straightforward on press
- Large format
- Different machine entirely
- Variable data
- Data handling, proofing
- Short-run packaging
- Substrate range, coverage
Press demand
- Business cards
- Cutting accuracy, stock supply
- Booklets
- Folding, collating, creep
- Folded work
- Grain, scoring, folder setup
- Large format
- Substrate handling, mounting
- Variable data
- Address quality, postal rules
- Short-run packaging
- Cutting formes, gluing, samples
Hidden requirement
- Business cards
- Color reprints across lots
- Booklets
- Underquoted bindery time
- Folded work
- Cracked folds on wrong grain
- Large format
- Space, delivery of bulky items
- Variable data
- Data problems found after printing
- Short-run packaging
- Promising an unproduced finish
Where it goes wrong
- Business cards
- Booklets
- Folded work
- Large format
- Variable data
- Short-run packaging
Packaging work so it removes decisions
A package earns its place by making the customer's job easier, not by discounting.
What a package must state
- Quantity included
- Stock and substrate
- Finishing operations
- Proofs and approval
- Delivery terms
- How changes are handled
The useful packages tend to have three properties. They cover a complete outcome, not a component: a new business's stationery set, an event's printed material, or a restaurant's menu cycle.
They fix the specification, which lets you quote quickly and produce efficiently. They set a repeat rhythm, worth more to a shop than any single order.
Build them around what your shop already does well and already has stock for. A package assembled from six substrates you do not hold is a package that will be late.
Say plainly what is included and what is not: quantity, stock, finishing, proofs, delivery, and how changes are handled. Anything advertised has to be delivered as described, and the FTC's advertising guidance for small business, which applies Section 5 of the FTC Act to claims, is the reference for how a headline offer has to relate to the invoice.
The most common way a shop adds a service it cannot deliver is by checking that it can print the job and not that it can finish it.
Where to say no
Declining work is a service decision, and the shops that never do it end up with a menu that runs the building rather than the other way around.
When to decline or send out
Quantity sits on wrong side of crossover?
Trade partner is cheaper than own setup
Keep the job in-house
Decline, or send out, when:
- The quantity sits on the wrong side of your crossover and the arithmetic says a trade partner is cheaper than your own setup.
- The finishing route needs a machine you do not have and cannot reliably book.
- The substrate is one your press has not run, and the job is not the place to find out.
- The customer's data or artwork carries a rights question nobody has answered. Whether a customer has the right to reproduce what they have supplied is not something a printer can determine from a file, and what your terms should say about it is a question for a qualified adviser.
- The deadline requires displacing work you have already promised, and the customer will not pay what that displacement costs.
A trade partner covering the quantities and processes you do not own is an ordinary and profitable arrangement. It costs no capital, carries no minimum commitment, and lets you keep the customer relationship. Compare their price against your own cost per productive hour, not against your instinct to keep everything in-house.
Rights, content and what a printer is not
Two questions come with customer artwork, and neither is a printer's to answer from a file.
Whether the customer holds the rights to the images, fonts and marks in the artwork is theirs to warrant. Whether a font supplied with a job is licensed for your use is a separate question again. Both belong in your terms of sale, written with a qualified adviser, rather than settled case by case at the counter.
Accessibility, labeling and regulated content requirements attach to some printed products and vary by item and destination.
When a customer asks whether a piece meets a requirement, name the body that sets it instead of giving an assurance. Food and drug labeling runs to the FDA's rules in 21 CFR; alcohol beverage labels to the TTB; advertising claims and textile fiber content to the FTC under the FTC Act and the Textile and Wool Acts; mailpiece size, weight and addressing to the USPS Domestic Mail Manual; and accessibility standards for federal work to the U.S. Access Board's Section 508 standards. Keep that map before you need it.
Building the menu against the market
The menu is a demand question before it is a capability one.
Menu against the market
- What nearby businesses buy and how often
- Repeat work at modest margin beats occasional
- Check press, prepress, bindery wage references
- Menu needing unhirable skill has a hole
- Solvent, waste, ventilationstate agency
- Machine and chemical safetyOSHA
Look at what nearby businesses buy and how often. Repeat work at modest margin beats occasional high-margin work in almost every small shop. It fills the schedule predictably and costs almost nothing to sell.
Then check the labor the menu implies. Press, prepress, and bindery roles appear in the BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics survey by occupation and local area, at the BLS occupational wage tables. A menu that needs a skill you cannot hire locally has a hole.
Some of the production duties come attached to the process rather than the customer. Solvent handling, waste, and ventilation questions belong to your state environmental agency, and the machine and chemical safety requirements start at OSHA's printing industry pages: the machinery guarding, hazardous energy, and hazard communication rules in 29 CFR Part 1910, including 1910.212, 1910.147, and 1910.1200, and the ventilation requirements at 1910.94.
Whether the demand exists at all, and in what mix, is settled by the work in reading the trade area before committing.
Reviewing the menu once a year
- Which services were sold, how often, and by how many distinct customers.
- Which ones consumed the constrained machine disproportionately.
- Which ones produced reprints, and from what cause.
- Which ones were quoted and lost, and on what grounds.
- Which ones nobody has sold in a year and are still on the website.
Then cut. A shorter menu produced well is worth more than a long one produced anxiously. Keep the records that make the review possible: job tickets, quoted against actual, and the reprint log, in the form described in IRS Publication 583, Starting a Business and Keeping Records.
Common questions
Should a new shop offer a wide menu to attract customers?
No. A short menu produced reliably builds a reputation faster, and a wide one produced unevenly builds a different reputation just as fast.
Do packages have to be discounted?
They do not. What a package sells is a decision removed and a predictable outcome. Discounting one that already saves the customer effort gives away margin for nothing.
How do I decide whether to send work out or buy the machine?
Compare the trade partner's price against your cost per productive hour on a machine you would have to keep busy, including finance and consumable commitments. Send it out until the volume clearly clears that comparison.
What if a customer asks for something we have never produced?
Say so, and quote it as a first run with the sample step priced in, or decline. Quoting an unfamiliar job at a familiar rate is the most reliable way to lose money in this trade.
