Ink cost justification

[Aaron van de Sande]

One company I worked for made the pheromones for the boll weevil. One of the components sold for 40,000$ a kilogram, and that was 20 years ago.

[Greg Lockrey]

How about the cost for Saffron? Something like an acre for a pound and the stemens (the part they use) has to be seperated by hand. All that so your soup has a yellow shade to it.

[Hugh Sakols]

What would lower the price is to have a little healthy market competition. What about third party inks???? Earlier I asked if anyone has experimented with MIS inks? As a serious hobbiest I'm spending way too much on ink compared to what I get back in a sale of a print here and there. It seems to me that there would be a prosperous market for archiaval inks that could match or exceed the quality of the Epson brand.
http://www.inksupply.com/arcnew.cfm

[Frank Petronio]

LOL at least you got a 4000 instead of a 2200

If you do it right, photos and prints will get you laid. So I hear.

[Steven Barall]

If you look at your per print costs, they are still pretty low. Stricly relative to price per print, compare the ease of operation of a well calibrated digital system relative to the expense of operating a darkroom especially if you have to rent the space for the darkroom and then multiply that serveral fold if you are printing color.

The new Canon and HP high end printers infact waste much less ink that the Epson printers. Epson is going to finally have to make their printers more efficient now that they have serious competition which is good for us. Actually, the new Canon and HP printers are better printers than the Epson printers anyway as far as print quality goes.

If you want to get angry, try getting angry about the cost of inkjet paper. Why in many cases does inkjet paper cost much more than silver paper? Isn't silver more expensive that no silver???

[Bruce Watson]

I understand supply and demand, but damn. Are we a bunch of idiots or what.

What makes ink so expensive? Gas is only $3.00 a gallon. Gas is a vanishing resource and is incredibly difficult to find and refine.

What I remember from my econ classes so many years ago is that there are two basic pricing models (and plenty of hybrids in between, so don't muddy the waters bring all that up). One is price-by-cost, and the other is price-by-value.

Price-by-cost is pretty much what it says. You pay what it costs to make it and get it to your location, plus a percentage profit. Typically you find this model in commodity markets such as gasoline. The reason for this is the huge competition.

Price-by-value is what every supplier dreams of. In this model you don't really consider the cost to make it. You only consider how much the consumer values it. You price it as high as you can until you start to loose sales. This is typically found with products that have minimal competition, for instance niche markets (those new ULF lenses that cost USD 5k), or with products that are patented (say, pharmaceuticals).

Suppliers always want to price-by-value and will do a lot of work to get there. For instance, they'll patent their ink carts, then add proprietary chips to those carts. They don't really want to patent their inks because this would tell their competitors enough to let them make the same ink (that's what a patent does - you explain it to the world in exchange for 20 years of monopoly position in the marketplace).

Why would they do this? So that they can do their other favorite thing -- sell the printer cheap. They'll juggle their books to be able to show that they aren't running afoul of predatory pricing laws, but suffice it to say that they don't make money on printers. They use printers to hook you on the inks, and use the inks to make money. Which is smart business.

That said, the barrier to entry isn't all that high. MIS is making third party inks. So is Cone. There are dozens of third party ink suppliers. Most of them under price Epson by quite a bit.

Just because Epson wants you to buy their inks doesn't mean that you have to...

[John Bowen]

aged balsamic vinegar will get you laid...Wow, now I know what I have been doing wrong all this time!

So what exactly do I do with the vinegar?

A nice Stop Bath, perhaps

[OldBikerPete]

<snip>...
I'm only getting the occasional decent print for my ink costs. I can almost justify the cost when my printer is working correctly but when I'm wasting tons of ink just trying to get and keep the heads cleaned then it's a little frustrating.

It's interesting that I'm using almost as much color ink only printing black and white. I think I need to start printing color again or switch to the strictly b&w ink cartridges. I'm constantly running the auto head adjustment.
<snip>...

I've not yet had occasion to try it, but I've often wondered whether a short immersion in a small ultrasonic bath (available for about $75) would cure the blockages that often occur in inkjet printer heads.

[Robert Oliver]

The third party inks come in at over $300 a gallon. Epson is around $2000 a gallon if I did my math and my conversions correctly.

I'm most likely switching to Cone's system. His lighting fast response to my questions definitely scored some points with me. He also gave me some very honest answers that did not involve buying his inks but getting my printer running with current epson inks.

I like that kind of customer service.

[Greg Lockrey]

Looked at your site Robert, wonderful images!