Mousemats?

[Flash]

Are they worth adding to our catalogue or a waste of time? Shall I Dye Sub or transfer print them? Who's mats would you recommend?
As always eternally grateful for all replies.

Phil

[Justin]

I really like the fabric mousemats, don't sell many but I like them! I use the Xpres ones. Don't get on at all with the more expensive 'premium' ones, their the ones with a shiny surface. The print looks very good but I've had many complaints of them not working with optical mice....mouses....meese etc.

Easy enough to dye sub so well worth adding in I would say, they do smell a little when pressed though!

[TransferGraeme]

Judging by the number we sell I would definitely say they are worth adding - and I would definitely dye-sub them - a better, smoother finish and cheaper than conventional transfers.

I'd recommend ours - I realise I may be biased, but there are certainly a couple of regulars on this forum who I know buy from us.

[accdave]

I'd recommend ours - I realise I may be biased, but there are certainly a couple of regulars on this forum who I know buy from us.


I haven't had any mice in the shop complaining so I guess they must be good :D

[Flash]

So what would be the cost in Dye-Sub ink + paper to print a full colour standard mousemat?
I know a sheet of transfer paper for 'lights' is about 40p then you need to add the cost of the dye-based inkjet ink.


Judging by the number we sell I would definitely say they are worth adding - and I would definitely dye-sub them - a better, smoother finish and cheaper than conventional transfers.

I'd recommend ours - I realise I may be biased, but there are certainly a couple of regulars on this forum who I know buy from us.
What size & how much are yours Graeme? I'm told size matters in this instance ;)

Phil

[TransferGraeme]

Ours are 25 x 19 cm and available in 2 thicknesses 4.5 mm and 6 mm (we sell about 40% 4.5 mm - 60% 6 mm).

Prices vary according to the number you buy - http://www.thetransferpress.co.uk/acata ... emats.html (http://www.thetransferpress.co.uk/acatalog/mousemats.html)

Taking Trupix A4 at 13.45p per sheet and adding ink costs - which we typically estimate at around 20p for an A4 print - so let's say a working estimate of 35p for paper and ink costs would sound reasonable.

[Flash]

They appear competitively priced Graeme ;) I have bookmarked your site.

Phil

[Andrew]

Mousemats can sell quite well if you have the right type of market for them. I go through loads and they always print well.

Not sure on Graeme's ink cost but he should know better than me. Is that for a fully printed A4 or lots of white Graeme? 20p seems cheap for an A4 print from what I can recall.

[TransferGraeme]

The 20p is a figure I always quote based on an average usage, and comes from an informed source at Sawgrass, and in retrospect I agree might be at the bottom end for mouse mats if you're doing 100% coverage. I know we have a customer who prints full wrap mugs only and is an absolute stickler on costs and he has calculated that his ink costs for 3 (20 x 8 cm) wraps on a sheet is within a whisper of 22 pence, so doing the maths and multiplying up to cover a mouse mat 100% with bleed (say a print area of 25.6 x 19.6) the ink cost would be 23.1 pence - this added to the paper cost of 13.45 pence gives a total of 36.55 pence - plus of course the dreaded VAT!!

HOWEVER !!! Every printer has slightly different ink consumption, and although the print per page costs for all printers (Epson and Ricoh) is broadly similar obviously there will be variances.

If I may be allowed to massively over-simplify the "business model" - and I know every penny counts so please do not think I am belittling the efforts and time involved - my expectation would be that a few pennies variance on the ink costs on an item would not massively affect your margins - for example whether the direct costs of a mousemat, ink and paper are £1.20 or £1.25 the margin if you sell it at £5 (a fairly typical figure imho) is only affected by 1%, and either offers margins that many comparable industries could only dream about!

[Andrew]

Thanks for that Graeme. Do you know what ink size that is based on? 220ml Artainium? I only ask as I am always trying to calculate more accurately the ink costs involved in our printing. Pennies don't matter for most but every penny does for us when manufacturing which is why the accurate costing helps.

Thanks,

Andrew

[Kaz]

Home to gifts have a very helpful PDF that gives a break down on costs for the Ricoh cartridges, but for some reason every time I try to open it lately, it crashes my browser :(

[bms]

Are they worth adding to our catalogue or a waste of time

I agree with Graeme as regards popularity. Certainly up there in the most popular 5 sublimation products sold. Ours are 23cm x 19cm and are 5mm thick. We used to offer the 3mm version but with cost of production being a couple of pence cheaper we decided to only stock the 5mm versions and have done so for several years now. We have one customer that advertise these as washable (put in the domestic washing machine if they get too dirty!).

Our offering is at the link below with price breaks also on quantity...
http://www.printerowners.co.uk/sublimation/108/sublimation-mousemat.htm

[Kaz]

The link is on this page, hopefully someone else will have more luck than me :(

http://www.hometogifts.co.uk/consumables_Gel.html

[TransferGraeme]

My customer who has done the calculation uses ArTainium from us at £49.90 + VAT per 125ml using an R1800 printer, using the standard settings as recommended by Sawgrass.

Andrew I hope you were not offended by my general comments on margins - I certainly appreciate that every penny matters, and I would be the last person to be casual about margins - the last week's fluctuations in the exchange rates which effectively increased our cost prices on a number of products by 7% in 3 days have certainly served to re-emphasize in my mind how carefully margins have to be considered.

[TransferGraeme]

I agree with Martin (who would think we were competitors :lol: ) we also used to offer 3mm mousemats and we sold hardly any and so we dropped them. The fabric mousemats are certainly machine-washable - but DON'T tumble dry them!!!!!

[Andrew]

Of course not Graeme. I agree with you that for the majority in the subliamtion industry a few pennies will not matter. I should have mentioned that pennies matter for me specifically as I work mostly on trade printing. I have far lower margins than most ...... unfortunately. This is the reason I was more interested in the costs and today when I came into work and before reading this thread I sat down and started working out updated ink and paper costs to try and squeeze whatever I can. I use wideformat now so obviously slightly different but still relevant. I am currently quoting on large runs of sun screens which then emphasize the ink and paper costs further.

[Andrew]

Thanks for the links Kaz. Opened for me ok.

[Kaz]

*phew* Glad it worked, must be my lappy then, probably something to do with adobe, off to investigate

[TransferGraeme]

Having looked at those figures they are coming out a little higher than I would have expected although they are some very ink-intensive designs. I will have a chat with Sawgrass during the day and report back!

[Kaz]

Graeme

I think those figures have been provided by sawgrass at some point, based on this info page

http://www.sawgrassink.com/v.php?pg=734

But if you can get clarification, that would be great

[Kaz]

Graeme

I think those figures have been provided by sawgrass at some point, based on this info page

http://www.sawgrassink.com/v.php?pg=734

But if you can get clarification, that would be great

[Andrew]

Graeme - I have heard so many varied ink printing costs over the years I think the only accurate way to find out is to do it yourself like your customer did. Like you mentioned, different printers and software settings etc can make a big difference. Some of the rip software for the wide format printers actually tells you the exact amount of ink used per print. How accurate that is I don't yet know.

[JSR]

Although I can't answer for the Ricoh printers, when I first bought my R1800 some years ago, I ran a spreadsheet that logged the amount of ink used against the size of photo printed. The amount of ink used was taken from when a cartridge was replaced, and the size of the photos were reduced to a calculation of square mms. Area of coverage was then divided into capacity of ink used to calculate the amount of ink used on any particular size of print.

Over the course of several months, the conclusion reached was that an A4 photo (borderless) used just over 1ml of ink on average. Borderless printing forces overspray from the printer, suggesting that an edge-to-edge A4 without overspray would use to the tune of 1ml of ink. Photos may vary between light coverage and heavy coverage but 1ml looked like a good average.

At the same time as doing this, a fellow R1800 owner living on the other side of the world was doing a similar test. His result generally suggested the same 1ml per A4.

These were "real world" tests and so the quantity of ink consumed included any required head cleans and ink purged every time a cartridge was changed. Using a CISS would reduce this waste and so would slightly reduce the amount of ink used. The test ran over several months to level off the excess ink "wasted" when a new printer consumes a certain amount of ink on its first install.

Given this information, I generally work out my ink costs using this same "1ml = A4" rule of thumb. A typical mousemat covers about 80% of an A4 sheet (with bleed), and so the cost of ink for a mousemat would be 0.8ml on average.

If the ink costs £52 for 125ml, then the cost of 1ml is 42p. The cost of 0.8ml is, therefore, 33p, so that's the ink cost per mousemat. If doing a large run of light or heavy ink coverage, you'd need to factor that into your costs. My calculations are purely based on averages.

Paper cost needs adding to ink costs - around 14p per sheet of TexPrint - making a grand total of 47p (55p inc VAT) per mousemat.

I suspect that the figure provided earlier in the thread of 35p (41p inc VAT) is a touch too low, but I would expect the true figure to be somewhere between that one and my one (because my calculations err on the side of caution).

Whether other printers use the same ink coverage (1ml per A4) is something someone else needs to work out. The R1800 was a CMYKKRB+GOP printer and we tend to use CMYK or CcMmYK in dye-sub.

As always, YMMV.

[Flash]

Another great comprehensive post JSR, thank you.
I have been trying to work out the most cost effective method of printing mousemats as it appears that mousemats that can be dye-sub printed can also be printed with a transfer paper.
I have not done the costings on ink consumption, but you have ;) which helps!
I know I can purchase a sheet of transfer paper for 'lights' for about 40p now I would print this with dye based ink which is in a CISS currently on an Epson SX200 All In One Printer.
I also know that dye based ink is significantly cheaper than dye Sub ink.
Now I have your calculations I should be able to find my answer with a calculator.

Phil

[Andrew]

Phil - as far as I know or can remember the transfer print onto mousemat is not the hard wearing as it on the surface rather than becoming part of it. Might need to do a bit of research on that as well.

Thanks for the extra info JSR