The Advantages of Going With a Local Sign Shop

You won’t be surprised to learn that the advent of internet-based printing has had a huge effect on printing services. Once people would have had to head to the local print shop to get their Little League shirts printed up; now they’ll often just order them online. Custom Christmas cards used to be a luxury, but today they’re commonplace. Even those people who are still ordering printed photos are more likely to order them online than to get them from a local Walgreens.

While that type of printing can be regulated to online companies, there are other times when it’s better to go with a local print shop. For instance, when it comes to important printing for a business, it just makes more sense to go with a local print shop than to take your chances with an online place. Here are a few of the reasons to go with someone local for printing services.

You’re Not Dealing With Shipping

There are some customers we deal with who work weeks ahead. If they’re in need of new trade show displays, they stop by (or send us the files) long before they need them. They have their displays packed up a week ahead of time and arrive at the airport three hours early.

These business owners are in the minority!

Let’s be honest, a lot of businesses are taking care of all of that at the very last minute. It’s not that they’ve been putting it off, it’s just that current business (for instance, selling to customers) gets in the way of future business (ordering trade show banners). Even overnight shipping is no longer an option, especially if that overnight shipping becomes “oh, sorry, when we said overnight shipping what we really meant was your custom sign won’t show up for four days. Also, your package was shipped to Sri Lanka for some reason.”

When you work with a local company, you don’t have to deal with shipping times or the risk of something getting lost in the mail. That aspect alone makes using a local print shop a much more appealing option.

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Mistakes Get Fixed Faster

Business owners who order something online have another problem to contend with: mistakes. Maybe they made a mistake in their art, or maybe the online printer made a mistake. Either way, the mistake has to be corrected, which once again adds shipping time and could cause the project to arrive later than needed.

Whether the mistake is yours or ours, the turnaround time fixing those mistakes is going to be a lot shorter when you work with local printing services. We’ll make sure that everything is just as you like it, and you can pick it up at the store instead of spending time on the phone (or waiting for someone to get back to you online) trying to make sure you’ll get your package on time.

Speaking of being on the phone..

You’re Creating Relationships

When you work with a local print shop, you’re going to have someone that’s willing to work hard for you. We know how word of mouth gets around regarding the reliability of a business, and we certainly want to be seen as the most reliable provider of printing services around. When you pick up a banner from our sign shop, we have to look you in the eye and let you know we’ve done our best on your project. The online place will stick it in a box and ship it off, hoping you won’t complain.

That’s not to say that an online place doesn’t want your business. But when you use a place across the country, they really don’t have much stock in providing you with the same level of service as a local print shop. And speaking of local…

You’re Shopping Local

Shopping locally is one of those ideas that just makes sense. When you shop local, you’re keeping money in your community. You’re also ensuring that other local companies can keep their employees employed, which means that they’re spending money in the community…possibly even helping support your own company. It’s incredibly symbiotic.

Is it always possible to shop locally? No. For instance, the printers we use are so custom that there’s no one around to purchase them from. And they’re certainly not made locally. But whenever possible, we’re big fans of buying locally and supporting our fellow small businesses.

Custom Areas

Covering custom areas can be a difficult task, especially when it comes to buildings with windows of varying sizes. Take the Budweiser Events Center for instance. Because it’s such a custom space, they don’t want to trust any multi-panel window coverings to an online provider. Because we’re local, we can handle the measuring and ensure that any sort of building-specific banner is the perfect size.

Vehicle wraps are another custom job that just can’t be done online. While you might be able to get custom stickers online, these are often small and simply don’t grab the attention of people in traffic. For a true attention-grabber, you need a full vinyl car or truck wrap. And since you can’t send your car off to an online print shop, we’re more than happy to take care of it for you. Vehicle wraps are a specialty.

What Convinces Most Business?

Here’s what convinces most businesses to work with a local print shop: they get burned. Often they’ll order something online that just isn’t up to the quality they require, or they sit by the window watching for the UPS guy only to find out that the package didn’t ship when they were told it would.

In the end, most businesses are convinced by the speed at which we can get them a quality product. If you’re ready to take advantage of all of the benefits of working with a local sign shop, we’d love to show you what we can do. Contact Action Signs today to get the best printing services in northern Colorado and beyond!

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