new to di sub-Which Ricoh should I use for start-up

[JSR]

Ah, so thats why i've been bumping into things today - the sticker must have slipped over my eyes! :biggrin:

Oops, sorry, didn't realise you had one.

So - urm - present company excepted, of course! :biggrin::biggrin::biggrin:

My "printer rants" come purely from my frustration that this industry has been around for years now, the ink market is strangled by one supplier, and there is no printer that's been designed to use dye-sub inks. We're forever having to use "square peg in round hole" Heath Robinson mentality. That can't be good for long-term future of this industry.

If other suppliers were "legally" allowed to sell dye-sub ink, I'm sure we'd soon see the equivalent of an OEM producing (or getting a printer manufacturer to produce) a printer designed for dye-sub ink. After all, they'd make enough money on ink sales (just as today's OEMs do) to invest in R&D for a dedicated, properly supported, dye-sub printer. The fact that the market is in the stranglehold grip of one ink supplier means that no one that's interested in the future of this industry benefits.

[John G]

I don't have the A3 - wish I did, just the A4 5050n.

I understand your frustation about sub inks but have you looked at it from their point of view. If they let anyone sell sawgrass inks they would have no control over who stocked what, prices and every tom dick and harry would be buying or selling supposed sawgrass inks that could be sawgrass but also could be copy inks. In my opinion it would totally devalue the market and put us all out of business. At least the way it's ran now, Sawgrass know who should be selling there inks and at what minimum price!

[JSR]

I understand your frustation about sub inks but have you looked at it from their point of view. If they let anyone sell sawgrass inks they would have no control over who stocked what, prices and every tom dick and harry would be buying or selling supposed sawgrass inks that could be sawgrass but also could be copy inks. In my opinion it would totally devalue the market and put us all out of business. At least the way it's ran now, Sawgrass know who should be selling there inks and at what minimum price!

Unfortunately, that doesn't work. If you know where to look, it's possible to get "cheap" dye-sub inks today. Sawgrass can't stop them all so, if cheaper inks devalue the market (I'm not saying they do), then it's happening here and now.

What really devalues the market, though, is that mugs like us who do the right thing have to pay through the nose for "authorised ink" that's supposedly supported. But what "support" do we really get? We still have to put third-party ink through a printer that wasn't designed for it. For all the extra money we pay we get ---- a generic profile that's worth about 20-quid that may or may not work. We can't choose what printer we want, we have to be told which to use by Sawgrass. That's a hell of a bargain - not!

This is very much the tail wagging the dog. It should be for us to make the decisions for our businesses - not to have lead and collar strangling us by those who couldn't give two hoots whether our business lives or dies.

Being led by the "authorised ink" manufacturer is a worse scenario than the guy who spends one-tenth of the money on "unsupported" ink and chooses any printer he wants to. Mugs are what we're supposed to print - not what we're supposed to be!

We're led to believe that "authorised" inks are the best that there is, but how do we know this? Most of it hasn't changed for 10 years - that's why you can use the same stuff in an ancient Epson 1290S that you can use in today's R1400. What progress has been made in all this time? Nothing, beyond us having to wait for the next profile to be issued for some printer that we probably don't want to use anyway.

My frustration is due to the industry being choked into stagnation.

[John G]

Sawgrass can't stop them all so, if cheaper inks devalue the market (I'm not saying they do), then it's happening here and now.

Yes it is happening now - just take a look on ebay and there's plenty of people selling individual, personalised, one off mugs for between £4.50 and £5.50 including delivery. You take off the delivery costs, packaging, paypal fees, ebay Final Value fees, Listing fees, mug, ink, paper and making costs there cannot be much left for profit.

Without the unauthorised inks I think the playing field would be a bit more level!

[JSR]

Yes it is happening now - just take a look on ebay and there's plenty of people selling individual, personalised, one off mugs for between £4.50 and £5.50 including delivery. You take off the delivery costs, packaging, paypal fees, ebay Final Value fees, Listing fees, mug, ink, paper and making costs there cannot be much left for profit.

Without the unauthorised inks I think the playing field would be a bit more level!

True but the unauthorised inks aren't going anywhere any time soon. The only way to keep the playing field level is to use the unauthorised inks ourselves. The tactics of pricing the ink high, supporting only a tiny few printers, and not planning for the future, is what makes the playing field unlevel.

[bms]

Yes it is happening now - just take a look on ebay and there's plenty of people selling individual, personalised, one off mugs for between £4.50 and £5.50 including delivery. You take off the delivery costs, packaging, paypal fees, ebay Final Value fees, Listing fees, mug, ink, paper and making costs there cannot be much left for profit.

Without the unauthorised inks I think the playing field would be a bit more level!

Just to break up the JohnG v JSR discussion!

If an authorised ink cost of a mug costs, say 14p (Sawgrass figures of using GXe3300 to print something 6" x 6.6" medium density ~ approx same coverage as a mug in different dimensions) then using unauthorised inks would cost less (admitedly), but even if it was 6-10p less I don't think this is going to suddenly change the market and make the playing field so much different. Yes the inks are expensive, but the cost per mug isn't very large at all.

[John G]

Its not the cost per mug - its how much you have to buy. For my Ricoh I have to buy 4 x carts at £60.00 each, + vat, a smidge off for bulk purchase. Fake ink and you can buy smaller bottles at a cheaper price (presumably with no vat) so people with long pockets and short arms can afford to fill up there epson's and trounce the competition on price.

[bms]

Its not the cost per mug - its how much you have to buy. For my Ricoh I have to buy 4 x carts at £60.00 each, + vat, a smidge off for bulk purchase. Fake ink and you can buy smaller bottles at a cheaper price (presumably with no vat) so people with long pockets and short arms can afford to fill up there epson's and trounce the competition on price.

Yes, but the cost of the ink going onto the mug isn't hugely different. At 14p (using the figures below) for Sawgrass ink in a Ricoh GX3300 (cheaper per ml for the GX5050) then the absolute max difference in ink cost is 14p!

As for VAT, it has to be paid somewhere - in import duty (plus VAT), but this isn't necessarily the issue - the differential in cost on this example mug, comparing GX3300 Sawgrass ink cost v, say an Epson using some chinese ink, is (max) several pennies.

[Paul]

now you talking about epsons like some evil machines that are responsible for all the bad things in this business... :rolleyes: dont forget that you fill up your ricoch too

[John G]

I have nothing against epson's printers - epsons are the main sub printers and I consider the ricoh's as the minority - but at this stage the Ricoh's are my favourite after owning both - although my epson wasn't printing sub inks.

Paul, I was kidding and it was meant as tongue in cheek

What I'm trying to say is the people who are selling mugs on ebay, for that price, are devaluing the trade. The only way these traders can do this is by having zero overheads and buying cheap inks as the profit made selling at that price wouldn't get them a full set of ricoh carts. Without fake inks the cowboy traders wouldn't exist - they couldn't afford to compete without putting their prices up as the next time a red light comes on, on the printer, they wouldn't have enough money to fill the inks up again.

They buy cheap gear, cheap inks, sell a few boxes of cheap mugs, with the help of this forum with any problems that may arise, then realise how little they are making. 5 - 6 months down the road and the whole system ends up on ebay for sale to the next punter and the damage has been done.

As for the vat on fake ink - anybody selling unauthorised sub ink is hardly likely to be vat reg.