Business stationery is one of the public faces of a business to the world. The quality of business stationery will be an aspect of the company that potential customers use to assess whether to use a specific company or to go to one of the many competitors. Therefore, stationery printing has a large role to play in showing off a company to its best advantage and this makes the choice of stationery printers part of the marketing and promotion strategy, and therefore a matter of some importance.
Stationery printers offer a service to businesses in printing business cards, annual reports or catalogues, as well as many other types of business stationery that is needed. When choosing a printer for your business stationery there are a number of areas to consider. Before even contacting any stationery printers it is necessary to be clear what services will be needed for your business. Basic company stationery includes letterheads and compliment slips, both of which should give information on the company name and senior directors, with clear contact information. There may be specific marketing or product information that needs to go out and this is another area of stationery printing to consider.
Even in these days of the paperless office it is surprising how much paper is found to be necessary. The digital world is not applicable for all communications and, on those occasions, when real world printed information is needed, businesses need to ensure that their message is getting across loud and clear and in a format that is well structured, readable and provides a favourable view of the company.
Once the need for printing stationery is clear, the next step is to choose the printing supplier. Budget will be a factor but this is an area where best value is a better guide than cheapest price. Stationery printers should be able to show examples of their products and that they can provide reliable quality in their services. Some stationery printers may use sub-contractors for certain parts of the order, in which case this is another sphere to investigate for quality and reliability.
Other factors to consider are how much guidance on design is needed or whether this can be competently done in house. Often this is the better option as each company has their own design style and this helps to keep up name recognition wherever company stationery is seen. However, such issues may depend on the company size and where larger businesses will have in-house expertise, it may make sense for the small companies to use creative input from the supplier.
As with all aspects of commerce, environmental factors should be considered, so when choosing stationery printers, it is worth taking into account location, as the stationery printing company who have a number of local branches will reduce the travel miles for your stationery, so helping to achieve the company’s environmental targets.
In general, business stationery needs to be produced by good quality, reliable stationery printers who can be flexible enough to meet the needs of your business.