Printing commercial sized targets

[dakota.potts]

My mom and I run a zombie merchandise and paraphernalia company. We have some wonderful zombie designs and the rights to use them. I believe we have vector files of the images so they can be blown up. I would like to take these and put the two zombie images on them. As well, I think we could get a standard biohazard symbol with a 9 quadrant grid off to the side. This would allow for a creative silhouette target as well as a grid target that could be used for precision shooting even at long ranges.

I'd like to find a place that could print these with commercial sizes. Kinko's only seems to print up to 11 by 17 online but I'll call in tomorrow.

Where can you guys point me and what kind of prices would we be talking? I've been talking to my mom about investing some money and I decided that this would be a more fulfilling (and perhaps financially rewarding) investment than buying a couple ounces of silver or copper. I can contribute maybe a couple hundred on my own for the first run, so not really talking a huge budget.

 

[g.willikers]

How about a poster printing software.
The kind that splits the picture up into manageable sections, and prints them out on separate pages.
Then they are just assembled on backing.
There's plenty of free versions of these kinds of software.
Just do a web search for them.

 

[2ndsojourn]

If they don't need to be in color, a 'blueprint' shop (blueprints are now black on white) can print them up. I use the plan copier in our office all the time to print up targets.

 

[alex0535]

Fedex apparently does poster sized prints, you aren't going to like the price for something your printing to shoot at.

Given that you and your mom own a zombie merchandize and paraphernalia shop have you considered purchasing a large format picture to be able to print them in house? (brace yourself before you look up how much they cost) Other than a just for targets people like posters, and will probably pay more for posters than they will for targets.

If your not into the idea of owning your own printer I wouldn't even bother finding out how much it will cost to print them individually at fedex or kinkos. Look for a large print company in china that will print you thousands of them, otherwise your not going to make money. The only reason I would print one off at fedex would be that I was going to ship that 1 off to china so that they can print 1000-5000 copies of the original.

I know someone will be like "but its made in china", so is everything else we buy because it is sooo much cheaper to get them to make it in china and ship it to the other side of the world than it is to get someone to make them at a price where you are able to make money unless you are doing it yourself. And even if you have the printer to do it yourself, there is a factory in china that can throw them out in a fraction of the time for a fraction of the cost.

Chinese price per print is going to be in terms of $0.01-$2 a print. American prices are going to be in terms of several dollars per print all the way up to $40-120 a print a fedex. Before you pick a printer find one that is communicative during their business hours, remember that its a very different time over there, it is helpful if they are willing to send you a one off or several to verify that it is the quality you desire, they will hopefully do this for little to no cost.

 

[dakota.potts]

We're in the start up phases and right now we only have t shirts, stickers, wrist bands, things of that nature.

I have no compunction about ordering them overseas or wherever if the price is good. How would I go about finding a print shop like that? Google searches such as "custom shooting targets" haven't turned up much

 

[power5]

Why look up target printing? Unless you are looking to get ez read targets that show where they are hit. Just look up printers in your area. I would almost tell you to contact my company HQ in Chicago, but you may be too low a quantity for them to look at. We are a print manager and shop jobs to our vendor pool of over 10,000 vendors including china. Figure a couple hundred buck minimum for each Of the 4 color plates on top of the material cost as well.

 

[dakota.potts]

What size is an average shooting target? I'm looking at the 27" X 39" now

 

[alex0535]

There are a number of services where oversea companies list their offers, prices, and capabilities.

I would look up "poster printing china"

Companies will be on websites like alibaba.com, there are a few others but with a quick look alibaba seems to have a lot of choices. Most of the results in the links blow are for movie posters. For relatively simple zombie posters on less than poster grade paper the price should be lower than what they describe for high quality movie posters. Movie poster are 27x39".

http://www.alibaba.com/showroom/poster-printing.html
You might need to make an account to contact sellers.

Some things to keep in mind, I would try to find a seller that has been around for a long time and good reputation. China couldn't care less about our copyright laws.

You mentioned having the rights to some vector images. With the level of quality they can print at, you could get some people and turn them into zombies, take pictures and print out hyper-realistic zombie targets using those pictures. There are a bunch of animated zombie targets on the market, but not a bunch of "realistic zombie" targets on the market.

 

[dakota.potts]

Alex, I had definitely thought about that! We have one at our range that is a full color picture of a guy holding a woman at gunpoint. I thought it would be awesome to get people to dress as zombies and take pictures but I think I'd need to hire somebody with a camera that can take pictures at that quality and I don't know anything about that.

Unfortunately, it also looks like it has been done before:

http://www.letargets.com/estylez_ps.aspx?searchmode=keyword&searchkeyword=zombie

 

[Hardcase]

The museum that my wife curates uses the local blueprint shop for large format printing. The prices are pretty reasonable, even for the one-off printing that she has done. I would check with your local shops and see what they'll do for quantity pricing. You might also want to talk to your local newspaper, too. A lot of papers that do their own printing also do other jobs to keep the presses running.