Cheapest CD Duplication? Look Closer…

When shopping for the best price on a CD duplication project, customers often look for the lowest price they can find.  It’s understandable.  At this point in the production process, you’ve probably already spent a lot of money on recording, mastering, and graphic design.  After paying for all that, you might be looking to pinch every penny you can.  But when you are evaluating quotes from different companies, make sure you are comparing apples to apples.  

When you see a quote that is drastically lower than the rest of the competition, there’s often a good reason why: it’s missing one or more important elements that the other quotes include.  Companies will advertise that lowest price to get you in the door.  When you request certain key features on your project, then your price gets jacked up.

Here are some common items that could be left off your low price quote:

1. Poly-wrap
   If  you are going to be selling your CDs, you will most likely need poly-wrap to seal the package.  Some CD duplication companies will advertise a really low price, but they won’t include this necessary element.  When you add the price for the poly-wrap, it ends up being the same or more than the competition’s advertised price.
2. 2-Sided Printing
   Most of our lower priced packages at COPYCATS Media include 4/1 printing.  This means that your printed inserts are full color on one side and black & white on the other side.  For a small increase in the unit price, you can get it printed 4/4 (full color on both sides). But some places will offer low prices that have less desirable print options, like 4/0 (full color print on one side, no print on the other side).  They offer this low advertised price to draw in customers, knowing that most customers will want print on both sides of their inserts.  That’s when they raise the price.
3. Standard Production Times
   Standard production time for a CD-DVD duplication project shouldn’t take more than two weeks (10 business days).  Some places that offer the lowest prices will also have slower than usual production times, like 15-20 business days.  Again, the tactic is to rope you in with the low advertised price, then raise it when you want a faster production time.

By now, you’ve probably recognized the pattern: 1) advertise prices lower prices than the competition to lure customers, 2) exclude key features that most customers will need, 3) raise the price when they request these features. 

Every CD-DVD duplication company will aggressively advertise their lowest prices (including us), but make sure those low-priced packages include everything you need.

1000 CDs in Wallets for $1390

Last week, we announced new low prices for our printed cardboard sleeve packages.  With the sun shining, temperatures rising, and snow melting in Minnesota, we start to feel pretty good.  So good, in fact, that we’re going to lower prices on other packages, too.

This week, we’ve got new pricing for our wallet packages.  They are now at $1390 for 1000 CDs.  So what’s all included in this package?  Here’s the rundown:

Replicated CDs- Commercially pressed replicated CDs with a 1-3 color imprint.  You’ll have the highest quality replicated CDs pressed from a glass master.  On top of that, you’ll get a 1-3 color screen imprint on the disc face.  Upgrade to a full color, CMYK imprint for a small fee.

4 panel cardboard wallets- Made from recycled materials and containing no plastic, this packaging option is better for the environment.  They fold over once and a folded pouch holds the CD in the wallet.  This packaging also includes a spine, making it easy for consumers and retailers to display and organize your CDs.

Full assembly with poly-wrap – We always assemble your discs into the packaging and seal them with poly-wrap at no extra charge.  This important feature is always included in our package pricing.

Free bar code- We also give you the option of including a bar code on your product at no extra cost.  You can use that unique bar code to track sales through Soundscan.

If you have questions about this product or anything else at COPYCATS Media, feel free to contact us.

You get what you pay for

I came across this very short blog post by Ted Pearlman about price shopping.  Here’s my favorite line:

Price shopping is a disease that will lead you to ruin: don’t do it. I’m not talking about seeing if you can find a $1200 designer suit for $200. I’m talking about budgeting $200 for a suit and then going out and buying one that lists for $200 retail.

The point he’s making is don’t purchase a low quality Product A when you can get a high quality Product B.  I would often pass this advice along to customers when working as a sales rep at COPYCATS Media.  Customers would have a limited budget and want a CD replication project done with full packaging.  Sometimes they would ask us price-match a quote from another company that was absurdly low.  We gladly try to match competitors’ prices, but we also have to make sure we’re comparing apples to apples.

Getting something for a below market value is often for a reason (remember the epidsode of Seinfeld with the red dot on the cashmere sweater?).  The first thing you want to evaluate is the quality of the product.  You can always request samples from COPYCATS Media, and most other places will fulfill that request, too.  If you come across a place that doesn’t give you a sample, then you already have a pretty big red flag (or red dot).

When looking at samples, here’s what you need to evaluate:

DIY vs. Letting Us Do It For You

I came across this post in a music forum.  Somebody was putting together a compilation CD that would be a 2 disc set.  They were wondering whether it would be more cost effective to print them off themselves or to get them done professionally.  I posted a brief answer on that board, but I’ll dig into it a bit deeper here.

Let’s first try to assess the cost of doing a project like this yourself.  They mentioned purchasing a CD printer to do this project and others in the future.  If they were to invest in a printer, I would hope they get a high quality thermal printer and not an inkjet.  Inkjet printing can smear and smudge when exposed to moisture.  If you check out this site, you’ll see that these printers can range from $2,000 – $8,000.

Let’s move on to the discs.  If you are using a high quality thermal printer, you will need to buy blank CDRs that are compatible and absorb the ink correctly.  If you look here, you’ll see that you can get them for $0.27 per disc.  At 3000 units, that would be $810 total.  This is assuming you go with silver discs that do not print on the center hub.  If you want white discs or discs that you can print all the way to the center hole, it can cost up to $0.44 per disc or $1320 total.

Moving on to packaging, you have a few different options: double jewel case, double digipak, or double sleeve/wallet.  Let’s keep it simple and just go with the standard, double jewel cases.  I found a site selling them for $0.30 per unit.  That would cost $900 total.

The last thing you would get is the printed inserts for your project.  Let’s assume you just a plain, 2 panel insert and traycard.  I found this place where you can get 3000 copies for $610.

Let’s add up all of these tangible goods:

Discs: $810

Cases: $900

Inserts: $610

Total: $2310

That’s a generous assumption for a few reasons.  The first is that I assumed the most basic options (2 panel inserts, silver print-to-hub CDRs).  If you wanted a larger insert or print-to-center CDRs, it will cost more.  The second reason is that I didn’t include the cost of the CD/DVD printer.  This is an investment, so you can’t allocate the total cost just to this project.  Since I don’t know this piece of equipment’s lifespan, I couldn’t make a good estimate.

The last thing to consider is all the time and labor you put into this project.  I really can’t put a price on ones time, but I’d imagine it’s valuable.  You would have to burn, print, and assemble 3000 CD packages.  Since they didn’t mention having any type of multi-drive duplicator, I assume their just going to be using the single drives on their computer.  Once they are packaged, you’ll have to get them all shrink-wrapped or poly-wrapped.  You could purchase a roll of the wrap and get a heat gun (or just a hair dryer).

This is a lot of time spent for some savings.  You can get all of this done at COPYCATS Media or other professional duplicators/replicators (but I’d recommend COPYCATS Media).  It will cost about the same, but save you all the time, effort, and frustration.  You’ll also be getting higher quality, replicated CDs. 

If you have a two disc project in the works, get in touch with our sales department to get a quote.

Getting the most bang for your buck

You may notice that when you receive price quotes from COPYCATS Media, you’ll get better per-unit prices when you order larger quantities.  This usually doesn’t come as a surprise to most people.  You see this everywhere from ordering custom manufactured CDs to buying toilet paper at your local supermarket.  The higher quantity you buy, the better value you receive.

In our business, we have price break points.  These are set quantities where the price changes.  They can vary from product to product, but the price breaks often come at these quantities: 100, 250, 500, 1000, 2500, 5000, and so on. 

This can cause some unique situations to arise.  For example, let’s look at the price breaks at 500 and 1000 units.  As mentioned in an earlier post, CD replication requires a minimum order of 1000 units.  Ordering 500 would typically require you to get duplicated CDRs.

Let’s assign some rough unit prices to these quantities.  Let’s say that 1000 bulk replicated CDs cost $0.50 per unit and 500 bulk duplicated CDRs cost $0.70 per unit.  This would end up costing $500 total for the CD replication project and $350 for the CDR duplication project. 

But what if you wanted 750 CDs?  We would still use the $0.70 per unit price.  When you take 750 times $0.70, you get a total price of $525.  That costs more than ordering 1000 replicated CDs!  Because of the jump from duplication to replication and other set minimums when ordering paper print materials, this pricing phenomena usually only occurs between 500 and 1000 units.

In this situation, your sales rep would typically recommend ordering 1000 replicated CDs instead of 750 duplicated CDRs.  It’s not because they’re trying to up-sell, it’s because they want to get you the best value for your dollar.  You would be getting a higher quantity and higher quality for less money.

The prices I used in this post are just examples.  For an accurate price quote from COPYCATS Media, click here.

Why no significant price drop for blank, imprinted CDRs/DVDRs?

I mentioned last week that you could get recordable CDRs or DVDRs with your own custom imprint at COPYCATS Media.  I don’t have the exact prices (contact our sales department to request a quote), but I do know that the price is going to be very close to the amount you would normally pay if you were getting bulk CDs or bulk DVDs recorded and imprinted.

So why do blank imprinted discs cost nearly the same as recorded imprinted discs?  You would think that with one less step in production, these CDRs/DVDRs would cost a whole lot less. 

This is somewhat true.  When there is no data to record on these discs, it takes a little less time and labor to complete.  However, recording the data onto these discs is the least costly and least labor intensive part of the process.  Most people have put a CDR in their own computer and burned data onto it.  That’s all we are really doing here during the duplication process.  The only difference is that we have a lot more discs to burn. 

That’s OK though, because we have the equipment to do it.  Some machines just require us to insert a master disc, drop in a spindle of blank CDRs/DVDRs, and press a button.  A robotic arm picks up the blank discs, inserts them into the writing drive, and then removes them when they are done.  An hour later, we have hundreds of copies ready to go.

The real cost is involved with purchasing the blank media itself and imprinting the design onto the disc face.  Imprinting a design onto a disc requires a few steps: prepressing art files, ordering film, shooting screens, mixing ink, color matches, etc.  These steps take the most time and labor when duplicating CDRs/DVDRs.

I hope this gives you a better feel as to how these products are priced.  Again, if you need an exact quote, just give us a call.

1000 bulk replicated CDs: $500; 500 bulk replicated CDs: $500. Wait…what?

Have you ever wondered why the minimum quantity for a CD or DVD replication project is 1000 units?  Have you ever requested a quantity of 500 or 700 replicated discs and have one of our sales reps recommend getting 1000?  It’s not some dirty trick to try and upsell you into more than you need.  The reason is the large fixed setup costs involved with replicating and screen printing discs (creating a glass master, setting up film and screens).  Most companies establish 1000 as the minimum start point.  If you find a company that offers a smaller minimum quantity, you’ll find that the unit price is so high that the total cost is nearly equal to ordering 1000 CDs or DVDs.

For example, a company may offer 1000 bulk replicated CDs for $0.50 per disc, or 500 bulk replicated CDs for $0.99 per disc.  That would work out like this:

1000 CDs x $0.50 per CD = $500 total

500 CDs x $0.99 per CD = $495 total

So for $5 more, you can get another 500 discs! 

But what if you honestly don’t need 1000 discs?  It then might be better to order duplicated CDRs.  I posted earlier about the basic differences between the two.  They will run a little bit cheaper at the lower quantities. 

What if you really need to have replicated CDs, but you don’t want all of the excess discs that you’ll have to store or just throw away?  Then you can simply let your sales rep know that you need only 500 and understand that the pricing is the same for 1000.

Note:  It’s been awhile since I worked in sales, so the prices I’ve mentioned in here are just examples.  To get an accurate quote from COPYCATS Media, click here.