The demand for sticker labels has never been higher. Stickers provide a fun and creative way for people to express their unique personalities and interests. They serve as a means of personalization, allowing people to customize their belongings such as laptops, water bottles, smartphones and more.
Because of this, it’s a fantastic time to be in the sticker-making business. But how much does it cost to get into this industry? There are plenty of brands to choose from, such as Summa and Roland vinyl printers, so let’s discuss some of the variables that affect price.
Sticker Printers Versus Sticker Cutters
Sticker printers exist to print stickers onto large rolls of paper. Depending on your specifications, the printer is able to print as many stickers as possible onto the space provided.
Sticker printers come in a variety of sizes. Some are developed to handle a specific material such as paper or vinyl, and others are more versatile and can print on a range of materials.
Once your stickers are printed, the next thing to do is to take your roll of stickers and run it through a vinyl cutting machine. This allows your stickers to be cut to their individual shape or into sheets of paper with multiple stickers.
A vinyl cutter works one of two ways: with or without blades. Bladed vinyl cutters use razor-sharp blades to swiftly slice around the paper, while the bladeless variety uses lasers to cut the sticker to the exact shape desired. Laser cutters are more expensive, but are typically able to create shapes that standard vinyl cutters may struggle with.
Two Birds, One Stone
What if instead of buying two separate machines for different purposes, you could buy a machine that did both the printing and the cutting? Thankfully, multiple companies offer a combination of vinyl printer and cutter in one easy-to-use machine.
These machines offer the convenience of not having to move large rolls of stickers from your printer to your cutter, and they save you from having to program the cutter separately.
All is not perfect, however. By adding a print function to a cutting machine or vice versa, one or the other will suffer some loss of capability. You may find that the purpose-built vinyl cutters are more capable of cutting certain designs, and are capable of doing it much faster. Likewise, printing vinyl on a regular printer is going to offer you fewer options compared to a specialized printer.
That being said, if “set it and forget it” is something you prefer, getting an all-in-one printer-cutter makes sense. This is especially true if you’re just getting started out in the sticker business and want to see how things develop before buying more specialized equipment.
Next Steps
Sticker makers can be expensive, but they can also pay for themselves. Airmark is committed to providing world-class customer service and support to all of our customers, whether on-site or over the phone. Our Summa product experts are standing by and ready to answer all your vinyl and sticker printing questions!
