Those suppliers that are jacking up the price need to be called out publically. Anybody have a problem with that or is there a better way to handle it?
Alan: I can't speak for all Suppliers but I can tell you how Nazdar SourceOne handles pricing of these and other supply items. In almost all cases our customer selling price and distributor purchase price is based exclusively on a List Price established by the manufacturer. I can assure you that there are never any cases where anyone at Nazdar SourceOne is sitting around thinking of ways to jack the price up to our customers. With that said, I could see a case where the manufacturers of these products might adopt a different List Price Pricing Structure for their Graphic Application Tapes versus a similar product that is being marketed as a Pallet Protection Tape. One of the reasons that this might occur is that Large Format Screen-Printers and Inkjet Graphic Producers use a much higher volume of these products as transfer tapes and/or graphics protection films than a traditional textile screen-printer would.
It takes about 3 sq./ft. of pallet tape to cover a standard 16”x22” auto press pallet, compared to 32 sq./ft. of application tape to cover a 8’x4’ large format graphic. A lot of screen-printers change their pallet tape out less than once per week, while Large Format Screen-Printers and Inkjet Graphic Producers can produce hundreds and in some cases thousands of graphics per day. The most common pallet tape Nazdar SourceOne sells is the RTAPE4350 PROTEK PALLET in 18”x100YDS that lists for $64.32 or $0.14 per sq./ft., and can be had at a discount by companies purchasing in volume or in case quantities. You use about two linear feet of the 18” wide tape to cover a standard 16”x22” pallet, which works out to about $0.43 per pallet or right about $5.00 to protect a full set of pallets for a 10 Color / 12 Station press.