July 1st, 2011, 04:51 AM
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#1 (permalink)
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Senior Member
- Join Date:
- Jun 2011
- Location:
- Auckland, N.Z.
- Posts:
- 369
- Liked:
- 47 times
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are there any INKSOFT users or considering it?
No, not trying to sell it, actually looking to buy it.
Inksoft was designed by JP and Anya at revolt graphics.com for screen printers by screen printers after they analyzed bluecotton, customink, cafepress, zazzle and the likes as online editors, but with licensing it to printers, they have been developing amazing code, and for those who print for corporate and event and schools with a three or four staff and up I think this is a great marketing tool to grow to a much bigger level.
I think it's great and the best of the design packages, yes some say it's expensive, but if you look on YouTube there is a day of tutorials and the back end is massive. Due to the size and nature of the beast the price reflects and the features are nearly in balance with that. If and when we pick this up we would likely have to load 30,000 images, most of which we would have to photograph on front, back, left and right sides for the image editor, and maintaining it etc would likely add an admin person at least part if not full-time to the investment. I see the average inksoft buyer would have to be a bigger company to afford and utilize it's features rather than basement owner operators.
My concerns or problems are the vector images see too strong in some areas and weak to non existent in others rather than maybe a bit more broader range, but I can live with that.
It seems hard to find crossover points between DTG, Vinyl, and Screen in terms of sales perametres, and the design suite hasn't mastered embroidery yet.
There are a few little things, but not so many, and they are developing and getting through wish lists ongoing and developing with boards members may make feature requests on.
The killer of this for me, and others whom I read a bit from is the costing. We run a sharp operation we think, and we cost very carefully to win jobs and not make a loss. Every quote is based around cost of substrate, plus freight plus packing and unpacking, plus setups, plus branding plus packing if required, and delivery, plus an admin cost per order, subtotal, and then plus margin, and divide that back by the quantity of items ordered. Our margins are as low as 15% for some clients to be competitive. We cant afford to loose jobs, or underquote. Obviously we take more margin where we can, when we can. Things like different suppliers having different volume discounts, freight frees, or palletized over courier fret all effect bottom line. So the logical is always costs plus margin equals sell price, however Inksoft is like a lot of other programs where it does not calculate full or true cost per order and then add a markup, rather it wants a sell price put in then discount backwards for volume which is just too random and unscientific for us.
Your thoughts and opinions appreciated, or other options out there you may know of.
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