Buying from China

ballooba

I've been hassling printers in Ireland and the UK for months for prices on printing plastic cards. The prices I've got have been ridiculous and they don't seem interested in the business.

I spoke to a friend in the industry on friday and he told me that this type of stuff is quite specialised and that there is insufficient demand in ireland and the UK for any printers to justify the cost of the equipment.

I figure that all of these guys are just contracting the work out to US and Asian companies anyway so why bother with the middleman.

I found a very pleasant company in China who gave me a nice price.

The shipment would weigh 8Kgs and be worth $520.

The shipping costs would be be about €130.

Is anyone aware of additional costs like customs or anything else i should be wary of?

Specky

All of the companies in Ireland (and many of those in the UK) who used to provide card print bureau services have now got out of that game and instead they sell card printers for you to do it yourself. Most people's requirements are in the hundreds rather than the tens of thousands so it is a pain for them to set up to print a small run. Much more money in selling printers....and of course, an income for life selling the consumables for the card printers which are really expensive.

There are a few Irish companies selling printed cards into the hotels for access control. One in particular dominate the market but it is a bit of a chicken/egg scenario. You can't sell the cards unless they're cheap, you can't get the cards cheap unless you're doing massive volumes.

There are a couple of US companies doing reasonable pricing (around $0.085 each in thousand up quantities with generic printing, with magnetic strip, a little more for custom printing depending on volume).

One thing I would watch is that there are some companies offering laminated cards and others offering unlaminated (often they don't actually tell you, but you can tell the difference quite easily. Laminated cards are a lot shinier than unlaminated ones). Obviously the laminated ones are more expensive but the printing and the mag strip rubs off these quite easily.

We've had problems with the mag strips on unlaminated cards and would tend to avoid them wherever possible.

ballooba

Wasn't referring to yourself by the way. I understand people being busy but a printer in Dublin who I won't name took two months to give me a quote. Some people just don't want business.

The info you gave me with regard to finger scanners was very helpful and I will be starting work on it in October. Thanks for your help.

This is for a seperate project. I am happy enough to take a chance on the Chinese guys as long as I don't then get stung by customs.

The price I got from China was $0.26 per card. They are .5mm, I presume this is quite durable.

Victor

You would pay duty (look it up on www.revenue.ie) + 21% VAT.

ballooba wrote:

They are .5mm, I presume this is quite durable.

I suspect bank cards etc. are about .7mm. Ask for a sample by ordinary airmail.

Specky

Wasn't referring to yourself by the way

Phew...

The info you gave me with regard to finger scanners was very helpful and I will be starting work on it in October. Thanks for your help.

Glad I could help, only sorry I couldn't help more.

They are .5mm, I presume this is quite durable.

Hang on, where's my calculator (card sizes are imperial and range usually between 0.02" and 0.03"...so 0.5mm is actually a at the thin end of the range so I'd say they're unlaminated.

The price I got from China was $0.26 per card.

To be honest, that sounds a little pricey for china. I'd beat that easily in the US and might not have quite as big a logistics problem. Are these custom printed? Are they all the same or do you have them coded? Is the printing full colour, single sided or double sided? Are they doing any encoding for you?

ballooba

Victor wrote:

You would pay duty (look it up on www.revenue.ie) + 21% VAT.I suspect bank cards etc. are about .7mm. Ask for a sample by ordinary airmail.

Was just looking on revenue.ie and i presume these would be classed as printed materials (section on plastics says that if the plastic carries a motif then it is printed material) as opposed to plastics.

Section on plastics : http://www.revenue.ie/pdf/CETI_04_07.pdf
Section on printed material (Chap 49.11) : http://www.revenue.ie/pdf/CETI_04_10.pdf

http://europa.eu.int/comm/taxation_customs/dds/cgi-bin/tarduty?Taric=4911109000&SimDate=20040817&Action=1&ProdLine=80&Country=CN/0720&Type=0&Action=1&YesNo=1&Indent=-1&Flag=1&Test=tarduty&Periodic=0&Download=0&Restriction=yes&Lang=EN&Description=yes

I read 0% duty on this. Surely this isn't possible?

[edit] These are member cards carrying discounts for certain stores and therefore I presume advertising material btw. Is it just me or is that tariff schedule very confusing?[/edit]

ballooba

Quote was as follows:

Size : 85 x 54 mm, round corners
Thickness : 0.5 mm
Colour : 4C + 4C
Quantity : 2000 pcs
Unit price pre card: USD$0.26/pcs(price will be more cheaper if quantity
bigger.)
Artwork film output fees : USD$40.
Delivery : 2 weeks after confirmation.0
Price for FOB China/Hong Kong.
Payment : TT/LC

There is no numbering, encoding, signature panels etc. it is essentially just a discount card for a few stores.

Victor

ballooba wrote:

These are member cards carrying discounts for certain stores and therefore I presume advertising material btw. Is it just me or is that tariff schedule very confusing?

Why not go for cardboard or laminated card?

Specky

ballooba wrote:

Colour : 4C + 4C

Oh. That'll push the price up.

Quantity : 2000 pcs

Especially for those quantities.

Artwork film output fees : USD$40.

Set up charge is quite low though.

Well if you can get your freight charges and duty sorted there's probably not going to be much in it for these quantities. No point in spending the rest of your life trying to shave a penny off here and there unless you're dealing in tens of thousands of cards.

ballooba

Victor wrote:

Why not go for cardboard or laminated card?

I don't think that they would be durable enough.

I got one of these cards 11 months ago and still use it regularly despite my wallet going through the wash etc.

By laminated card do you mean like video shop cards or the ones like printing.com do?

Victor

Well thats what I was thniking of, but you can also get "coated" types. Some taxi drivers use them as they probably reside in peoples wallets for a while.

Specky

ballooba wrote:

By laminated card do you mean like video shop cards or the ones like printing.com do?

Your credit card is a laminated card (not the same type of lamination as a video shop type card though), the laminations being a protective outer covering on both sides of the card (if your credit card gets hit the way mine does, even this starts to peel off eventually but it does prevent a lot of damage to the print and the mag strip).

As mentioned earlier, a lot of cheap cards are being sold without the lamination.

ballooba

Specky wrote:

Well if you can get your freight charges and duty sorted there's probably not going to be much in it for these quantities. No point in spending the rest of your life trying to shave a penny off here and there unless you're dealing in tens of thousands of cards.

The price I was quoted by Dublin printer was best in UK and Ireland @ €1075.20

I'll check with my designer if the 'Colour : 4C + 4C' is necessary. Don't actually know what it means . But we have 5 logos with various colours to go on it.

From all the above I am taking it that you would recommend:
.7mm cards
laminated

Thanks for all the advice so far.

Do you reckon that price sounds ok for the specification that I got Specky?

Victor

ballooba wrote:

I'll check with my designer if the 'Colour : 4C + 4C' is necessary. Don't actually know what it means . But we have 5 logos with various colours to go on it.

I presume it mean 4 colour (black, red, blue, green) on each side. More expensive than B&W, cheaper than specialist colours like gold, etc.

Specky

ballooba wrote:

The price I was quoted by Dublin printer was best in UK and Ireland @ €1075.20

Well they have to make a few pence somewhere..... :rolleyes:

I'll check with my designer if the 'Colour : 4C + 4C' is necessary. Don't actually know what it means . But we have 5 logos with various colours to go on it.

4c + 4c means full colour both sides and will really push up the price. If you could even go for full colour one side and blank (or just black) on the back you will knock a sizeable chunk off the price (almost 50%).

From all the above I am taking it that you would recommend:
.7mm cards laminated

Well they will be the most robust. Maybe you don't need the thicker card if it isn't going to be handled all that much, but there's not much point in printing complex stuff on the card if it is just going to wear off in your wallet/purse. All that valuable branding going to waste.

If you go for your current spec on a thicker, laminated card it will cost more again. If I were going to choose I'd say go for the same card thickness, laminated, with print on one side only. That should come in around the same price or lower.

Do you reckon that price sounds ok for the specification that I got Specky?

Probably is. The double sided colour print will make it costly.

I guess if these things are loyalty cards you're giving them away so it would be nice for them to cost a minimum, but even if they cost €1 surely your customer's loyalty is going to be worth more than that? So is the cost of the cards really all that important?

Specky

Victor wrote:

I presume it mean 4 colour (black, red, blue, green) on each side.

Spot on Victor.

More expensive than B&W, cheaper than specialist colours like gold, etc.

All single colour prints are about the same price, even gold and silver shiney ones. Each colour is printed seperately which is where the cost comes in. If you're only printing one colour the card only goes through the printer once, if you're printing full colour it goes through 4 times (then one more time for laminating). Also this is why colour print ribbons are so expensive for card print machines, they have 1/4 the printing capacity of a single colour print ribbon.

ballooba

Specky wrote:

I guess if these things are loyalty cards you're giving them away so it would be nice for them to cost a minimum, but even if they cost €1 surely your customer's loyalty is going to be worth more than that? So is the cost of the cards really all that important?

I work for a charity. Our sponsors, who in fairness to them have given us a lot, are not willing to contribute to the cost of printing the cards. I have a situation where we got circa 130 members last year at €2 a pop.

The cards definitely go a long long long way to getting people to join. From experience I reckon worst case scenario with the cards would be 500 at €2 a pop.

The membership fees go to helping us run the charity for the year so the lower the cost of securing the members the better.

Specky

Hmmm....I see...

I jumped to the conclusion that you are actually using a mag strip on the cards, is this the case?

If you don't need a mag strip maybe your options are more varied. Could a wee bit of lateral thinking maybe give you something more readily available here perhaps?

ballooba

No mag strips needed.

Would definitely be interested to hear your suggestions.

Specky

Well, what you're really looking for is something handy to carry, preferably in a wallet or purse (so probably needs to be flat) that will be reasonably durable and onto which you can print a number of logos and some text.

Sounds to me a lot like a business card. There are a few companies that do plastic business cards and I'm sure they'll do full colour printing too.

Alternatively you might talk to a label company making plastic stick-on labels and ask them to make the labels but don't apply the adhesive...

I think your current problem is because you're going down a specialist path for something. If you can get something functionally equivalent from a more mainstream, less specialist supplier the price will come down and the availability will go up.

What you think?

ballooba

It's not actually that specialised, just too specialised for our humble little market in Ireland. The plastic business cards are the same deal as the things I'm looking at.

The conservative side of my brain is telling me to go witht the cheapo plastic feel cards from printing.com, the more ambitious and reckless side of my brain is telling me to give china a go.

It's going to be a battle royale between the two camps over the next week (with a two day ceasefire for the weekend drinks).

To be honest the conservative side of my brain loses most of the time.

Specky

I used to be a schizophrenic but we're not anymore...


You are truly reckless...lucky thing :cool: