Your home-based business has been doing great; the growth of your customer base and your profits have been tremendous and doesn’t look to be slowing down anytime soon. Things have been so good, in fact, that there’s no longer enough time in the day to do everything that needs doing. What you need is a way to streamline your company’s more time-consuming operations, preferably one that can also assist in organizing and tracking your inventory. It might be time to invest in a dedicated label or barcode printer.

Reasons to Invest

If you’re on the fence as to whether your home business needs a dedicated label or barcode printer, it may be worth looking at your company’s needs and whether you can take on the investment necessary to purchase such a device. Here are a few of the main factors you should consider when making your decision.

Barcode Printer Cost

If you’re interested in taking your home business to the next level, you’re going to need the equipment that can get you there. Your printer may have served you well to this point, but as your volume increases, you’ll find it less and less capable of meeting your company’s needs. It’s not simply a matter of whether a basic home printer can keep up with some labels you need to produce; there’s also the matter of the expense involved, both regarding materials and maintenance. Home printers aren’t designed to operate at the volume required by most businesses, a fact that will become apparent as the costs of repairs and expensive cartridges pile up.

Now, none of this is meant to downplay the price of a dedicated label or barcode printer or the maintenance costs associated with such a device. Depending on the model, you’re looking at a several thousand dollar investment. If you can’t afford that cost at the moment, that may be a sign that you should look into other ways to grow your business. Home business owners that do take the plunge, however, will find that their initial investment is more than offset by reduced printing costs and the added efficiency of their operations. Buying an industrial printer also means buying industrial components and materials to go with it, which are almost universally cheaper (regarding cost over time) than their retail brethren.

Convenience of Barcode Printers

The main benefit to a dedicated barcode or label printer is the fact that it can print much more quickly than a model designed for basic home printing needs. A high-end laser printer can dash off as many as twenty pages a minute, which seems pretty fast until you consider that an entry-level industrial printer - such as this affordable and high-quality model - is three times faster. If you spend three hours every day printing labels, investing in a dedicated barcode or label printer can help you put two of those hours back into growing your business.

There’s also the matter of your home printer working with materials that it wasn’t explicitly designed to use. Yes, there are settings on some home printers that allow for easy label printing, but it can be incredibly frustrating and time-consuming to switch back and forth between those settings and those needed for everyday printing. If you don’t need to switch back and forth - if you’re only using your home printer for labels - then you’ve already got a dedicated barcode or label printer...just one that isn’t very good at its job. You wouldn’t keep on an employee that works a third as quickly as the rest of your team, so why tolerate that with your printer?

Added Organization and Professionalism

The cost of a dedicated barcode or label printer can seem daunting if you believe that its capabilities are limited to creating mailing labels for shipped products. The truth of the matter, however, is that labels can also be used to organize your inventory. When your business was just starting out, it’s likely that your product was just piled up in a garage or spare room. That’s fine, to begin with, but as your volume grows you’re going to need a way to keep that product organized to facilitate easy retrieval and shipping. Smart label application can be of great assistance in marking off specific areas for specific products, which can be incredibly useful in keeping things orderly as your offerings expand.

There’s also the matter of wanting to be taken seriously by bigger, more established companies. Rightly or otherwise, sticking labels created with a home printer to your products may convince representatives of those companies that your business is little more than a side hobby, not a professionally-run organization into which you’ve poured countless hours of your time. Much as you might dislike changing your ways based on how other perceive you, the truth is that the people at these companies may represent the contacts and partnerships you’ll need if you want to take your business to the next level. Perception is reality, some say, and in no area is that truer than the veneer you create for your business.

Conclusion

As much as you wish to grow your home business, taking the actual steps to do so can often be stalled by concern regarding whether you’re making the right choices and investments. The purchase of a dedicated label or barcode printer, however, need not be plagued by uncertainty. It’s one of the most necessary and risk-free ways to upgrade your business, and purchasing a model through LLT Labels comes with the added comfort of our comprehensive return policy and excellent customer support. Your clients and employees are ready for you to take the next step - all you have to do is say when.