It almost looks like something I could make myself, but cutting those tiny pages while keeping them perfectly indexed would surely be where my diy would go wrong. Good work OP for working out that special sauce!
It's a clever idea, and it's encouraging to see that there are still clever ideas at the small-business scale still waiting to be invented.
We’re thinking of adding a DIY version where you can buy a pattern made from your video, print it at home or a local print shop, cut it, and bind it with a clip binder. Would that be something you’d find interesting?
maybe one could die-cut sheets containing an array of cards that you first print onto and then are easily separated by hand and aligned with some sort of pegs. I once bought a type of printer paper to make business cards that comes pre scored/cut so you print it normally but then the cards come apart with a gentle pull.
Highly recommend against it! Instead of 100 customers at $10 you're cannibalizing (let's say) to 80 customers at $10 + 40 at $5. So a +20% revenue "bump", but you lose all quality control of peoples perception of your product!
Prefer: 80 customers at $12, which is approximately revenue neutral, but increases your effective ROI / hourly wage... AND you keep the high quality, word-of-mouth advertising.
Basically, you'd prefer to have people walking around with _your_ printed and bound product with nice QR code on the back rather than some hackintosh, ink-jet + scissors on 19lb copy paper and saying: "i PaId moNeY FoR ThiS!!" ;-)
...as I'm in the "home printing and binding biz" (gbc-proclick, hand/kettle stitch, carl rolling paper slicer, hp-laserjet, all for personal/hobby use)... What's the equipment you had to end up getting? I'm sorely tempted to chase a (manual) hydraulic paper cutter, but absolutely can't justify the cost / space. Are you still on color laser or are you doing something else for printing? Jigs for slicing? What's the story?
Thanks for this thoughtful perspective! Honestly, you’ve brought up a key point about quality control that we haven’t fully considered, and I completely agree. The last thing we want is our product ending up being judged unfairly due to subpar, home-printed alternatives. We’ll definitely rethink this feature and make sure any future decisions keep quality at the core.
As for the equipment, we currently use:
- 450VS/520E Electric Paper Cutter
- BINDER K5 (Soft Binding Machine)
- Ricoh MPC3003 (Color Laser Printer)
It's a clever idea, and it's encouraging to see that there are still clever ideas at the small-business scale still waiting to be invented.