Blame Amazon. Time was when nobody expected same-day anything. Then the online juggernaut appeared and now everyone expects the thing they’ve just ordered to be at their door pretty much the moment they’ve ordered it.
Investing in same day printing can help you give customers the immediacy they expect, but it comes at a cost for print shop owners. So is it worth it?
Same day printing: the need for speed
Do customers really value same day printing services? Look at it this way: we’re in a world where everything is on demand. It would be astonishing if that didn’t apply to print. The stats back this up.
As the UK print industry has declined by 4%, express printing services have grown 4% globally. The UK is print-on-demand’s third biggest market.
Meanwhile, the average turnaround for a standard digital print job has decreased by 40%, from five days in 2020 to three days in 2023.
The world expects everything faster, and print is no exception.
Express printing services: cost vs reward
Inevitably, setting up a same-day printing service will come at a cost if you’re doing the print yourself, even for a print shop that already has equipment, staff and ways of working in place.
The costs
Equipment: You might need to bring in new equipment to cope with the faster turnarounds customers expect, especially if your existing printers aren’t designed for high speed. If your printers are likely to be working harder, they’re more likely to need more regular maintenance, so there’s the cost of service contracts to factor in too.
People: It’s not a given that you’ll need more staff. Depending on your printers’ capability, you could automate more, enabling your team to manage an increased workload. But if scaling up express printing in your business will mean longer hours of operation, you’ll need more people, increased working hours, overtime (or all three) to manage.
Inventory: Printing more, faster means more substrate, more ink, more finisher. Same day capability will almost certainly lead to carrying a wider stock of print materials than you might previously to cope with urgent demand. And there’s the risk that as jobs are completed faster, wastage rates increase.
Workflow: You can make your print shop more efficient (and therefore perhaps reduce the need for additional staff or printer costs) using workflow automation software. But if you don’t already own it, you’ll need to pay for that too.
Outsourcing: Alternatively, you can outsource all of the printing to someone else, saving you time, money and effort in equipping, staffing and supplying your business. On the flip side, you sacrifice a lot of control and profit because you’ll have to pay your printer/dropshipper.
The benefits
The single biggest benefit of offering express printing services is profit. Customers are prepared to pay more for faster turnarounds, although there’s a lot of discrepancy in the figures which suggest the profit uplift range is somewhere between 10% – 40%.
Those higher margins seem to be based on niche products – so same-day printing of banners, flags and posters is likely to fall at the lower end of that range.
It’s also true that as same day becomes the default expectation, the profit uplift may drop, but there’s still enormous value in offering same-day printing services, if only to keep pace with the rest of the market.
The challenges of express printing
It’s not as if you can flick a switch and make your whole operation same day overnight. There’s an argument to suggest you shouldn’t do that, even if you could. So in considering shifting to a same day printing service model, consider:
Your ability to deliver: The reality needs to match the promise, otherwise you risk real reputational damage. There’s no point offering same day unless and until you can deliver consistently. That means ironing out bottlenecks and production backlogs before scaling up. Print automation can be particularly valuable here.
Risk to existing business: If you switch focus to same day printing, is there a risk to existing trade? Would a switch encourage new business? Or would existing customers simply want the existing service upped to same day? It’s important to know who the same day part of the business is targeting and clearly segment them, so they remain separate from ‘regular’ trade.
Burnout: You can probably do more with the people you already have. Add in automation and streamline workflows and you might be able to do considerably more. But there’s a limit. So make sure you keep lines of communication with staff open, so you know when it’s time to hire.
Considerations for launching same-day printing services
Just a thought: what does same day mean to you? Four-hour turnaround? Close of business? Midnight? It’s important to set expectations and you can only do that if you’ve established the ‘rules of engagement’ for your business. So bring your team together to define:
- What same day looks like for your business.
- Whether that definition changes by product. Does wide-format print, for example, run to a different standard than flyers.
- Tiered price options based on time or speed (or both).
- How you’ll trial capacity and capability before scaling up – run express printing on a single product to understand what unexpected things it throws up, operationally. And set a time limit for the trial.
- How you’ll measure success.
Same day isn’t a ‘no-brainer’ for a business. If your reputation is built on quality, on the sort of products or finishes that would be challenging to deliver in a day, or on niche products for which customers will happily wait, same day may not be the right route for you.
Even where express printing services represent a clear opportunity, costs, capabilities or logistics may force you to, at the very least, take baby steps towards implementing same day in your business.
Talk to Soyang
Where express printing is a) viable and b) makes commercial sense, talk to Soyang about the printing materials that can enable your same day success.
