Well, I think there is a huge market out there. Its for people who want to use ready filled carts with back up from companies and have piece of mind and also there is cheap ink from china or korea that people can refill by them self. this second option will be for people that are more experienced.Please, lets don't start about what option is better
Is like with blank mugs.
Loads of them out there and all priced differently. All of them find customers who like them...
I would hazard a guess that Sawgrass has patents, marketing, lawyers and a few hundred staff to pay for hence price. SS manufacturer (China?) who knows.
been brilliant reading this thread. When I brought the sg400, I was a bit taken back by the prices on refills, however I did see people on fb etc refilling with bottles of ink but I wanted to stay with a manufacture backed ink. I can't really complain with the sublijet inks
im very new to printing and print not much in the way of mugs but I agree, for the differnce in print quality and in real terms price. It may not be worth the switch for someone who does not print very many mugs like me
i am learning so much from this forum. Thank you guys
UK Printed Mugs;123587 wrote:I would hazard a guess that Sawgrass has patents, marketing, lawyers and a few hundred staff to pay for hence price. SS manufacturer (China?) who knows.
Still think they missed a massive opportunity. It should have been easy to sit 30% under and still make a good profit. There are companies out there such as Marabu that can easily put these inks together if someone believes you can get beyond the patents. When SG did this they also had to create and build the market. This is fully in place to jump on the back of and with a meaningful saving a supplier could really make a dent. As it is, I would hazard a guess there are bigger margins for supplier and main distributor with only a token saving for end user.
At what price would other users feel it is worthwhile swapping? What savings would you like to see?
Whilst the initial printed results seem to be quite impressive, I have to say that I agree with Andrew that an opportunity to tempt people to switch has been missed and the reason would mainly be the cost, they are just too close to make it worthwhile. When it comes to me re-ordering ink, i'll only need to order one, maybe two carts for the colours about to run out, rather than a full set to swap out, yes I know there is the swap out kit but £42 or £84 compared to £230 is too extreme for me to invest in. I'm also considering the amount of complaints from customers relating to prints using SG ink, none! So it all comes back to cost, no customer complaints, no problems with print, no lack of availability.. what else is there to encourage me to switch!!
Not seen it mentioned already, but worth considering, as soon as you put SS inks in your machine, your warranty is blown isn't it? If so, is it worth it for a 15% saving?
As well as the warranty you get direct Sawgrass extensive knowledge and support which I guess has added value too. I think this is why experience posters on the forum say go the sawgrass route rather than unbranded ink route when starting out because that is usually when you will need help the most but also if your in business you also appreciate having that sort of support and warranty available on hand should you get stuck on a job. I'd imagine sublisplash will have ink related support available.
I am no ink expert by any means, but i know that if i print "perceptual" on powerdriver using Sawgrass inks which is the default, i don't get anywhere near the vibrancy and saturation when comparing to original artwork (paints or prints from my clients for example).
For anyone using Illustrator / Powerdriver / SRGB2.1 - try changing your settings to Relative Colometric and see if you notice a difference at all. No need to change the powerdriver settings (you can switch between photo / graphics depending on the type of work you are dealing with though).