Hi Jessica -The key to a successful business is first doing research. Do you have any shops like yours in the surrounding area? Will your shop be catering to a special niche? Price points? Do companies and consumers around you need a service you are providing? Know you won’t get rich anytime soon being a letterpress printer, long long hours doing anything and everything to get orders out. The glory is design and letterpress but then there’s also invoicing, estimating, ordering and keeping track of supplies, keeping the presses and equipment you have well conditioned, the cost of materials (which are skyrocketing). If you are planning to do commercial letterpress printing or custom – do you have a pr plan? How will you get the word out? What if you get a lot of orders in a small period of time, can you get full or part time staff to help? Do you have enough experience to start a printing business? We’re on the Letpress list and see too many times where new printers get a job they can hardly handle on their presses and then asking for help at the 11th hour. Sorry to be such a downer but these are all legit questions to ask before you start a business. It takes a lot of labor, stress and money to build a successful business no matter how small.To answer the rest of your questions…There are an influx of new letterpress printers out lately, which is great for the letterpress industry. You can compete still, it’s such a small % of printers as a whole, if you are creating something that people want to buy and they’re buying it, you don’t have to worry much about competition. There is still a lot of room for great design printed letterpress. We shop the gift and stationery stores and you can clearly see good design from everything else. In this nasty market, it’s more than slapping a vintage graphic on Lettra and selling it for $5/card.I think it’s a good time to start any business when there’s a need for your product or service in your area. As long as you have enough capital and have a good plan, you’re already half way there.Good luck with everything and let me know how we can help you on your journey!
