Printing for designers

Hi there! I’ve had a couple of requests from designers who would like to have their own designs letterpress printed so that they can sell them in their shops and I’m having a really hard time figuring out what to charge. I know what to charge for my own greeting cards that I sell in my shop…should I just take a percentage off of that for designers? I’m curious to hear what all of you do in that situation? Thanks!

This is a good question.

I really struggle with this because you never know when you’ll see returns if you charge a percentage of sales. I’m hoping some other folks will chime in!

I would charge them for the paper, plates etc at the standard rate (purchase price plus surcharge) and charge the printing hours at a reasonable level. I don’t what how high that might be in the States, but in The Netherlands I explain to letterpress printers that a mechanic for your car would charge about 60?/hour, only for labor. I believe a letterpress printer should use more or less the same level.

Don’t worry about the final selling price by he designer. That is his/her issue, not yours.

Christiaan / passion for paper

I would also love to know what other printers are doing for this. For myself, I currently offer designers a 20% discount on my retail prices, but that is for wedding invitations and not for greeting cards or pre-made type items. I’m a relatively new letterpress business owner so that discount was just something I came up with rather randomly…. so far it’s worked out.

I wrote an article about pricing a while back over on Letterpress Commons:

http://letterpresscommons.com/pricing/

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