Can I just order 100 Business Cards?

Sure you can, why not?  Our pricing is structured to reflect the costs that are involved with producing your project.  So when we quote a client for 100 business cards, the pricing is quite close to that of 250 business cards.  Well why is that you ask?  You would think that 250 cards is 2.5x the order of 100 cards, so the pricing shouldn’t be that close, right?

Well let’s take a little higher view of what’s going on here.

Like most manufactured items, you try to produce them as efficiently as possible.  For our production process that means on the average we’re printing 25 final cards on 1 press sheet.  So 1 sheet = 25 cards, or 4 sheets = 100, and 10 sheets = 250 cards.

This same logic applies to postcards, brochures, booklets etc.  It applies to everything we do.

Now let’s keep in mind that this doesn’t factor in waste either.  Every job has waste, just how much depends on how well your production process is.  So what waste is involved with business cards when we produce them?  Well when we cut cards for instance, we typically lose the top sheet of the stack that is cut.  That’s just due to the pressure the cutter applies to the stack.  Sure there’s nothing “wrong” with it if you like having a deep line through your business card.  Most clients don’t, so we end up recycling that waste sheet.

So now going back, if we have an order of 100 business cards, that means instead of printing 4 sheets, we’re printing at least 5 sheets, so that the customer receives the entirety of their order vs. being given an amount less.

Now when we get to the part of where labor factors into the price, do you think it costs more or less to cut 100 cards vs. 250 cards?  It doesn’t!  It’s the exact same.

It helps to understand it when you look at the elements that factor into the pricing again:

Setup + Clicks (Print Cost) + Paper Cost + Bindery + Delivery.

You can see that the only difference for the order of 100 cards and 250 cards is the print and paper.  Well as we explained above, that’s only 6 sheets of paper.  That means it’s literally just a couple seconds more of printing.  That’s why the cost is so close.

So what do you do if you only need 100 cards and not say 250 or a larger amount?  Try doing multiples for your office.  An easy example is if you’re ordering a new card for one staff member why don’t you order a generic card for the front desk?  This way you’re getting something else of value at the same time.

With just a couple extra seconds of thought you can save yourself and your company a good bit of change by planning out your orders.  If you’re not sure what’s the best setup for your next one, just ask us and we’ll help you out.