Outsource printing or bring it in-house?

Question

I know that I should let this thought go because outsourcing saves so much time and effort but every time I pull the report for how much we spend on direct mail marketing it blows me away. We could have purchased a really nice printer that prints letters, postcards, and envelopes, stuffs, stamps, and seals.

Would really like to hear from anyone that handles any kind of volume that does this. Also, if anybody from Portland is interested it may be fun to kick around some thoughts on going in on it together.

Cody Alexander · Answer

Neal C.  You might be surprised. The type of equipment that it takes for all of those items is extremely expensive, even more expensive when you start talking volume. And there's not one piece that would do it all. You then have to find the personnel to actually run all the equipment. Investors should spend their time buying houses and creating systems to help automate their business.

Then again I'm a bit biased, so take that for what its worth.

Cody Alexander · Answer

Neal C. I understand, you can always have a company design you your own mail piece or design your own and have the company print them for you. For letters there's also lots of options to make your mail piece stand out from the others like colored envelopes and envelope art.

Raw products are pretty costly unless buying in huge quantites. We buy 500,000 envelopes at a time to get our costs down, same with cardstock and other paper.

If doing it yourself make sure you include your time as a cost, most people don't consider that because its not costing them anything by doing it. However if your time is spent making mail pieces, you're taking time away from buying houses which is extremely costly.

Postage is also much more expensive unless you have a bulk mailing permit.

Neal Collins · Answer

Thanks for your feedback @Cody Alexander. The capital cost is why I was thinking about going in on it with a small group of investors. I also like the control over my materials so that I feel confident that my material is 100% different than other letters that are hitting property owners' mailboxes.