We have added some common questions
with some explanations. Please scroll down to read more information on these topics:
Why does the price of an item drop so greatly when the quantity goes up?
What is going
on with the price of flash memory (USB drives)?
What is vector art and what are these things called eps files, and ‘converting to outlines’?
Why is my eps version of the file not acceptable?
Why does the price of an item drop
so greatly when the quantity goes up?
This is a common question and normally applies to printed paper goods or decals. You may
see the price of an item drop to a fraction when the quantity goes up. For example, there is a gold embossed
decal available at a price of $0.43 for 500. The price for 1000 drops to $0.23 each and is even less for
2000 ($0.14). How can this be?
There are a couple things to consider when determining the price of printed paper goods – 1)
material cost, and 2) production cost. In general, the material cost is less significant than the production
cost. Here are some of the items that make up the production cost:
a) Machine
setup – this is the actual preparation of the machine to print the selected item. This entails the
mounting of the printing plate, testing the alignment and running print samples. This is the most significant
component.
b) Machine run time – this is the time the printing machine is running. After
the initial setup the machine time is consistent for each item.
c) Packaging
– there is the time and cost associated with the unpacking of the goods and repackaging them after printing.
Smaller quantities require more packaging (fewer items per package). Overall this is a consistent
price per item.
When you look at the production costs, the most significant component is the machine setup. Once
the machine is setup the job is turned on and runs with little intervention. The machine setup cost is
absorbed into a high quantity and is barely visible but becomes more significant when the quantity drops. In
summary – there is a significant cost to set a job up; however, once it is setup, the machine is turned on and they
‘just let it run’.
What is going on with the price of
flash memory (USB drives)?
There
are only a few manufacturers of flash memory and they control the market prices. Having few manufacturers
means there is a lot of exposure to market demands. Since flash memory is in MANY of the products available
today (USB drives, plasma TV’s, stereos, etc.) the supply chain is impacted by consumer demand from many different directions.
When the price of memory changes it will have little impact on the price of large electronic components, like a plasma
TV. However, since a USB flash drive is primarily memory (over 80% of the total price of a flash drive)
a change in memory price will change the price of a flash drive accordingly.
There are other market conditions that have been seen
this year in the USB flash drive price fluctuations. Early this year the memory manufacturers cut back
on production anticipating a decline in consumer demand. Shortly thereafter, the Chinese Ney Year was celebrated
creating 3 to 4 weeks of production stoppage. When the Chinese returned from their New Years break there
was a backlog in production orders – and at the same time there was a decline in production. As the
backlog orders were being fulfilled this created an upturn in demand while there was a decline in production.
The result – greater demand and lower supply… a rise in price. Although this
had a temporary affect on price, it was significant during March and April.
Overall, the price of flash memory continues
to fall. Early last year a 4G flash drive was $100. Now, a 4G flash drive is less than
$20!
What is vector art and
these things called eps files, and ‘converting
to outlines’?
Here’s the deal, if you have artwork designed for a specific product or promotion you
definitely want the final product to look like the original file. When a file is sent from one computer
to another the receiving computer attempts to show the file as it was designed (the text and the picture). If
a specific font is used, let’s say you used Tahoma in your design, the receiving computer will display the file using
the Tahoma font… as long as it is a font available on that machine. If the receiver does not have
Tahoma then a substitute font will be used and the design will not look like the original. If the text
is converted to outlines before it is sent then the text is not transferred as a font, it is transferred as a graphic (lines
and points) so it will be displayed as it was created.
Sending a file in eps format is very important. Look
at a jpg file very close… zoom in and watch what it does. You can see how a jpg file is very pixilated
and fuzzy, there is no clear definition to the image. When an image is saved as an eps file (encapsulated
postscript) it is converted to mathematical points and lines, there is no ‘picture’ – this is ‘vector
art’. This makes the image portable and scalable… meaning it will look the same on any machine
and it will scale to any size and keep its definition. When an eps file is printed it is very crisp and
clear.
For additional information please see Why is my eps version of the file not acceptable?
Why is my eps version of the
file not acceptable?
It
is common to think that simply saving a file as an eps is sufficient. This is NOT necessarily the case.
When you select ‘File’, ‘Save As’, format ‘.eps’ you haven’t converted anything,
you are just changing the file extension. Let’s assume you imported a jpg into your design.
If the jpg has not been converted to outlines, and the file is saved as an eps, then all you are doing is embedding
the jpg image in the eps file… the jpg is still there and the file is not in a vector format. All
pieces of an art file need to be saved in vector format. Different graphics software tools have different
capabilities. Adobe Illustrator, for example, has the ability to do a ‘Live Trace’ and convert
a picture into vector art. However, you will find that some of these utilities are very crude and your
art will require significant ‘clean up’ to make it look like the original.
The best scenario in all cases is to find
the original art file, or the source file. If a graphics designer assisted in the development of the art
file there is a very good chance they have other formats of the file, or they can convert the source file into vector art
for you.