Beginner's Guide to Commercial Printing?

Hello all,

Very nice forum, I just joined today. I am about to launch a business card website where I have partnered with a print-shop to sell business cards online, but eventually I want to operate my own printer to cut the middle man out and increase my margins.

My question for you guys is this: are there any FAQs or beginner's guides online for commercial printing? I've been researching with Google but haven't found anything like this. Some questions I have include:

• What type of printer do I need to print high-quality business cards, brochures, stationary, etc?
• Is there any special software required to use these commercial printers?
• How much (ballpark) would I need to spend to get a high quality commercial printer, something capable of making top of the line business cards?
• How do you cut the business cards once they're printed?

Anyways, if there is a document (or a thread on this forum) somewhere that would get me started, that would be really helpful!

Thanks!

 

Are there specific types of business cards you're looking at, or all types? I mean 4-color gloss cards, raised type, foil stamped, special stocks... there are so many business cards out there, that top of the line to me means unique. If so, the cost may or may not be that great depending on what you specialize in.
For the mainstream 4-color gloss cards, top-of-the-line small format for business cards would mean a 300,000K+ offset with UV plus finishing equipment. Digital machines won't match this, especially under 100,000k where finishing isn't quite as good as uv offset and registration of the print on the sheet isn't quite accurate. Specializing in something not so mainstream, you may be able to produce top-of-the-line (the best possible in that medium) for far less.

 

Depends on the volume and budget. Google for "business card slitter" and you'll see a variety of tabletop to floor standing slitter machines designed to cut short run small format into finished cards. Cutting them on a guillotine is a pain as most aren't designed to work ideally with such small size as the last rows you'll end up with... but it works if your volume is small or you can optimize the workflow to end up with the cards nicely ganged on the sheets possibly with some larger cards at the edges. Bigger volume = machines better optimized for a card only workflow

 

re

Thanks for the response, very helpful!

I'd be looking to offer four-color UV coated business cards and raised print business cards, along with speciality cards like plastic/metal/magnetic business cards (which I imagine bumps the cost up?). $300k is certainly a lot of money, but once my website is established I wouldn't have a problem with investing that much if it meant increasing my margins for the long-run.