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How Do I Choose the Right Business Card Slitter for My Print Shop?
In this series of posts, “How do I choose?”, we will help you take a little of the guesswork out of selecting the best print finish product for your shop or office. It’s sometimes difficult to find the right machine to fit your needs when there are so many models.
Ah, the business card. Still a valuable business tool after all these years. If you’re a full-service shop, you’re likely printing business cards for clients that use your other services. If you’re not, you may be missing out. It’s a nice little revenue stream that requires very little work, and even less up-front investment. That is… if you’ve chosen the right business card slitter.
But how do you do that?
When it comes to business cards, you must consider volume and automation. The more volume you expect, the more automated you probably want to be. Automated business card slitters like the HS-3000 will cut and stack 1,000 cards in five minutes ready to box and deliver. When you’re doing cards for an entire company that’s just gotten a new logo or street address, the speed and accuracy of a machine like this comes in handy.
Manual models are still efficient and are certainly not slow, and they have the advantage of being extremely economical. Lloyd’s has a great selection of both manual and automatic card slitters.
The thing to consider when buying either model is the format in which you’ll print the cards in the first place. 8-up, 10-up, 12-up, gutter, or no gutter are all options. Just remember, the flexibility and speed your print shop has in cutting business cards may just keep your customers from exploring purchasing one of these machines on their own. These machines are so easy to operate, they’re also sold as “ideal for the office.”
Color Variable Data Business Cards with a UV Printer
I’m tired of business cards. They’re dull, they’re boring, they haven’t changed in nearly 100 years.
Oh sure, you get the occasional creative type that has a uniquely die-cut card, like a round card, a thin half-size card, or even the double-sized card that’s folded over to normal size (although to be honest, I tear off the half that doesn’t have the person’s name on it).
But these cards all look the same. They’re on white stock, have different colored inks, and have the same information on it.
Yawn.
Look people, we live in an amazing technological age: we’ve put a man on the moon, we can transplant hearts and livers into people, and we have special printers that will actually print photographs inexpensively. Why do you insist on printing one-sided, two-color business cards on white stock when you can print double-sided full-color cards for the same price?
Why not print a card with a photo on the back, full-color logo and color background on the front? All you need is the right kind of printer, like the Legend 72HUV UV curable inkjet printer. We have one of these in our shop here in Indianapolis. I’m always amazed by what it can do.
This printer is basically a huge version of your typical desktop inkjet printer. Think of all the color documents, fancy graphs, and even photographs you’re able to print on something the size of a VCR. Now imagine being able to do that on a 4 foot wide substrate. Although the Legend 72HUV is often used by sign shops and poster printers, it can also be used as a way for cut sheet printers to save costs and increase revenue. And it can be used to print some of the coolest business cards I’ve seen in a looooong time.
Photo: PhotoOneGang