Printing for online sellers: what you actually need

What to order

Most e-commerce sellers need the same handful of things, in roughly this order of usefulness.

• Custom packaging tape and mailer stickers
• Thank-you cards and discount inserts
• Product labels with batch and MRP details

The constraint to design around

Labels must comply with legal metrology rules — MRP, net quantity, manufacturer details and customer care all have to be present and legible.

The mistake that costs most

Ordering labels before finalising the MRP. The declaration is legally required and cannot be stickered over.

It is worth an extra week of planning to avoid, because the alternative is paying twice.

Lead times to plan around

Print is not instant, and the difference between products is larger than most people expect. Cards and flyers turn around in two to three working days; apparel and ceramics take five or more because each piece is handled individually.

Standard delivery is free to every PIN code in India, so the only thing distance costs you is time — two days to a metro, up to twelve to the islands.

Claiming the GST back

All of this is a business expense, and the GST on it is claimable as input credit provided the invoice carries your GSTIN and the correct HSN per line.

Enter your GSTIN at checkout rather than asking for an amended invoice later — amending an issued invoice is considerably more trouble than typing fifteen characters.

The specifications this applies to

For reference, here is how it works out on the products this comes up on most often.

• Product Labels — 50 × 50 mm finished, 2 mm bleed, 300 DPI minimum, from ₹3 per unit with a minimum of 100.
• Flyers — 148 × 210 mm finished, 3 mm bleed, 300 DPI minimum, from ₹2.5 per unit with a minimum of 250.
• Standard Visiting Cards — 89 × 51 mm finished, 3 mm bleed, 300 DPI minimum, from ₹2 per unit with a minimum of 100.

Ordering

Every file is checked automatically before printing, so a mistake in any of this is caught while it can still be corrected rather than after a run is on paper.

Standard delivery is free to every PIN code in India — two working days to a metro, up to twelve to the islands — and prices include GST, so the figure on the product page is the figure charged. Add a GSTIN at checkout and the invoice carries it for input credit.

Getting the artwork right first time

The files e-commerce sellers send fail for the same handful of reasons as everyone else: no bleed on a design that runs to the edge, a logo pulled from a website at screen resolution, or text sitting a millimetre from the cut line.

All three are caught automatically before anything reaches a press, so the cost is a day rather than a reprint. The single best thing you can do in advance is get your logo as a vector file — PDF, AI, EPS or SVG — because that removes the resolution problem permanently, at every size you will ever print it.

Common questions