Here comes part two where we take a look at the quality issues you may discover upon receipt of your sticker sheets. (See my previous post for things to consider before you place the order).

But first off, a disclaimer. I do not mean to discourage people from ordering sticker sheets at all, and I do not imply that any particular printeries are inherently bad. I just want to share some lessons learned the hard way and potentially spare you some frustration.

The thing is… my daytime job revolves around quality of processes. And although I am not directly involved in the process of manufacturing per se, having seen plenty of customer complaints and how they were tackled not only to keep the customer happy but also to prevent the issue from happening again company-wide, I might have higher expectations than an average customer to the way my complaints are being handled, especially in B2B situations. I suppose I just expect my suppliers to improve based on the input they receive instead of producing the same defects over and over again…

Okay, enough intros, let’s get to it. The examples of issues I’ll be talking about come from different suppliers and sometimes from different deliveries of the same supplier, just for your info :)

Receiving: don’t skip incoming inspection!

This is probably the main takeaway.

Make sure you check your sticker sheets (or any other goods really) as soon as they arrive. This is particularly important if you’re ordering for the first time. The excitement may be just too high and if you’re blown away by the quality of the print/colours, it’s easy to overlook other details that may hide under the top few seemingly ideal sheets. I’ve made this mistake once - and had to absorb the cost of the consequences - so here’s your warning :)

If you have an eye for detail, you will notice that many sheets you get will be far from ideal. I have only dealt with 2 suppliers for these but saw a range of issues:

1) Colours being completely wrong.

2) Sheets being cut not according to margins specified.

3) Wrong material used - with branded backing sheet instead of blank one.

4) Cut lines around designs slipped leaving too much distance between design and the edge of the sticker on one side and too little on the other. I suppose in some cases this won’t be critical but the more intricate the silhouette of your sticker is, the more annoying the inaccuracies will look.

I haven’t seen the process of printing/cutting but from what I’ve heard from the printers, they have pretty high tolerance levels for movement when making cut lines - a little too hight for the scale of the stickers, imho. How your stickers come out is a bit of a lottery. I had one large batch with almost 0 cutline issues, and a smaller order where nearly half of the sheets were wide of the mark…

5) Then there’re material issues - with the vinyl itself.
I suppose the printeries receive it in big rolls and it’s not always easy to inspect its quality. Well, when you receive your stickers, make sure to check they don’t have any visible bumps, cuts, or pores - especially within the designs. There may also be some creases similar to those that appear on rolled paper when you unroll it without much control and it warps a bit. It also seems that the material can get jammed in the process leaving you with crinkly bits.
Sometimes the vinyl gets pressed too hard by the rollers that it’s fed through, and this leads to grooves stretching across the sheet, as if it was embossed or something. They aren’t really visible on an applied sticker but often they do stand out on the sheet - so I guess it depends on how deep they are and how keen your/your customers’ eye is. Personally I consider them unacceptable: given a choice everyone would obviously prefer a sheet that is perfectly smooth ;-)

6) Sheet cutting is not without flaw either: some edges may be rough, there may be small or big pieces of the backing sheet torn off.

7) Cleanliness is another topic. I’ve seen a crazy amount of dust between the sheets in one of the deliveries. I’ve managed to clean it but removing dust particles from the cut lines was super annoying. Grrr.

These are that issues encountered by me so far. Lucky, ain’t I? xD

Seriously, don’t take any chances:

Make sure you carefully inspect every sheet you receive the same day and contact the printery immediately if there are any issues. Some only give you 24 hrs of receipt to place a claim so there’s no time to wait with the checks! I suppose certain defects can be reported at a later date as well if they are production-related, but it totally depends on the goodwill of the company if you do it outside the timeframe mentioned in their policy. So be careful.

If you know people who regularly order sticker sheets - see if you can ask them for recommendations. But bear in mind that the same printing company might have different machines and operators for the same task, they might also change with time so the quality might differ as well. So take the precautions I mentioned in the previous post and carefully check the delivery.

So?

To be honest, I think I’m done with sticker sheets for the near future. I might restock a few popular designs when they sell out (and pray they turn out fine) but I’m completely discouraged from making any new ones soon, even though I initially planned designing 4 more this year. It takes a huge amount of time for me to create them and the result is rather unpredictable leading to a lot of scrap and wasted time trying to get some reprints.

My plan was also to start with wholesale but I had to give up on the idea as too much variation in the printing process makes it completely unreliable for such endeavours. Bummer…

I might try a different supplier which was recommended by another creator at some point if/when I’m ready to significantly increase the batch quantity, otherwise it will be extremely expensive… At that point I’ll also be asking more specific questions about their cut line accuracy because if their tolerances for movement during cutting are not lower than those of the other folks, it won’t make any difference...

For the time being if there are going to be any new stickers, they will be die-cut ones, such as this babe I recently added to my shop.

Anyway, I hope this was useful and that you don’t have to deal with any of these issues if you decide to make your own sticker sheets!

If you’ve already had tons of success with your own sticker sheets that turned out perfectly fine - well done and congrats on your printery! Please share which you use :D Any further tips are welcome too :)

Cheerio!