Okay, now as you get into outsourcing fine art photography, you’ve got some issues to deal with:
1. Signing the print. If the print is going to be drop / shipped to the customer to improve turnaround time, you obviously can’t sign it. You can put a digital signature in the border and you can send a certificate of authenticity for the prints through regular postal mail… but frankly, it’s not the way to go.
2. If you are going to buy several prints at one time, you can’t have that drop / shipped to the customer. So again – drop / ship doesn’t make sense.
WCI does a fantastic packaging job, and you really want to re-use that packaging to send it to the customer. It saves you time and packaging costs. The more I think about it, the less sense drop / ship makes.
What makes sense, in terms of saving money, is to order more than one of your most popular prints. I don’t remember the exact number of prints – I think when you hit 10 of the same the price really goes down.
And finally – you really do want to see what is going out to the customer. So have it shipped to yourself so you can inspect it, add your certificate of authenticity, sign the print, add promotional material etc. (I put a business card, a photo card and framing instructions) and then re-use the packaging to ship to the customer. Yeah, that’s the way I’m going to do this. I already have two prints in the queue at WCI and it is a pleasure to think that I won’t print or package them anymore. That is living large.
* * *
Feb. 8, 2010
Following up with West Coast Imaging – I had a nice conversation with M. who then went on to talk with the production staff, and they are going to give me a better turnaround time when I need it. What a great bunch of people to work with. And frankly, I totally understand their turnaround time for inkjets as they can have the same issues that I have.
So let’s see how it goes. The first thing I’m going to do is prepare a bunch of my most popular files to do in quantity with WCI. Then as orders come in I’ll have them shipped back to me so I can a) check them and b) add my promotional material and sign them etc. I’m feeling very hopeful about this arrangement.
Yup, that’s the way to go – shipped back to you for inspection, quality control and signature, then off to the customer with peace of mind. How much time are you really talking about this process adding, and if that time for fulfillment is clearly spelled out on your site, how many customers would really have a problem with that? And for those that do, just pass WCI’s rush charge on to them, at their choice. IMHO.
Dave W.
7 Feb 10 at 10:06 pm
Back to you for inspection, signing, etc. sounds better. As good as the lab is you want to see the print.
Craig Nisnewitz
7 Feb 10 at 10:37 pm
At some level this would seem to be a numbers exercise. This a vast oversimplification … but for arguments sake … If you print yourself there is a per print cost. One factors in equipment (and the tax advantage of depreciation), paper, ink and your time and prints cost X. If WCI does it they cost Y. The difference between cost and retail is your net profit (not factoring your other business costs). It would be interesting to see a spreadsheet with all the variables worked out. Dave as you’ve pointed out, no fancy spreadsheet is needed to figure out prices have to go up … but still it would be interesting to see it all worked out … I wonder if WCI has a white paper on having them do your printing vs. buying a printer and doing it yourself.
Ty
8 Feb 10 at 12:13 am
Ty – even in it’s most simple form, it would be a huge undertaking.
1. What is my time worth? Is it the same labor cost for various activities, i.e. is packaging activity billed at the same rate as printing?
2. One of the most interesting and doable things would be to figure out how much paper and ink were used and divide that cost by the number of sold prints. But the printer doesn’t know the difference between expensive paper that was wasted and sheets of xerox paper that were used. Does it? I don’t think so.
3. Shipping costs for the paper and ink.
4. Of course I haven’t kept a record of how much time was spent just maintaining the equipment. Obviously this was extensive over the last four or five days.
5. If I reuse packaging from WCI – then I would need to figure out how much it cost me for: plastic bags, separating sheets of paper, boxes, fragile stickers. Tape. And time spent packaging.
It would, as I say, be quite an project to undertake. I would have had to be like a lawyer, writing down each activity and time spent at it during a given period of time. Maybe someone has done something like this but I doubt it. It goes against the grain of most photographers. But as I say, the most mysterious (at least to me) aspect of it, is what my labor is worth.
I did once do a simple task of taking my gross sales, roughly subtracting supplies and equipment, and including time spent shooting and in post processing, scanning negatives, supporting / building the web site etc. and I came up with a number that showed that my hourly rate was less than if I were working at a fast food chain.
Now that hourly rate goes up substantially if I’m shooting beauty shots of New York; and down to practically nothing if I’m doing street photography. The reason being that a) street shots take the most time to capture and b) sell the least, no matter how “good” they are. I always found that fascinating, that the most challenging form of the art (street photography) – even if it’s at the level of a Cartier Bresson – because of the ratio of keepers – and the lack of public interest – are the most expensive to produce, and the least likely to sell.
Which is why, I think that the best thing a street photographer can do is find assignments that pay for that sort of work.
dave
8 Feb 10 at 1:12 am
Have you considered a printers co-op ? There must be several photographers in the city who could share the cost of the operation, but have more control over their own work.
Robert
8 Feb 10 at 7:51 am
Robert, regarding the printers co-op – have you or has anyone else ever heard of something like that in New York or other large city?
The first thing that comes to mind is where would it be located, and what would the overhead for the space be (cable connection, electric, rent).
Basically, you’d still be stuck with the same issues, i.e. printer maintenance, packaging, and now you’d have to hop on the subway to do your print run and come back when prints are dry… etc.
What I think you’d end up with is essentially running a print shop where no one gets paid. Plus, you’d have five or I don’t know how many photographers who all have different levels of expertise in terms of keeping the co-op machinery in good shape; ordering supplies… Personally, I can’t see it.
dave
8 Feb 10 at 9:32 am
Dave -
This really is an interesting topic … made more of a mystery by hard to quantify costs associated with inkjet printing. It seems like costs associated with running a wide format printer would be more readily available with a google search but they are not … or at least I’m not finding it but I’ve only spent a few minutes looking.
I thought it would be interesting to try and put numbers to this and I admit I’m likely missing something here but lets give it a go…
I’ve seen calculations from time to time on news groups and on the Red River Papers site they show a test coming up with with a cost of $1.00 in ink per 8X10. So that would be roughly $2.00 per 16X20. What does a sheet of Museo Rag 17X22 cost? Single sheets are about $5.00 give or take. So in rough materials cost thats $7.00 per print for a 16X20.
What about a printer? A 24″ Epson, Canon or HP is about $2500 -3000. The life of printer is what? 3-5 years? Lets say 5 for this exercise. At 3K this works out to $600.00 per year or $50.00 per month.
Of course hardware like this can be written off as a business expense so the actual cost basis would be less.
If you make 25 prints a month that works out to $2.00 a print.
So in my very off the cuff analysis a 16X20 print costs … just in hard materials costs about $9-10. More prints or less expensive materials changes the equation. At quantity a WCI 16X20 is about $33.00 not inclusive of packing or shipping.
This of course doesn’t include time for packing or dealing with a cranky clogged printer (and wasted materials for doing so). On that issue I think you just have to figure that as part of the cost of owning that printer. What does that add a year? $100? $200? $300? and increase the cost basis.
How many hours a month are spent printing? Figure that out and what your time is worth will help with the equation.
Ty
8 Feb 10 at 10:59 am
Ty – the amount of wasted paper is fairly substantial for me. I’d have to add one botched print for every 8 good ones, and that’s when the printer is up to snuff. i.e. a fleck of coating on the paper comes off. a spec of dust lands on the print and sticks. And when things are screwed up, you can go through a lot of ink and paper. It depends on how picky you are about defects.
It’s not only me. For example, when I did my last order with WCI, the 40 x 60 inch print, they called to say they had found a defect in the print and were going to reprint it. That is exactly the attitude that I appreciate from a printer. And so there’s a one to one ratio, at least for that print.
When I have the time – I’ll see if I can fill in some numbers.
dave
8 Feb 10 at 11:14 am
Of course, WCI would be used only for prints that have been ordered, or for inventory purposes for the more popular prints.
I’d think that you’d still have to do a decent amount of printing yourself . . . test prints mainly. Printing new work just to see if it works as a print. Although you wouldn’t need a large printer for that function, after all.
Mike Mundy
8 Feb 10 at 3:15 pm
Mike, absolutely. I would still be doing proofs on my own printers before sending them to WCI. I’m going to order a bunch of the more popular prints very soon just to have them in stock.
dave
8 Feb 10 at 4:50 pm