Thread: Please help the newbie, needs pick the right small business color label printer

Aloha!
I wish to ask this forum if a small business owner stands a chance of acheiving what I am trying to do.

We are trying to print labels for our bottled tea business. This will go to super markets, and stay in the refridgerated isle.

I have seen several paper based lables with glossy finishes (online labels.com) that are decent, and dont poof up, swelling as the moisture enters them when stuck on a product and placed in the fridge.
However, I am inclined to say, I am considering a plastic label (poly propolene I believe - weather proof lables), something that will surely not disintegrate in the fridge.

I was adviced to check out Canon (over cheaper HP models and the more expensive Xerox) for optimum price and performance. However, I know nothing about this to be true.

Can I find a printer in the $1000 range that will give us a full color label which looks pretty good? (Pretty good = as good as professionally done labels, or as close as possible).
I think I am willing to settle with the labels are OK (not taking away from the basics - no blurring - no color running - not taking away from the artwork mostly. We are thinking of full color art pieces, impressionast style work but can also do someting simple for the art work

Is laser or inkjet a better choice? Can our business achiece this without having to hire this job out and buying lables pre printed? Is there an ecomical option for a printer that the money will even out at 3000 lables approx? (This is how many tea bottles I am buying to start the business)

Also looking at PRIMERA LX 400 - LX 450 which was just released. Are these good?

thanks in advance!

MODS - Can you please move this thread to the main forum so most people see it?

The reality with a low cost printer (under 15k) is that your cost of consumables (and durables after a while with a laser such as drums and fuser) is going to be high if you're buying inkjet ink or toner/drums retail. If the coverage is high (full color background/image rather than line art and text) there may not be much real economy in printing these labels yourself, though you may not notice the economy right away as the initial consumables which you get with the printer should carry you through 3000 labels. Current pigment inkjet quality is excellent, dependent on how the ink works with the stock (so it may take more testing to get a compatible stock) but the oem inkjet cartridges will be a very high cost per print unless the coverage is pretty low. With low-cost "desktop" lasers you typically get a "dumber" printer in terms of color accuracy, and after a while the cost of the durables add up too, but not as high as inkjet ink typically. Still, you may find yourself doing the work and taking the risk buying the printer for not much if any financial gain over having someone with a 50k laser print them for you or having an offset print them if it works out to more than 1000-2000 sheets of the same. The advantage of doing it yourself however is the control, the ability to change something with no lead time if you're printing them basically on demand, and the satisfaction of being hands-on with the whole process.

thanks for the reply Copy7.
I'd like to get a very good idea of what you are talking about here.

If I spend $1000 on a decent HP (God forbid I buy this brand, although they dominate the affordable Laser printer market) or Pigment based printer, (Epson Stylus Pro 3880 Inkjet Printer is what I just googled and found on amazon as decent looking, just guessing it's good)

and what happens is I end up paying more after a 3000 page print job (pages over time). And It's not good for business if I am dealing with things I am not good at. This is a mom and pop business which only POP here is running 100%. One more problem is not welcome.

However, If I go the other route, I noticed that prices quoted to me are quite high.

My first choice for a professional company was Santa Rosa Labels, and it costs $1000 just to get plates for 4 colors ($250 a plate) . Also, minimum orders are very high, and as a brand new business with evolving products (half of our products are in R&D stage), and changes in label desgn and info may need to be made as needed in the near future after launching our website, it's hard to justify this cost since I could get stuck with thousands of labels that can't be used if a change I did not anticipate has to be made.
It's great to control over what I print, to have rotating images on our products (my wife is an artist)and for a part of our business, I wanted her art work to "revolve" on some products.

So in the month of Jan, for example, we can print a part of her latest piece, and change it in feb, if she has another piece that fits the product's needs. The aforementioned is IDEAL case senerio. It's not necessary. It would be great. I'm open to options. SO I did the next best thing. DIGITAL!

Digital prints (labels in quantity of less than 250) are exhorbidant from the price checks so far (please refer me to somoene you think this is untrue).
Sure they look good to me (I dont' need a Van Gogh in Gichlee, just a decent looking label that does not run colors)


So to summarize, I realized this catch 22 a long time ago. Thanks for pointing it out because there must be a solution to this problem. As a small business owner, I feel there surely must be!


There must be a way to print various sized lables in batches of 100-200 (labels not pages) and then I can go into photoshop, and whip up another batch for the coming months. Could be the same design, or can be changed.
This way I feel free, minimums are low, cost per label is decent. And most of all I dont have to deal with print jobs. (I have enough click and ship lables, and printing in B&W to worry about)

Am I overlooking a smoother solution that I am not aware of here?
thanks a lot! Can't seem to find help any other place.

An thinking about it, I am thinking of getting a $500 laser printer from HP (God!) and labels from onlinelabels.com and getting my product out there to test the market reception!
HELP ME NOT DO IT!

What is the actual size of the label?

With the Epson 3880 the quality will not disappoint you (as long as the labels are compatible coating for the inkjet ink) but I don't think you'll see less than $1 per print in cost (of course depending fully on the amount of ink coverage since that is 100% of the cost with the inkjet, except for the cost of the printer itself; figure you'll get around 3 years out of the epson printers before the nozzles and/or feed mechanisms start to act up costing you too much ink or time wasted, and you have to replace it; with others hp and canon you can replace heads but the cost is high, so then again, the question is whether to replace head or go for the latest greatest printer.)

With that $500 laser I'd estimate you'll have a real world cost of around 30 cents a page when all is said and done; less initially if you're not including the cost of the machine until it comes time to replace durables which can be a steep cost.

Does HP build their own color lasers now? I honestly don't know. After making thier unstoppable black and whites, I remember they used to rebadge canons for color way back in they day (nothing wrong with that). I'm not familiar with HP's current lineup at all, so maybe someone else will jump in there.

And I'm not trying to discourage you at all - I like being hands on. I don't think the advantage of doing it yourself will be economy, except that you don't get stuck with labels you want to change but have already printed in vast quantities; the control and ability to have fun with it is a nice advantage. You may end up with a brick printer in a year if anything goes wrong and there's a quality issue (roll of the dice) with one of the low end models since you won't have a qualified tech on your side with the cheap ones... but that's not a dealbreaker considering the cost of the unit and toner included and cost of that toner - it can be amortized over the next year's run. I also suspect wanting to print on plastics that printers who could print it more cheaply for you will be adding a little bit of $ to cover the ordering and experimentation/risk with the plastic label material (which could damage digital machines if wrong, e.g. losing coating into the machine and such.)

Firstly, thanks a lot to the only contributing member here, I appreciate your help.

Let's say if my needs changed. (an experiment to determine if fair quality and economy can ever be achieved if one prints their own - in the longer run, over 1-2 years)

Instead of plastics, what if I picked paper, with a gloss/matte finish. Instead of refriderated products, what if my products were not for cold storage, just on grocery shelves?

If I now pick a laser printer, say a $500 HP or something, will it be cheaper in the long run?

Curious.

Actually, I think the closer you get to "standard every day printing" the less economical printing yourself becomes.

With an inkjet, I bet you'll end up with a cost of at least $1 per page (all dependent on ink coverage) and as much as $3 a page.

With a $500 to $3000 laser, you'll end up with a cost of around $0.30 per page (dependent again on coverage; retail toner is expensive; also dependent on quality expectations as you go past 3000 and towards 10000 prints as it depends on how much use you can get out of the durables before the quality of one or more becomes an issue that needs to be replaced, which corresponds also to the difficulty of what you're printing; e.g. very consistent large solids show drum issues on lasers long before photographs or more complicated graphics which will hide any streak issues and such much longer)
A tool like http://avpsoft.com/products/apfill/ can run a pdf file and give you the % of each color C M Y and K toner a pdf document will take; remember the toner cartridge yields are calculated at only 5% coverage which is almost certainly much less than you'll print real-world.)

With a $15,000 to $75,000 printer, a printer (or you) can print up to 6x cheaper with a click contract, but then they have to pay for the machine itself (or rather the lease). My suspicion is that a printer with a digital printer/color copier/digital press can print better and cheaper than you can youself, but the more danger and setup involved the higher the overhead they'll add to the job. So printing on some unknown plastic is likely going to increase the quote a bit; whereas on your own printer, the risk is low and you aren't adding your own time to the quote

With a DI press, the price per print can be even lower, but there's a minimum to pay for the (not huge, but still) plate material cost, and the slightly higher skill level of the operator required to run the di press than the all digital machine. This could still be an option for you vs. a larger format offset though, especially if there's a local printer with a DI press who would be interested in working with you long term.

Another disadvantage of digital printing is that you don't have perfect control over finish quality; with offset, you often have a matte or gloss aq or uv coating applied over the top which provides a perfectly even finish. With laser, the quality of the paper makes a bigger difference since you won't be overcoating with a clearcoat. Rather, if the paper is very matte you will likely find the toner printed areas a bit shiny (get test prints from the printers you're considering; if you specifically want matte, look at samples on matte paper; some canon toner e.g. can be very matte, whereas xerox provides the best gloss finish on a low-end unit to my eye.); if gloss, you need a really nice gloss (e.g. cast coated) finish or else white areas won't be quite as glossy as the glossy toner areas. This isn't necessarily a drawback, but it's something to be aware of. Same thing is true to a an extent with inkjet printers where the result is much more dependent on how receptive the paper is to the ink, where you get bronzing when viewing from an angle on certain ink/stock combinations. This simply means that the stock choice may be more limited and more expensive with do-it-yourself printers not only due to the volume you will buy but also the "specialty" nature of the stock you need as you don't have a coater.

I'm not saying "don't do it" though as I enjoy control and flexibility of being directly in control of the process and I think you would too. Long term I don't think the reason to do it is economy (you'll end up with a bit of a false sense of economy when you first start until issues start to come up and you have to buy replacement parts, durables, or replacement printer(s), but that's ok too. The reason to do it is if you want ultimate control and flexibility and can still make it work economically.

Guess I really have to consider TRUE economy and the LEAST possible chance for a potential problem here. Thanks for halping me make up my mind with good information here.

Copy7, do you know of print shops you like who charge a reasonable price for paper based labels (not for refridgerated products)? It would be nice to choose from gloss, semi gloss or matte options, and dull gold and dull silver backgrounds as well.

Here are the prices I got for 3" round label.

Label Size: 3" diameter (1-lot only)
Material: Coated White Matte
Ink Colors: 1-Color 2-Colors 3-Colors 4-Color Process (digital printing)
250 pcs $78.55 $117.82 $133.53 $149.24
500 pcs $94.25 $141.38 $160.23 $179.08
+ shipping & tax

- You will provide camera ready artwork
- Estimates subject to review of actual artwork

As you can see, full color prints of $.36 per label. This is at par with cost of glass packaging for me! Unreal!!

If you know any good print shops anywhere in the US, Please recommend places where I do NOT have to pay for plates, and order 10k pieces minimum and can instead order full color labels in smaller quantities (200 labels for example) using their digital press technology.

Thanks again!
Demi