When To Switch To Automatic Printing

We recently asked our long-time Product Manager, John Hatcher, what advice he would give printer/owners about running their business.  John has a lot of experience, so of course he had a lot to say.  One of the points he did elaborate on is the following:  “Many printers who own their own business don’t value their own time as much as they should.  What I mean is, they don’t put a dollar value on the hours they put into the business, often working by themselves late nights to finish a job.   Some time ago I met a printer who did just that, working too many hours printing shirts manually.  Oftentimes, these printers don’t realize how valuable their time is or how much better they can utilize their time in expanding their business rather than spending most of their time printing the job manually when an automatic printer may cut their print time by 50% to 75%.  I suggested to this printer that he should really invest in an automatic printing machine.  At first, he was not keen on the idea - probably because of the expense; but several months later he called me and told me that that was the best investment he’s ever made as now he could do two to three jobs in the same amount of time it had taken them to do one job.  They also had more time to spend on promoting and selling their products to help expand the business and more time to spend with their family and friends.  My advice to other small printers is to take a good look at your business and make sure to make the transition to automation as soon as you can when your time is taken up too much by manual printing or other tasks that could be automated.  While the cost of an automated printer may seem to be really expensive for a small business, if you really do time studies you more than likely will find that the dollars generated compared to the time put in can improve to a very large degree with automation.  The key is outputting more work or jobs in the same amount of time as one spent on doing fewer jobs, so you should have more income for the same amount of time worked.  Does this mean you buy a 14-color automatic, probably not for your first automatic.  You really need to look at your key or top-selling products and then make your decision on what type of equipment would best suit your needs.  If you do primarily 1 to 4 color designs, then a six or eight color press may be all you need for your first automatic.”