Invitations are made specifically for you and are personalised to what you need. You are paying for a personalised one off service.
Your order is made up of STOCK, PRINTING, DESIGN, CUTTING, SOMETIMES SCORING, SOMETIMES GLUES AND TAPES AND ASSEMBLY.
STOCK – the papers, envelopes and embellishments make up MORE THEN 50% of the price. Extra stock is also purchased so each invitation is perfect and the imperfect ones are thrown away.
85% of stock comes from more than 1 supplier and up to 4 suppliers, so there are also these shipping costs. It is impossible to keep stock on hand of everything as every order is unique in some way and there is a huge range to choose from.
PRINTING – the cost for ink (toner and drums combined is $4,000) plus maintenance.
DESIGN – the going rate for qualified graphic designers is $90 an hour. My rate is $60. (I have 9 years experience in this industry). With my standard designs you are not charged for a new design but just an edit of a template.
With designs you want to replicate from ETSY or similar, they have put in the time to design their invitations and continually sell the designs for years and continue to make money from their creation. I can not re-sell these designs after I have created it for you as I would be in breach of copyright. New designs can take 2 – 6 hours to create.
GUILLOTINE AND CREASING / SCORING – stocks come in A4 or A3 sheets and are cut down to the sizes listed in your quote. There is also maintenance, blade sharpening, blade replacement ($500), plus extra paper to cut with your job so it protects your invitations.
GLUES / TAPES – needed to put together the invitations.
ASSEMBLY – Depending on the design and quantity, this can take 3 hours – 28 hours.
Kindly keep all this in mind when considering the quote you have received as it may be just an invitation to your guests, but there is alot of work and effort put into them to make them perfect for you.