socialgiraffe;76554 wrote:Yes, it would be good if Ben could give us an insight as to why they are more expensive but limited in their products. This isn't a dig, far from it, I just want to make sure that there are very good reasons as to why these machines are what they are.
I am presenting to my customers a unique system that will require a good quality machine, film loading capabilities (as I do not like faff!) and good quality reliable printing. But that does not mean I want to throw money away at something I do not need
The first half decent machine on the market was the machine that we were selling at Printwear and Promotion in 2012.
We called it the MiniPress, others called it Sublideck, and some know it as the Pictaflex.
In theory the machine was fine, we extensively tested it in 1 of our own retail locations before we started selling it in December, The manufacturer at the time felt it was right to have 2 different companies selling the machine, Octitech and CASE-iD. I felt having 2 companies in Yorkshire was a little too competitive for us, cutting a long story short changes were made behind the scenes. We continued to work with our original cases which in our opinion are the best available on the market, like everything, you can buy cheaper and you can buy more expensive, but in general we sell to retailers who want the best quality in order to achieve the highest retail price, we have tried selling cheaper cases, but if you have to sell for £10-£12 instead of £20 - £28 it didn't make any financial sense, having said all that I totally understand if your customers don't get the chance to see you face to face and actually hold the product a custom case is a custom case online for example.
CASE-iD does work well as a brand for selling custom cases and our most successful clients use our brand in mall or department store locations and we have really helped some of our clients transform their businesses in terms of turnover and profit.
We recently launched 2 new machines, an A5 press for £3495.00 and a B4 press for £5295.00,
Our new machines are built to a high standard and no corners have been cut. Inside the B4 machine there are 2 large industrial grade vacuum pumps, 1 would have probably done an ok job but what we are trying to sell is high end systems for customers that are looking for the very best. Each model also comes with a large HD touchscreen programmable unit. The air is channeled better around the bottom of the case for a better wrap, and importantly everything is tuned perfectly to provide the least amount of distortion in its class.
We have managed to lower the nest prices down to £80.00 which is the lowest on the market. I feel the margins you get on cases are definitely still good for retail but when we are in a recession its always tempting to save pennies here and there.
What we really feel like we offer over and above what you'd expect is great opportunities to sell cases. One of our most recent clients is developing a franchise model. We franchised another retail business back in 2007 and thats where alot of our experience lies, we also provide clients the option of using the code from case-id.com to create their own site,
Unlike others we are not just box shifting, we are there to help clients make their business successful,
Sorry bit of a long boring e-mail for most i am sure,
Ben
