Define Your Suppliers Before Your Target Market
In the printing business, it greatly matters to cooperate with authentic suppliers. Define your suppliers before you define your target market. Suppliers are the most important factor in the success of brokerage businesses. As long as you have access to suppliers, you can do your job in the best possible way.
Besides printing offices, you may have to deal with other suppliers such as graphists, post-print services and providers of printing materials. When you have more suppliers to work with, you have less concern regarding the provision of your customers' orders, and the risk of losing orders is reduced as well.
As a print broker, you must be able to deliver a printed product to the customer with the best quality as soon as possible. In order to do so, you need to have a permanent contract with the printing office, so they prioritize your order when taking printing orders is at its peak.
When you have long-term cooperation, the supplier gives you the product at a lower price. Naturally, the way a printing office interacts with minor customers is different from the way it interacts with a print broker who works with them permanently.
The type of collaborative contract with suppliers can bring comparative advantages regarding quality, price and time of production. Comparative advantage of production and a specialized view toward the printing industry are the two principles in writing a marketing plan for print brokering.