The cost of full-blown specialist design software can be surprisingly high. Adobe's Creative Suite, for instance, sells for more than $2,000 for new users. While this appears a hefty investment, if you're confident in your basic design skills it will quickly prove cheaper than paying an external designer $100 an hour.
If you plan to frequently produce catalogues and have a constantly changing range of stock, then a digital camera may also be a useful addition to your in-house marketing kit. For effective printing, aim for the highest resolution available (at least four
megapixels). To get the best results, make sure you take pictures in a well-lit environment, and take advantage of image editing software to fix up any problems and crop out unwanted details.
A fundamental decision when examining in-house printing and marketing productions is whether to purchase the equipment outright. Printer prices have dropped dramatically in recent years. The most basic entry-level colour printers cost well under $100, and even high-performing business grade colour lasers can be had for less than $1,000.
However, such comparisons are a little deceptive. Consumable costs for printers remain much higher than their initial installation costs (and most printer companies make far more money from selling cartridges than from selling machines). To effectively judge the cost of a printer, you need to combine initial hardware with the likely volume of printing you'll do, converted into cartridge use.
Increasingly, printer companies now sell printers on a service model—for a fixed monthly fee, a printer and its associated consumables are provided, along with servicing. Rates are pegged to the number of pages printed per month, but can be adjusted if needs differ dramatically over time. Providing you're happy with the basic costs associated with the model, this can be much simpler than trying to assess for yourself how many ink cartridges you'll consume.
Vella is a firm advocate of a combined leasing arrangement, with Phoenix Freight's latest system leased over a three-year period. "We've got one fixed monthly cost which is fully inclusive of all toner and servicing."
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