The following article appeared in Graphics Arts Magazine– January 1987.

This is an excerpt from that article.

Part I

What Price, Price?                                                                                                                                                                                               by Richard L. Joutras         Chariman, Bradley Printing Company, Des Plaines, Illinois

A feed salesman was having trouble making a sale to a particularly penurious farmer. The farmer kept insisting there had to be a lower price for feed. The exasperated salesman finally agreed but pointed out that the quality would be lower. “The only feed available at a lower price is feed that’s already passed through the cattle,” he said.

That story demonstrates that you have to pay for quality and value. In printing, perhaps more than in many other fields, buying at the lowest possible price may be more than the customer can afford.

Printers compete on the bases of quality, time and cost. Any printer can bid a job cheaply, but the lower the cost will surely have to be made up in sacrifices in quality, or time, or both.

Printed pieces are run for  specific reasons: annual reports to meet reporting requirements and to set an image for the company; advertising pieces to attract potential customers; information pieces to get the word out about a company. But if people don’t read them, or if they look less than the finest quality, they’ve failed. A poor printing job, even one run for the lowest possible price, is worse than one not run at all.