Low Cost Copies Can be Enticing, but Beware!
We talk to customers in Denver who seem to only be able to look at the cost of the copies when they are assessing the cost of a copier. I wanted to write this post to warn you this is a dangerous way to think. Why? There are fundamentally 3 different sources of cost when it comes to copier costs in Denver.
- The equipment
- The supplies
- The maintenance
When you get allured by the low cost per print, you are looking at #2 and #3. This is a valid componet of the overall cost, but it is more than just those two… there is also the equipment portion. So, lets look at this simplistically. If you have a copier that is $9,000 and costs $.008 per print or a copier for $3,000 and $.018 per print and you plan to own the copier for 4 years, how many prints do you need to do a month before it’s breakeven?
The math works like this –
- $9,000 – $3,000 = $6,000 differential on equipment
- $.018 – $.008 = $.01 differential in prints.
- $6,000/.01 = 600,000 — this is the number of copies needed for breakeven to occur.
600,000/48 = 12,500 copier per month. I would generally say if you’re doing more than 10,000… getting the big copier would make more sense (as you’ll have better finishing, stronger mechanics, etc…) Less than 10,000 a month, you may as well get the $3,000 copier and pay more per print. If you only did 4,000 prints a month and got the bigger copier, you would have spent an extra $4,000 for copies than had you bought the smaller unit.
- Eq A cost – Eq B Cost = Equipment Differential
- Supp B cost – Supp A cost = Supplies differential
- Equipment Differential/Supplies Differential = Breakeven quantity of prints
