Price for Used Plastisol?

[alan802]

I've decided to sell our plastisol ink and invest in an RFU (as close as possible) system.  We have hundreds of gallons of various PMS colors and I want to sell it all but need to settle on a price for them.  I'm thinking a certain $/gram so I'll weigh the buckets and price them that way unless someone has a better idea.  I could just put a base price for popular colors based on how much we have, for example: half a gallon of brite red could be $25?  I'm basing that price by a new gallon costing us $90, half of that is 45 and it's slightly used so about half of that.  I don't know if I'm overpricing or if a flat $/gram would be the best way to sell it.  Any idea of how much per gram I should charge for standard colors?  I've already culled a ton of bad inks so what's left on the shelf is decent at worst and at least half of the ink is a great mix of opacity and wow ability that I've built over the years for various jobs.  So many of these quarts are labeled with the name of the job so I'm not sure how I'll go about documenting what colors we used for jobs that will be repeated once the ink is sold, but I have some ideas.  We do a large amount of repeat work, and over the years the sales staff has allowed everyone to have a custom PMS color so this could potentially be an issue when we do a repeat job with the ink no longer being on the shelf, but we need to do this.  Short term I see the issues but long term I know it's the right thing to do.  We have so many quart buckets that will never be touched that we mixed up for jobs that will not be printed again and for those inks there is no downside.  Our ink inventory has gotten out of control and when you have 35 choices for red ink and 65 custom PMS blues I think it's a bit excessive.  It can be handy to have a job with a custom color we already have on the shelf and that does happen on a regular basis so I do have reservations about getting rid of that type of stock.

I guess I'm having second thoughts now that I've typed it out.  Talk me into it, or out of it, what would you do if you had hundreds of different PMS colors on the shelf with about 60% of them collecting dust?

[jvanick]

does your current ink matching system have a 'recycle' feature?

Wilflex will let you recycle old ink into new colors.

[tonypep]

Not fond of that feature. It is inaccurate at times.

[Frog]

The recycle formulas that work are merely a matter of math. The numbers are either there or are not.

There's always black, (or the maroon-ish dark gray that I used a lot when I began and was using a lot of recycled inks)
A little pigment would have helped that.

[inkman996]

I would think you can combine a lot of the same color spectrum together to get one usable color for non critical jobs. I do it all the time with inks i mix by eye. For instance I might have 5 different blues that I can combine and adjust with a royal or navy and have something usable for non critical jobs.

[ebscreen]

We're kind of in the same boat. One of my dudes is pretty good with color theory and can typically grab something off the shelf and know
which way to bump it.

Not sure if it applies to you guys, but nailing down a stock color chart and sticking to it unless otherwise asked has helped a ton.
Ninety nine percent of the time the client wants a bright red and that's all that matters. They don't care and likely couldn't tell the difference
between 185 and 485.

Contract side is filling up the shelves though, luckily the majority of it is frequent re-orders.

[3Deep]

That's the reason we try our best to use stock inks, just to many qt's of ink that will never every be used again, I think we all have some just collecting dust as Alan said.

Darryl

[tonypep]

Been in that boat. Sitting on about 800 gals from an acquisition. Too much of a pain to sell. But..........we do have a library room with 80% of the pantone colors with formulas clear sealed on each one. The mystery ink sits and waits for the big runs.

[Screened Gear]

Contract side is filling up the shelves though, luckily the majority of it is frequent re-orders.

Why is this. I get the same thing. My retail orders are all done with maybe 12 colors. Then my contract guys as always needing pantone mixes.

[ebscreen]

Contract dudes are in the middle so they make sure everything is exact on their end for their client.
And unless we charge for matches, it's no skin off their nose.

We don't charge for matches with our good contract clients, but I'm thinking about beginning too, if only
for the storage.

[blue moon]

I've decided to sell our plastisol ink and invest in an RFU (as close as possible) system.  We have hundreds of gallons of various PMS colors and I want to sell it all but need to settle on a price for them.  I'm thinking a certain $/gram so I'll weigh the buckets and price them that way unless someone has a better idea.  I could just put a base price for popular colors based on how much we have, for example: half a gallon of brite red could be $25?  I'm basing that price by a new gallon costing us $90, half of that is 45 and it's slightly used so about half of that.  I don't know if I'm overpricing or if a flat $/gram would be the best way to sell it.  Any idea of how much per gram I should charge for standard colors?  I've already culled a ton of bad inks so what's left on the shelf is decent at worst and at least half of the ink is a great mix of opacity and wow ability that I've built over the years for various jobs.  So many of these quarts are labeled with the name of the job so I'm not sure how I'll go about documenting what colors we used for jobs that will be repeated once the ink is sold, but I have some ideas.  We do a large amount of repeat work, and over the years the sales staff has allowed everyone to have a custom PMS color so this could potentially be an issue when we do a repeat job with the ink no longer being on the shelf, but we need to do this.  Short term I see the issues but long term I know it's the right thing to do.  We have so many quart buckets that will never be touched that we mixed up for jobs that will not be printed again and for those inks there is no downside.  Our ink inventory has gotten out of control and when you have 35 choices for red ink and 65 custom PMS blues I think it's a bit excessive.  It can be handy to have a job with a custom color we already have on the shelf and that does happen on a regular basis so I do have reservations about getting rid of that type of stock.

I guess I'm having second thoughts now that I've typed it out.  Talk me into it, or out of it, what would you do if you had hundreds of different PMS colors on the shelf with about 60% of them collecting dust?

we are going through the same thing. We are introducing the new colors with all the documentation on the shelves and slowly phasing out the bastard mixes (one time use, blend leftovers . . .). some inks went in the boxes and to the warehouse. New inks going on the shelves all have formulas which also get written down in the PO so if we use it up it is not mixed again until needed. My guess is, the collection will continue to grow, but at least it will be manageable! With the work we do, we don't really have a choice. Similar to Tony, we will probably end up with most of the PMS colors on the shelf at some point in time.

pierre

[ZooCity]

I hate having overstock of most colors, we have too many systems to accommodate that- WFX Standard, WFX Performance, WB, DC, HSA -that's a metric crap ton of spots and PMS colors to keep on hand when it gets multiplied out and then there's considering puff, metallics, etc.

We do use the WFX IMS recycle function for plasti and it works for us.  Sometimes it won't pull an obvious match for recycle material though but I think we just need to update our software.  Looking forward to using Rutlands with the WB99 system too. 

If you keep additives out of your plastisols I think you can really keep using most of them.  I cleaned house awhile ago and got 90% of the "soft hand", "fashion", "stretch" (none of this really achieves anything in my now seasoned opinion) mixed colors spun down into a recycled grey blend for going on lighter Ts (some clients really dig this actually). After doing that, most of our plastisols can be recycled either with IMS for criticals or by eye for one-offs into what's needed.

I personally love mixing color by eye and a good pair of eyes and some intuition makes it go very fast but eliminated that from our shop awhile ago, there's no way to repeat it.

+1million for locking down standard colors.  We are losing our minds busy right now but it's a project I'm going to make happen this year.  I want my ink tech pulling buckets off shelves more than mixing up matches.  We do charge for matches $15 for plasti/HSA, $25 for WB/DC, one time cost.

I can't seem to get it work for me but there is a way to get a readout in illy to show you exact image area for calculating usage.  We rough it now but get can very close on estimating ink usage and that's huge.  Once you know your multipliers per sq inch and how much is needed in the well to pull that last print you can really reduce this problem.

[Frog]

Before using the Mixopake system, and still occasionally, I mix by eye, and I still record the different components and proportions used.
One thing that pops up is matching vinyls. They don't necessarily read the same books (like Pantone) as I do.

[jsheridan]

as long as the mix doesn't have any, or very little white in them you can mix it all up with some high black, it's a super loaded pigment version from Rutland and you have a recycle black ink.

It took me 3+ yrs to phase out and get rid of old ink this way. In the end, even today, those shelves are filled with nothing but the correct pms formulas.

[mk162]

try matching women's lipstick.  not kidding.  I have a cosmetics customer and we are always matching lipstick, blush, eyeshadow...blah blah..  We do pretty well with it, things like blush I will add a bit of a really fine metallic to for a little bit of shimmer.