Making Money with a Trade Printer 101

Printing is an expensive business. The cost of paper, ink, and machinery can prevent you from increasing profits easily. One of the most effective ways to save money in your printing business is to work with a wholesale or trade printer.

The Role of a Trade Printer

A trade printer is able to provide you with the same level of quality printing at less than you can print it for yourself. A trade printer’s job is to get work done for you quickly, economically, and efficiently. And when your customers receive the final product, they will never know that their print materials didn’t come directly from your plant.

Who Buys From Trade Printers?

The most common customers for trade printers are print business owners, graphic designers,  print brokers, and marketing firms. It is also common for commercial printing companies to outsource their jobs to trade printers to fulfill a specific request or when they require specialized equipment to complete an order. Furthermore, many resellers who do not own printing equipment rely solely on trade printers for producing their clients’ orders. Ideally you should find a trade printer that sells printing only to print providers and resellers, not end users.

The Advantages of Working with a Trade Printer

Trade printing contains a number of advantages. Clients can save on production costs they would normally pay to print in-house, such as the costs of paper, ink, labor, machinery, and more. This is thanks to things like offset printing, gang imposition, automated workflows, and other efficient processes possible only with large volumes of printing.

Printing with a trade printer also helps you save time. Instead of doing repetitive, time-consuming work, commercial printers can outsource these tasks to the trade printer so that they can focus on more complex and value-adding tasks.

The Process

Whether you are a printer that is simply overwhelmed, a small print shop that received an order for a big print project, or a company that would like to add printing to the list of services that you offer, a trade printer can be a valuable ally.

It begins with taking the order from your customer. Make sure that it meets the file requirements of your trade printer, and place your order. Your trade printer will then process your order and produce it using their equipment, which is often more advanced and expensive than small print businesses can afford themselves.

From there, you are afforded two options: you can have the items shipped to you first or you can have them “blind shipped” directly to your customer. Blind shipping means that the items will arrive without any identifying marks from the printing company. You get to claim all of the credit.

Markups and Your Profits

With the low prices that come from wholesale printing, you’ll be able to increase your markups while keeping your own prices competitive. This maximizes your print profits.

A good trade printer is also able to offer you consistent wholesale pricing. Because their pricing is stable, yours can be too. For trade printers like SinaLite that have an instant quoting system, you’ll be able to quote your clients quickly and know exactly how much you’ll earn from each order.

What Do Trade Printers Print?

Trade printers can offer countless products suitable for promotional materials, events, storefronts and more. In contrast, printing such a large variety of products in-house is difficult and costly. A full service wholesale printer offers all of the items that your customers want, such as:

• Business cards
• Postcards
• Brochures
• Booklets
• Signage
• Banners
• Magnets
• Stationery
• Labels
• And more

Working with a trade printer that offers a vast selection of printed products helps you become a one-stop shop for your clients. You’ll be able to provide everything from small marketing collateral to large format printing. That way, they will be less likely to go to your competitors.

How to Choose a Trade Printer

Here are some key attributes to consider when looking for a good trade printer to do business with:

• High quality printing, proven by customer reviews and testimonies
• Up-to-date equipment
• Strong, dedicated customer service with adept knowledge about the print industry
• Various shipping options, including blind shipping
• Fast turnarounds to meet your clients’ deadlines
• A large selection of print products
• Additional services that equip you to grow your business
• Wholesale prices that are not available to your end-users

SinaLite

For an established trade printer that has been in business for over 20 years, we recommend SinaLite. This wholesale trade printer currently serves over 9,000 print businesses and graphic designers all over North America. Their goal is to help businesses like yours grow. They provide not only the printing services to do that, but also free business tools, which are available on their Business Tools page once you sign up for an account with them.

Edited by Haidan Dong