When shopping for labels, you obviously want to get the best value for your money.
But you might be surprised that the lowest price is not always the “best” price. For various reasons, a cut-rate label order might not live up to your standards or properly meet your needs.
In our recent webinar, “How to Negotiate for Better Label Pricing,” The Label Printers’ President, Lori Campbell, and Joe Kane, Vice President of Technology, outline everything you need to know (and consider) to get the best price for your custom labels.
Label Pricing Depends on Several Factors
Custom labels are not just stickers. Anyone can get a sticker that looks exactly the same and isn’t customizable to your product. Custom labels are unique to your organization and designed with your needs in mind. And those needs determine the price. Factors that affect the price include:
- Form, fit, and function are the basic building blocks for your label, including its purpose, the materials it will adhere to, and its expected lifespan.
- Materials and size vary widely and can impact durability and longevity.
- Color and graphics can influence how your label looks and what it costs.
A Good Vendor Relationship Goes a Long Way
When it comes to label pricing, how well you communicate and work with your vendor can have a big impact on the pricing options you’re given. Some considerations include:
- Creating your labels should be a collaborative project – meaning open, two-way conversations.
- It’s important to be upfront about your budget and what you expect from your labels.
If you’re not comfortable with either of these things, you may not be working with the right vendor.
Take a deeper dive and learn more about what was discussed in the webinar.
Webinar Transcript
Lori Campbell:
Welcome to our webinar. We want to thank you all for taking the time out of your busy day to join us. Now I know the title says How to Negotiate for Better Label Pricing, but we really hope that you leave today feeling like it's less about negotiating and more about collaborating. To get your best label price, be aware that you all are muted, but you will have the opportunity to ask any questions you might have used the question mark box in the upper corner of your screen. We'll address all the questions at the end and a link to the recorded webinar will be sent out to all the attendees. So, I'm Lori Campbell. I am the president at The Label Printers. I've been here for about 40 years and active in the industry for about 30 of those years, years. I started out as a receptionist and kind of moved my way through the organization primarily in customer facing roles, which included estimating and it's that realm of experience that I helped to bring to the table today.
Joe Kane:
I'm Joe Kane. I'm a partner and vice president of technology here at the Legal Printers. I've been here for over 25 years now. Started shrink wrapping labels, part-time back in the day. Eventually moved my way into pre-press and IT departments eventually to management all the way to today where I'm involved in all aspects of the organization. But today mainly I'm going to be drawing upon that pre-prints and production experience.
Lori Campbell:
Just a fair warning, this is our first webinar, so hopefully you can forgive any rookie mistakes that we might make. We are going to send out a survey afterwards and we hope that you'll take a moment to give us some feedback so that we can make some improvements as we do want to do more webinars this year. And towards that end, hopefully you can share maybe some additional topics that you'd like to hear about. So, we really would appreciate any feedback you can give us. So, to kick us off, Joe, would you like to go through an overview of our agenda for today?
Joe Kane:
Sure, no problem. So, in general, we hear from customers all the time. They might hate dealing with labels or the whole process is frustrating. It can be that way for us too. Sometimes it's more complicated than we give it credit for, but our goal here is to guide you from being a frustrated buyer or maybe you're just new to this whole thing and we'll help you through that process. We want you to be confident that your suppliers are working with you, of course not against you in making your experience as stress-free as possible. We're going to face some of those frustrations head on. We'll talk about some basic factors that go into your price and we'll break down some of the specifics and in the end we'll talk about what a trusted vendor relationship should look like. Lori, do you want to talk about some of those frustrations?
Lori Campbell:
Always happy to talk about frustrations. So, for a lot of people, we know it's just a sticker, what can be so complicated, but here we'd like to distinguish between stickers and labels, primarily custom labels, we think of stickers as being general or generic in nature. You can get them anywhere even online, and in those cases we strongly encourage price comparison shopping because pretty much if it's a generic label, it's something that you're going to be able to get at multiple places. All of them will probably suit your needs and then therefore you've got the ability to just keep going until you find that cheapest price. But custom labels are going to be unique to your organization. Now, it might even be a blank label, but maybe it has a special size, a special shape, so that makes it not something you can buy out in the open marketplace.
And sometimes custom has nothing to do whatsoever with the label, but it might have everything to do with how you need to manage distribution or your inventories, and you usually can't do that with a generic sticker vendor. So, we know you have a lot of us label folks banging on your doors. You give one of us a chance to compete for your business. We come in with a better price than your current vendor and now we cut the business until the next vendor comes along and undercuts our price. Or maybe you found a way to buy your labels online. Sometimes this transactional approach works, but sometimes it doesn't. All of a sudden now maybe you start hearing from people on your production floor that this new label isn't sticking quite as well as the previous one did. Or marketing is starting to be concerned because the label, or I'm sorry, the logo color isn't quite right.
Or maybe you've got a deadline to get a huge, massive order of your own out, but you can't do it without the label and it's not there. You call to find out where it is and maybe you're going to get it in a week, maybe it'll be two weeks, and these are all stressors that nobody wants in their day. So, trying to resolve any of these issues is going to vary vendor to vendor and navigating a lot of different vendor relationships is never easy, but it's even harder if you don't have a relationship to start with. If you're buying transactionally that's usually the level of customer service you get in return, unfortunately. But we think there's a way to kill two birds with one stone, get the label you need for the price you need, and work with a vendor whose job it is to remove some of these stresses and just make your job easier.
But what does that look like? How can you be certain your label vendor is going to give you the best price? Well, hopefully you'll notice I didn't say the lowest price because I would say that the best price is the lowest price to get a label that does what you need it to do consistently order after order after order, and from a vendor who you can rely on to understand your business and who's going to evolve to respond to your changing needs because they will. Everything changes, right? A lower price is better than the best price, probably a lower price than the best price probably means you're sacrificing in one of those areas. But from the beginning, we want to consider both short-term what you need today and long-term what you might need tomorrow. So, a good vendor for custom labels should ask appropriate questions about the label itself of course, but sometimes looking beyond the label specs is where some of the magic lies when it comes to pricing.
Now if you look at this list, you might be wondering what some of these things have to do with anything. When we start talking about existing labels and asking about how many you might have and how many different skews you might have, it gives us a little bit more insight how we might approach your pricing to give you more options for cost efficiencies. So, for example, with existing labels, can they be explored to see if any of the specifications can work on your new label? If so, now you've started to create what we would call a family of labels, labels that share the same size, the same material, and can be grouped together to order together. In that particular case, rather than ordering each label on its own, we can prompt you to say, Hey, can you take a look at your demand for some of these other labels in that family to see if you've got some upcoming demand?
So then when you place your order, your price is going to be based on a higher volume, meaning it's going to be a lower price. We also want to look at what your ordering patterns are. When do you place orders if you're only ordering as needed? Those times when people come in running into your office with their hair on fire saying we're out of labels or small volumes because of inventory concerns, you might be surprised at how cost effective it can be to order a little bit higher volume. For example, maybe ordering a three-month supply instead of one month. Let us just show you the math and see how it works. People are usually shocked to see it's only a few dollars more in total spend to get sometimes double or even triple the quantity you need in that immediate moment. So, we want you to have those price options to make the best decision you can.
You're going to be the one to know best if it makes sense to do a group order or to buy a little bit higher quantity. We're always going to be curious if you have multiple label vendors. Now, unless there are specialty capabilities that separate them, having several vendors for your custom labels is usually going to unearth some challenges you might be having with consistency and quality or performance. And it might not occur to you that it could be because the labels or the vendors just aren't doing everything the same way. We don't all buy the same materials from the same raw materials, from the same raw material suppliers. So, you might have mixed materials giving you mixed results In those instances. We're really interested less in your vendor's performance and more interested in what the nature of those issues might be because it helps us identify possible causes and areas that we can address to make improvements moving forward.
Because not all vendors are bad, some may not have asked the right questions or didn't test out their solutions before selling you the label. For us, we're always going to recommend sampling. There are so many variables that exist between success and failure that it's going to always be a good idea to put our recommendation through your own testing and evaluation. As they say, beauty in the eye of the beholder for the moment, we're going to stay in the short term and we're going to consider some of the variables that go into your label and its pricing and Joe's going to kick us off of that conversation.
Joe Kane:
So, in general, the successful quality performance and price is going to reflect kind of three main things, right? The form, the fit and the function of it. So, what kind of label is it? Is it a point of purchase label? Is it instruction, a warning, a security label? What might that be being adhered to, a drum, a box or a bottle for example? And again, what material are those things made of? Is it cardboard, is it glass? Is it plastic? There are various types of plastic that can affect performance and ultimately what is the purpose of the label? Is it there to attract customers on a store shelf or just to warn an operator not to stick its hand inside the pointy thing? How long does it need to retain that purpose? Now, most people answer that question forever. I want the label to last indefinitely, but we have to design for a specific durability in mind.
Just a simple example, a shipping carton label for example, it only has to work once it arrives at its destination. After that, how it performs is not really an issue. So, you don't want to pay more for a shipping carton label that's going to last forever, but other times you need that warning or danger notice to last as long as feasibly possible. Again, we don't want to over engineer or under engineer, it can lead to you paying more than you really need to or paying for something that doesn't work at all. Now we have some of that information we can dig a little bit deeper.
Lori Campbell:
So, the form fit and function conversation just gives us that basic building block for your label, but the devil being in the details as it always is, we're going to have a few more questions for you before Joe gets started off on some of those details. I want to reassure everyone here that might be thinking, oh my goodness, we're in for this long torturous q and a process. Please don't despair. Most of the fact gathering that we do around understanding your label needs is going to come through just easy conversation. After that form fit and function, we usually have a pretty good idea of what we're going to be proposing and we run into so many different label applications that it's going to be likely that we're going to be familiar with yours as well. But even in those cases where we need to ask more questions, we also know that you're not always going to have the answers and that's okay. We'll work through it together. We're not going to leave you hanging because generally speaking, if your vendor can't accurately discern what you need within about 30 minutes or less, they probably don't know what they're doing or they just don't care enough. So, we're going to start digging into some of those details. Now the things that start to build into that label price, and we're going to start it off with label size, Joe.
Joe Kane:
Sure. So, the size of your label seems pretty straightforward. Why do we need more conversation after that? You might be asking for a standard size, a three by five or one by two or something very specific to it has unique dimensions. We'll start there, but ultimately that label has to be cut out of the substrate and we use a thing called a die or tooling. You can see in the picture on this slide as an example, there's that web of material there coming through. There are four cavities on this particular dye. I believe this is one of our 13-inch presses here. So, another dye of this same size might be designed for a narrower press, might only have one single cavity. At the end of the day, you are going to ask for a size. We're going to see if we have one of those dyes on hand that meets your needs or if we happen to not have that size, we can quote a brand-new dye for you and that's totally fine.
We do that all day every day. But alternatively, if you're open to adjusting your sizes, perhaps a little bit in one or both dimensions, we might have a tool on hand already that can meet those needs. The more flexibility you have, the more options that we'll have to select from the thousands of dyes we already have available, and this can ultimately end up saving you from even having tooling costs. Another size to consider here is the size of the order. This is where I'll reiterate that short-term versus long-term thinking. We might choose that one across dye and narrow press for your prototype or your short run that you're doing right now, but if you have plans for this to grow into millions of labels, purchasing that dye might be a shortsighted adventure. We want to understand what your current forecast might be to make sure that we're purchasing or creating the right dye for you, especially because the dye as said earlier, has a set number across and it's designed just for that one particular machine. It also may only work on a small set of materials, and once we make that dye, if any of those factors change, that dye is no longer going to be usable.
And it may not just be the future volumes for this particular part, but maybe as mentioned earlier, it may be about that family of parts. If there are several labels of the same size or that share similar characteristics, we might take that aggregate quantity into about what tooling might be appropriate. And while, yes, sometimes we'll ask these questions, it might seem like we're probing, but we are trying to find the scale and scope of the opportunity at hand, but that's going to lead to us giving you better advice. Nobody wants to pay for tooling, but hopefully these questions will end up getting you the right tool for your needs now and as you grow. So, we'll assume we got the right tool for the job here. Ultimately it has to cut this material. Lori, you want to talk about options there.
Lori Campbell:
Absolutely. One quick add-on to the dye conversation. We know customers want to avoid those tooling costs at all costs, but sometimes paying one time for a dye can really be beneficial in the long run and just allowing us to work through the math with you, being open to showing you how fast that dye will pay for itself versus using a smaller dye on hand, for example. I think it puts it in a little bit better perspective, so don't always be afraid to make that leap and buy a dye because it's probably going to suit you in the long run. So just wanted to get that out there. Thanks. In terms of materials, one of the pitfalls that we can run into from time to time is when a customer hands us a sample of their current label wanting us to quote it and they say, just match the sample.
Now, if your current label materials are identified through written specification or blueprints, of course that makes it pretty easy, but if you only have the label sample to guide us, it's not going to be enough. As this slide states, there are thousands of face stocks and thousands of adhesives out there in the marketplace and they come from a wide variety of different material suppliers, but to our eyes and to our touch, they all look the same. There's virtually no way of knowing which of the thousands of papers or which of the thousands of adhesives are the ones being used on your particular label. They don't come with a fingerprint. And unfortunately, also this webinar doesn't allow us enough time to get into the nitty gritty of material compositions. We're happy to dig into materials and another webinar if you'd like. And again, we hope you'll let us know in a follow-up service survey.
But from your sample, we can determine simple things. We can identify the basic structure. For example, if it's a paper or a film, and we can infer a lot just based on the appearance. If it's glossy or matte, that can tell us a lot of things too. But a key element is what's behind that face dock, which is the adhesive. There's simply no way to identify the specific adhesive. I can't tell you if it's a 3M product, if it's an Avery product or any other supplier's product. So, we're going to need to understand a little bit more about the label application before we can understand what we need to narrow down the choices. Now in every label application, the two main areas of consideration are going to be the face stock and the adhesive. The face stock is just that. It's the face of the label, what your text and graphics are printed on what you see.
They generally fall into two main categories, papers and films. But there are so many iterations within each one of those categories that we need to go back to that form fit and function conversation again, just to get us started in the right direction. So, for example, if you tell us that your label is being applied to a lawnmower, now we know immediately that that label had better be durable or it's not going to last one summer, let alone a few. So, we know we can eliminate paper because we all know what happens when you take a piece of paper, you put it outside, and of course, depending on the weather, that paper is going to disintegrate within a few days. So, we're going to focus on a film material for that durability. Now, films are a very broad category. You have polyesters and polypropylenes and polyethylenes and vinyls and more.
One description we hear customers use a lot is plastic to describe their label material, and it's kind of easy to understand why it has that kind of plastic look and feel to it. And while many films have some element of plastic inherent in their composition, many don't. So, relying on plastic to fully describe the label material can be misleading and doesn't give enough information. It can lead you to paying more for material that you don't need or getting a material that works doesn't work at all. So, moving on to pass the face doc to the next layer, that's the adhesive. And if it's possible, there are just as many if not more adhesives out there than there are face docs, and they can be complex with each one designed to perform in different conditions. So, at a minimum, we want to understand your need for a label that gets permanently attached versus a label that you might want to be removed after a period of time.
Life expectancy is going to come into play in both of these scenarios. Now, most people will tend to think that a permanent adhesive is maybe more challenging to nail down, but in fact, it's often the reverse because removable adhesives tend to build a stronger bond over time. Very few are going to remain completely removable over a long period of time. So that's when it gets tricky is how long do you need it on there before you want it removed? So that can be a tricky conversation, but we also want to understand if the label's going to be exposed to any kind of extreme conditions, temperature ranges, low or high weather exposed to chemicals of any kind because these factors will impact both the face duct and the adhesive. So, using the lawnmower example I gave earlier, common sense already tells us what the label's going to be exposed to, I hope.
But other applications aren't always so cut and dried. So, the bottom line is just that there are performance characteristics for different face stocks and for different adhesives. And based on a conversation with you, we're going to ultimately lead us down to making a recommendation. And there's a third component that I want to just briefly mention that not only has an impact on performance, but also aesthetics, and that's a surface treatment that may be needed on top of that face dock. This is either going to be in the form of a protective film that gets added on top of your printed graphics or a varnish, which is applied much like an ink. These surface treatments allow for different levels of durability. A film laminate laid over the top of your printed text and graphics offers kind of the ultimate in protection. A varnish on the other hand, given that it's applied like ink is much thinner and offers really only kind of a basic protective feature against normal handling and maybe some scuff resistance. Now, surface treatments can also elevate your graphics and provide a finishing touch to the look you want to convey by either giving you a gloss look or a matte look or even in some cases some texture and feel. So, I am going to hand off the conversation now to Joe because he gets to talk about the fun stuff, which is aesthetics, which it boils down to color and graphics, Joe. Sure.
Joe Kane:
Color, fun and complicated sometimes. So, the first thing regarding color I like to talk about is managing and communicating expectations. These labels are going on a wide range of products from food packaging to brand labels, sometimes the side of industrial wire inside an enclosed space that we'll never see the light of day. So, your color accuracy and color needs may change depending on where, and these things will be affixed and when and how they're going to be viewed. That includes the lighting conditions. Darker areas are going to affect color, how we perceive those colors. So where do these color expectations often come from So they can come from a preferable communication just telling us, Hey, I need this to be this particular shade of red, or it just needs to be black only. It could come from the artwork that you submitted, which could come in the form of artwork or even a specification or a blueprint that might call out all the specific colors that are needed. It might come from branding and marketing guides in your organization. And then Lori had mentioned providing samples earlier and it had limited value from assessing the material. What it comes to color. If you're like, well, this is how I was getting it before and I'm very happy with it, that now becomes paramount in us deciding what your color expectations are because it's that label, it's that sample. We're going to meet and match all of those.
How we're going to do that is going to be using an array of ink types. Oftentimes we're going to use CMYK that's known as four color process or often just simply process. This is going to use cyan, magenta, yellow, and black just like your home or office. Printers use a combination of those inks to combine to create thousands of colors with just those four inks, it sounds like a lot of colors, but it actually is a limited palette given that it only has those four components. When we need something that goes above and beyond that palette, we typically move to spot colors. You may be familiar with the name like Pantone or other predefined coloring systems. These often have names and numbers to signify. This is PMs 180 5 and you tell that to a printer and they're going to have a little book that will show them exactly what that color should look like. Oftentimes we're using a combination of both process and spot colors. You might have a photo, but you also have a logo that has a bright, vibrant purple in there that you can't match with the process. Generally speaking, the more colors we print with, the more expensive it's going to be.
Once we have your expectations, there could be some little pitfalls that happen. Sometimes you'll communicate, Hey, I want this in four color process and we receive your artwork and it's in 12 different spot colors. Sometimes that's an effect from designers picking and choosing what aesthetically looks great and not fully understanding how that translates to a production world. That may cause us to ask some further questions to ensure that you don't want those 12 colors because that will be much more expensive than running it in four color process. Understanding the artwork and the expectations will allow us to select the right ink system and the right printing process to ultimately produce your labels, and we'll reread it again on the short versus long-term thinking. We don't want to handle this label just as a single entity. It might have several other labels in that family or in your entire repertoire that have commonalities, right? It has the same logo or it has the same background. We want to understand that fully so we can make sure that we're planning for the long term ahead to get you best price.
Now we know what you want and we know how we're going to do it. Now we can have a conversation about accuracy. Not every project has Coke red or Hershey Brown on it where we have to use precise measuring tools throughout the entire process to ensure the limited amount of variability is possible. There is always variability in the printing process that goes without saying, but understanding your tolerance to that variability is important for us to select again, the right inks and process to use. An additional complication is the base material that Laurie just talked about can also influence how these colors are produced. You can imagine a color being put on a white material. It's going to pretty much look like that color, but you put that color on a yellowish linen material or even a clear or metallic, it's going to change how that color is perceived because the colors tend to be transparent. That surface, that base material is going to kind of have influence on there. And again, as she alluded to the surface treatments, those have a large impact on your color as well. Your gloss treatments tend to be shiny and bold. They saturate colors and give them a deeper look. Your blacks look extremely black where matte has sort of the opposite effect, right? It's flat and soft, but it tends to desaturate colors. They lose their vibrancy, even black, which seems black, but under matte can look dark gray or sometimes even medium gray.
So, once we know ultimately how your label's going to be constructed, we want to show you how we're going to create those colors to you. Normally, that comes in the form of a proof by far. The most common one is A PDF proof that's convenient, inexpensive. Now, unfortunately, you're generally going to view those on your phone or your computer, and those tend to produce color very differently than a printed material. So, they're not great at color matching. They'll show you the different colors and where they're at, but as far as matching that color, they're not really great at that. The additional thing is it really can't give you any idea of how that base material is going to affect the color and has no chance of giving you what the surface treatments are going to do. We can upgrade to a color managed physical proof that we can send you, and this is attempted at using a similar transparent ink that we can print that can mimic more closely what we're going to get in production.
But again, anything that's non-white material, it's going to have a harder time matching, especially your textured materials like linens, your clear materials and your metallics, and again, it has no chance of doing the surface treatments. At the end of the day, if color is paramount to you in the success of your project, we really would recommend a press proof. This is essentially a small production sample run that we would do using the exact construction, the exact inks, and the exact machines that we're going to use for your production. So therefore, all those color influences are included, the base material, the inks, and the surface treatments. Unfortunately, of course it comes at a higher cost. The important thing is that we understand what your needs are and communicate that to us so that we leave nothing to chance. So, we're getting close to the end of all these pieces. We don't know how you want these labels supplied to you.
Lori Campbell:
Well, I'm going to jump into that, but of course, I have to add on to what Joe just talked about with color. He mentioned having a sample of the color, and one of the things that we will run into from time to time is a customer has, let's say a corporate color that they're using on all of their printed materials, all their printed products, boxes, bottles, brochures, envelopes, you name it, it's this corporate color. All of those variables that Joe mentioned are going to really come through when you start to want this exact same color across such a wide spectrum of products and printing processes and materials. So, it's something to really be cautious of and to discuss very, very carefully with the vendor to make sure, okay, this is the color, 2 87 blue. Okay, well let's hold all these pieces up against each other and see how 2 87 blue varies across all these different products. And you'll see that it can be very tricky, but having that sample takes away a lot of the guesswork and a lot of that trying to convey expectations. This is the color we want, we know it, and we can adjust as we need to nail in that color regardless of what Pantone system it might've been starting with.
Joe Kane:
Okay, absolutely. Thanks for that, Lori.
Lori Campbell:
Sure. So again, our focus so far has been about the label itself, determining the size, the material, clarifying your color expectations, but there are other important considerations like how will the labels be supplied to you? And of course, here you have options. Also, what you want to be thinking about is how the labels are going to be used in your operations or by the end user if you aren't the end user. So let me give you a couple of examples. A very common one is maybe you need to do some secondary printing on the label perhaps to capture lot and expiration date information for the product that you're labeling. How is that secondary printing done? Is it in line with your labeling operation? Is it done separately on say, a thermal transfer printer? Either way, that label is going to go through some sort of equipment, and with very few exceptions, that's almost always going to require that your label be supplied on a roll, so that's easy.
There will be some other details to figure out, making sure that the label dispenses out that roll and the appropriate directions so that when it feeds into your equipment, it's going in the right direction to make sure your software is printing in the right place and also maximizing the role dimension because you want to avoid, in most equipment operations, you want to avoid changeovers, so understanding what your equipment will accept in terms of a maximum roll size. Let's make it that maximum roll size so you can just keep going and going and avoiding all these small roll changes. But conversely, oh, go ahead.
Joe Kane:
Pointing out here. Some of these application machines might require additional markings like on the face or underneath the label, depending on the substrates we're using and the machines you're using. But just make sure we have that conversation when deciding how this is going to go.
Lori Campbell:
Yeah, yeah, good point. Thanks. Conversely, maybe you're going to be putting your labels on by hand, but is it done by multiple operators? Do you have a whole assembly line of operators sitting there applying labels? And if so, what's a reasonable package size for them to work with? Do you want them to have this great big, huge role or huge stack of labels they've got to work with or something a little bit more manageable? Or maybe you work with subcontractors who assemble some of your components, and so maybe you want to put together a sheet of labels that go with all your components so they've got everything contained within one package. Those might be best provided on a sheet or maybe your label's a promotional piece that you give out to attendees at a sporting event or a concert. Consider the people who are handing those labels out.
Do you really want them standing there with a big punk and roll of labels, having to tear them off and hand them out to attendees? Probably not. Might be easier for them just to have a small stack of labels in their hands. They can just hand them out so quickly and so conveniently, and the examples can go on and on and on. Every single one of these formats is also going to impact your price. Probably about 90, 95% of the time rolls are going to be your most cost-effective format, but even with rolls, the number of labels per roll can have a huge impact on your price. So, think for just a moment about a million labels. The price difference between getting a thousand rolls of a thousand labels per roll and getting 10,000 rolls of a hundred labels per roll is going to be huge. So, we want to make sure you understand the ramifications for what you ask for so that you understand what you're paying for and is it appropriate to what you need.
And I know that most people think that material and colors are the most significant factors in going into a label price, and they usually are, but I can tell you that a lot of times it's the formatting that can play a huge factor in your price. There are many, many jobs that we've run where the amount of time spent in formatting and packaging well exceeds the amount of time it took us to print the label in the first place. So, it's an important consideration to have and we want to walk through that conversation with you. So, we're just about ready to get a price quoted for you. We just need to know how many labels do you need? And again, another straightforward question, right? But yet again, we have another area for options for you to consider. I think it's probably important first to talk about how pricing is presented in the first place.
Not all vendors price in the same way. Some might give you a price, a lot of price for the entire quantity. Others might price per thousand labels with some exception. Our unit of measure for price is typically going to be per each label based upon the quantity of labels that we're going to run at any given point in time. So, it's kind of like going to the grocery store. You can see on the store shelf that brand, A 14-ounce canopies is 21 cents per ounce and brand Bs 14-ounce canopies is 18 cents per ounce. In our case, your need for a thousand labels might be priced at, for example, 30 cents per label for a total spend of $300, but most people are amazed at how little their total spend changes as they go up in quantity. What happens to your unit price if you double that quantity to 2000?
In this example, the unit price could be 17 cents per label spending now a total of $340 instead of 300. So again, $40 to get double the quantity of labels. Now, does it make sense to double the quantity? It might, might not, and this isn't about trying to upsell you. It truly isn't. This is connected again to that conversation about how you order and looking at both the short and the long-term views. It's really going to come down to the label itself. If you're ordering a label that has a long history with a pretty reliable forecast, it gets easier to weigh that cost benefit of ordering more than just your immediate need. If it's a new label, that becomes a little bit trickier, and in that case, we can show you a couple of unit price options based on a few quantity breaks. If you think it's a good idea to have a little bit more on hand, go for it.
You're really not going to be out a ton of extra money and the labels will be there whenever you need them, or you may decide to see, I'm just going to see how this forecast shakes out for this particular label. Just order what you need now and you can consider it again if and when the need arises. So, it's just really all about having some choices and having options and making sure that we arm you with the information to make those best decisions. Now, one thing I can tell you that we do run into from time to time when the conversation turns to quantity, customers will give us their estimated annual usage, and that's great because again, we kind of want that big picture kind of view but realize that our unit pricing is based on what we can produce at any given point in time. So, unless you're going to be ordering your EAU, which is usually not the case, we're going to want to discuss how you might break that EAU down into individual order quantities and potential order volumes. So, for labels with a stable volume history, there are ways to take some of those bigger EAUs maybe and turn that into another benefit, and I'm going to let Joe talk about that.
Joe Campbell:
Yeah, sure. As Lori stated, the cost of the label, oftentimes the majority of setting up the machine and then running it, so the less we have to do that, the better label pricing you're going to get, which means order more labels cheaper per label price. One of the other mechanisms we use to achieve this is through managed inventory. So, we have many customers today from all walks of life using different programs in which to do this. So, they come from hold for release, they may order 20,000 labels, they need 10,000 now and 10,000 in three months, and we'll take care of that for them. It may be a Kanban system where we have an array of products on the shelf that we might ship out a subset of those on a daily basis or all the way to global distribution where we're taking releases from all over the globe and sending them out again daily, weekly, monthly, whatever it needs to be.
In almost all these cases, the customers giving us a PO for generally between six and 12 months of what they expect their usage to be. We plan out how best to run that as efficiently and effectively as possible and as the customer needs them, they issue a release in some form, again, depending on the program, and we send those out. And the impact here is of course, it does require the customer to commit to buying those larger volumes, but they don't have to pay for it all upfront and they don't have to house all of that excess inventory. Again, this tends to be a win for both parties. We get more accurate forecasting and scheduling and they get better unit pricing. Again, still only pay as they use them. It's not all wine and roses. There are some challenges here. As mentioned, these programs generally only work for larger volumes.
It wouldn't make a whole lot of sense for us to produce a thousand labels and distribute them across 12 months’ worth of shipments. I don't think anyone wins in that scenario. Another thing to consider is the volatility of the copy itself, the graphics and art. If it's a food product label that might have ingredient changes or something that's subject to regulatory changes that might have unknown changes that come through the pipeline, you really don't want to end up sitting on a pile of obsolete inventory. So just something to be mindful of as we design these things together. Looks like we've pretty much covered everything from sizes to finished format to quantities and everything in between. We should be able to supply you quote at this point, but let's look at how finding a trusted partner that you can do this with your particular project.
Lori Campbell:
Yeah, we hope you've come away from this webinar with an understanding that spending a little exploratory time with your label vendor can result in improvements and a host of ways, and not the least of which is going to be cost. Working with a trusted vendor means you can check one more or more items off your stress list, but how do you get there? How do you get that trusted vendor? My simplest advice is to be willing to engage, be willing to have these conversations and let your vendor prove themselves. We've armed you with the kinds of questions that they should be asking. If they're not asking them, I'd be kind of doubtful about where they're going to be for your long-term.
Joe Kane:
Yeah, one of the things we encourage too is sharing your budget. If you have one, of course, it can be very helpful. Oftentimes, this is a sensitive thing for people. They don't keep it very close to the chest. They think we're somehow going to manipulate the numbers to be just under your maximum cost. You just have to trust us in the case that we're not going to be doing that. The reason, again, is this fact finding, understanding all aspects of your project and how we can insert ourselves into that because we may find out that we're very close to that budget and we might have to negotiate with you, and if we change just this one little thing, we might be able to fall into that range. Or conversely, we might be so far out of your range that's really not worth anyone's time to continue the conversation, but we'd be glad to see if we have other vendors that we work with in the past that we can hedge you in the right direction to. We're in it for the long haul, right? This is not about one particular project. If I can't do this one for you, hopefully you'll come back for the next one if I at least aided you in some way.
So, as I stated, we be that trusted vendor for you. We would encourage you to come visit our website, find a little bit about who we are and what we do for our current customers. We don't want there to always be this only be there for you when there's an ordering at the end, right? We'll be a resource for you whenever we can.
Lori Campbell:
And we know you have a lot of label vendors to choose from. We'd like to think that The Label Printers is perfectly sized. We're large enough to carry influence within the supply chain to ensure that we're getting the best prices on the components that go into making your labels, thereby giving you better pricing, and yet we're small enough to really value our customer relationships. We're very, very proud of the decades long tenure that we have with most of our customers. And there's another aspect too. Some vendors are kind of niche specialists. They primarily focused on one or two market verticals. That doesn't mean they can't produce your labels too; it just means that they've decided to focus their efforts on those markets. We are generalists, meaning we do business in pretty much every label vertical that you can market, vertical that you can think of because everybody uses labels, right? But we like to bring all of that experience to our customers every day, and a customer in one market is no more important to us than a customer in another market.
Joe Kane:
Very well said. Well, in case we somehow haven't covered everything you ever wanted to know about the label buying process, we can see if there's any submitted questions here. Let's take a look. Here's one is artwork included in the cost. I assume that normally that's negotiated depending on how your artwork is coming in, depending on the amount of work it may need to be done to it. We will give you a quote upfront that says, oh, this is perfectly fine, and there's no charge, which is often the case, but sometimes if you need us to make some changes or manipulated in some way, or it comes in with different color instructions than you had communicated in your expectations, and we have to convert some things, sometimes there are some fees involved in that process. Additionally, we have can you use dyes from other vendors?
The easy short answer for this is no. As I mentioned earlier, dyes are very specific to not only just a machine with, but a brand of machine and a gearing of that machine. The chances of you having a dye from a manufacturer that has the exact same machine as we do is very slim. And even if you did, since we didn't purchase that dye and do all the care and maintenance of that throughout his lifecycle, it wouldn't be something we would really trust to put in tide our machines for us, any tooling that we either have on hand or purchase on your behalf, we maintain that tooling for the forever. We replace it as needed, sharpen as needed, et cetera, to make sure that we're not only safe to ourselves, but giving you the finest product, we can. Let's see here. I think we answered that one already. Alright, if we have multiple kinds of labels printed at once, does that help my pricing if they're all different?
Lori Campbell:
Well, it depends on what's different about them. So again, talking about those families, if they're different sizes, generally there's not going to be any kind of advantage in ordering them together other than maybe saving on some shipping costs if they all ship out together, something like that. And some transactional costs, you have fewer purchase orders being generated, fewer perhaps invoices to pay, but in terms of actually producing the labels together, they've got to have some common themes. Again, size, usually material, although we have had some situations where we'll run different materials of the same size together. So, it really kind of depends.
Joe Kane:
Okay. There's another one here. This one might be a two-parter. What if the information on the label changes every month, but the label specs other than the text is essentially the same. Is there a way I can order larger quantities and have it printed as needed? What are my options? I think that kind of depends a lot on that label construction on what it's being used for. There are oftentimes where we can print shells or blanks with a lot of pre-printed information, and as Lori mentioned, you might be able to do the secondary printing that might have a lot number changing or a serial number of some kind either on your line or we can do that for you. It's going to really depend on your unique situation and the constraints that it might pose.
Lori Campbell:
Yeah, I would say, yeah, I was going to say, I think in a situation like that, it would probably be more cost effective to have your own thermal transfer printer. I mean, that's the whole idea of on demand, because if you order it from us, then you've got to tell us exactly what you need and we're going to have to, there's going to be an additional cost versus you taking in a generic label with everything that's constant, but the stuff that changes that you need to imprint, I think it gives you a lot more flexibility and probably more cost effective in the long run. That's just my guess, sight unseen of any of the details.
Joe Kane:
Yeah, it makes sense as anything, right? It depends.
Lori Campbell:
Always.
Joe Kane:
Yeah, exactly. There's another one. What if I need an order expedited? Is there an extra charge for that? We didn't really get into some of the logistics conversation and shipping that kind of thing, but it's an interesting question.
Lori Campbell:
Yeah, I mean, we typically don't charge for expediting. Now, when I say typically, have there been occasions where, and I'm talking about extreme situations for instance, if a dye has been purchased, if you've decided to buy a dye, and the difference between making your date and not making your date is how long that dye takes to get here. And some of these dyes get pretty heavy, so they can be costly to ship overnight to us, but that might be an option we would simply pass that cost on. But in terms of just rejiggering our schedule to try and fit you in to get your label order faster than somebody else's, we typically do that and there's not an extra charge. The only other time I can think of would be if we have no plans to work on a Saturday, for example, and the only way to get you your label is to work on that Saturday, and that's the only reason we're going to be open. Yeah, we would talk about what costs that would be associated with that. But again, I would say 95% of the time when we're expediting internally for on our customer's be halves, there's no cost to that. We can either do it or we can't.
Joe Kane:
Or there's the boy who cried wolf scenario where it happens often enough, that case by case basis, right? Yeah. Basis. Yeah. There's another one here. Is there a charge for custom colors? So, this depends as always on where something's printing, right? I talked earlier from a color standpoint, a custom spot color often has a fairly nominal charge, if anything, to mix that uniquely for you. But if we're talking something, let's say on a digital realm where I have to get our press manufacturer to produce a new color in their system, that can be extremely costly, not only from a processing standpoint, but from the physical ink standpoint as well. So, the cost will range from zero to depends.
Lori Campbell:
And maybe you should embellish a little bit on the extended gamut in that situation. Let us show the bridge book and let us talk about what the extended colors, because sometimes that might be able to solve the situation without adding to the cost.
Joe Kane:
Yeah, when I talked about colors, I kind of kept it to a simple four-color process or spot, but there's always more nuances, right? In some of our printing processes, we have the ability to do extended gamut, which adds essentially more colors to the process. Orange filets and greens, this essentially extends that limited palette I talked about. And it might be that your custom color now falls within that range, and we can use those colors instead. And that's, again, it will increase the cost because it increases the number of colors used, but there's no additional charge beyond that to match your custom color.
There's a question here about design work. If we offer any kind of design work, I'll field this one in general and then I can get a little some nuance here. By and large, we are not a design house. I don't have a staff of designers on hand at the ready to take in your elevator pitch and then generate you brand new artwork. We really encourage you to go seek out designers or advertising agencies that can aid you in that process if you don't have those tools available to you. That being said, if you have something to start with, we are more than happy to talk you through how much it will take to convert your label to this new version or vision of the label you have. The more you have to start with, the more we can work with you on your design changes.
Lori Campbell:
And just a side note, and just a side note on that, in terms of working with designers, our sales team has got a little stable full of designers that they've recommended to customers, so we can always make those recommendations. They don't always necessarily have to be super expensive design agencies.
Joe Kane:
I think we have reached the end of our, oh, wait, there's one more. How long will your labels last?
Lori Campbell:
Forever? No, no, please. I'm just kidding.
No, so that's a pretty loaded question, and I'm going to take it from the standpoint that we're talking about shelf life. That makes sense.
Joe Kane:
That makes sense to me that we take it from there.
Lori Campbell:
So, if we're talking about shelf life, that's going to vary depending on a couple of factors. Number one, all the raw material suppliers, and we are firmly going to recommend that labels are stored at ambient room temperature, which I think is like 72 degrees, 50% relative humidity. And we'll take it an extra step and say that we're going to send you your labels wrapped, and we want you to keep those labels wrapped until you're ready to use them. Don't expose them to dust and particles and things that are floating around your facility because they will eventually start to work their way into the label and start to attack certain elements of your label, mainly the adhesives, and also be careful where you're storing that from a light standpoint, because light is going to affect the color over time. Even warehouse lighting and office lighting, the more it's exposed, all of a sudden you might start to see a degradation in some lighter colors. The blacks and the dark blues, they'll probably be okay, but reds and yellows, reds and ...
Joe Kane:
Yellows.
Lori Campbell:
Yeah, might start to fade. But if you keep them all in those kinds of nice conditions, we expect that your labels will last a good couple, two, three, maybe four years. Again, all other variables aside, now, there are some materials that I would not recommend that you ever buy more than probably a six-month supply, and that's going to be for those labels that need materials with a very aggressive adhesive. Those adhesives are very soft and oozy. They're designed that way on purpose so that they can really dig into some really heavily textured surfaces. Really challenging applications. They're designed that way, but the downfall of them is over time, especially if you've got a stack of labels or you've got a roll of labels, they're just in that compressed mode. The longer they're compressed that way, the more over time that soft adhesive wants to start to ooze out the sides and next thing you know, go to use them, and they're just a big sticky mess. So, we would be very cautious in making sure that you understand how to order those and how to store them and hope for the best. So hopefully that's answered your question about how long will labels last and nothing is guaranteed, unfortunately.
Joe Kane:
Well, thank you for that answer. We have reached the end of our time here, so I want to say thank you for bearing with us in our rookie endeavor here in a webinar.
Lori Campbell:
Webinar. Yeah. Yeah. Thank you so much for your time. I really appreciate it. And again, hopefully you'll fill out our survey, give us some good constructive feedback we can take into the next webinar. Until then, thanks so much for your time. Have a nice day.
For more information about getting the best price for your custom labels, contact us today. You can also watch the webinar on demand.
