Working with Printing services

For  my table at True believers I wanted to create some custom acrylic phone charms or key chains and prints.

CHARMS

I wanted a product that was laser cut, my first known website was Zap! due to several of my friends using it before, their own experiences with them was good and they had generally high quality products. However i was sceptical and i had done some research into their company, i found that they had recently changed hands as i talked to Fran of BIRCHpls and found that she had previously used zap creatives before buying her own laser cutter. She had come in to trouble with dealing with errors with her order, having images warped and struggled to talk to staff to get refunding.

Although I looked around:

Ink it labs
Was ultimately more expensive with their minimum order one and half inch designs coming to £101.44 minus shipping, as a company based in America the shipping expenses may may become even more costly.
Their minimum order was 50 however you could only get two variations on the design.
for a minimum of 5 designs I would have to bulk order 100 charms.

Although set up for the charms was very clear and it had an extensive FAQ and a good turn around time it would ultimately be a lot more expensive in creating them.

Craft Jam

is A UK based company that was recommended through looking at reviews unfortunately i did not take steps with as they work largely on a quote system, and any image imported has to be a  .DXF file.
as it gave no information about turn around times, General pricing, the example images where quite small, and the general website looking older, or only run by a smaller team i did not want to take steps forward with this company.

Zap! creatives was still quite expensive however their minimum order starts from 1.
I wanted 50-100 charms this would range from £88 to £164.55 not including shipping.
This order would allow me to have 5 designs, the key rings would come pre made and pre packaged so i did not have to worry about assembly and getting other materials for the product.
I had chosen the pack of 50 using all 5 designs, and the order had come to £94.44

while the tutorials where generally clear in explaining how to use the templates, i had to dig around other tutorials to find how to label and send off images to the company.

Despite this working with the zap creatives team was fairly easy having a quick turn around times of just one week in my experience. The staff emailed me quickly about addressing any problems with the image and where generally friendly towards me.

When the Key-chains where shipped to me they came individually packaged, with keychain already attached.
the images where well printed, very clear and where free of scratches.

STICKERS

 I couldn't find many websites that prevalently did sticker sheets, largely sticker packs that i veered away from due to the fact that you may not be able to see what you are getting.
My two main websites where zap! and Awesome merch.
In hind sight Awesome merch is cheaper, as a minimum order of 100 A6 sheets is £75 with free shipping within the UK and the turn around time is relatively the same.

however i went with Zaps! sticker sheets, which is much the same build with a minimum order of 100 at £79.56 (including shipping), i had much the same process with them as before, the images came out very cleanly and without any faults.

They are both made from vinyl they are durable and i would definatly work with either zap again as they where very responsive.

PRINTS

Wanting a smaller batch of prints i found that Awesome merch was ideal, having small minimum orders. I wanted only 25 of my prints. this came to £25 having a good overhead, however i felt that the application service was a bit out of my hands, if i needed to make last minute changes to my image i would of felt that i wouldn't know who to email or if i could make any contact in time before the art team was done printing.
When i got my order it came with 28 prints (not that i'm complaining) and although the print quality was good when i had ordered it to be printed on recycled white, and i believe it's on smooth white.

It still is nice print quality, and i may use their services again.


Overall my Experiances with Zap! was good and i would use their services again even if they do not have everything that an artist needs Zap is generally art oriented as Awsome merch is very band focused.