Is It Time to Bring Printing In-House? A Real-World Guide for Wrap Shops

How to Know When Outsourcing Stops Making Sense for Your Shop

By Sierra McKinster, Vibrant Print Solutions

Sierra McKinster is COO of Vibrant Print Solutions, working directly with wrap shops on printer sales, service, and production workflows.

Buying a printer won’t automatically make you money, but bringing printing in-house at the right time absolutely will. Outsourcing your prints has worked so far. It feels safe. It saves time. Most days, it saves headaches. But is it always reliable? What happens when a print comes back late, or the colors are off? Quality and consistency can vary, and when the customer is upset, they aren’t calling the printer; they’re calling you.

Cost is another pain point that many wrap shops and print businesses eventually face. Outsourcing can quietly eat into your margins, invoice after invoice, pulling profit straight out of your pocket. At some point, almost every shop owner looks at a new invoice and thinks, “Maybe I should just buy my own printer.”

Before you make that leap, this article is meant to slow you down and help you decide if now is truly the right time. There is a sweet spot for purchasing a printer and bringing it in-house, so how do we find it? Before we even scratch the surface of what brand to buy or whether you should be looking at solvent, latex, UV, or anything else, we need to start at the very beginning. The options can be overwhelming, leading many wrap shops to put the decision off indefinitely. As a printer dealer and service center working closely with shops every day, these are the factors we would consider before purchasing a printer ourselves—no fluff or sales pitch, just raw honesty. Together, we’re going to break down the important considerations behind bringing printing in-house: workload, running and maintenance costs, return on investment, and the realities many shops don’t think about until after the printer is installed.

Bringing Printing In-House: When Outsourcing Stops Making Sense

Why Shops Consider Bringing Printing In-House

At some point, most wrap shops, print businesses, and growing creative businesses reach a crossroads. Outsourcing starts to feel less like a convenient option and more like a limitation. Turnaround times don’t always align with customer expectations or leave you much room to work with. Color matching can become a back-and-forth process. Last-minute changes become expensive or limiting.

Bringing printing in-house promises control over quality, timing, and consistency. It opens the door to saying “yes” to jobs you may have turned down before due to tight deadlines or concerns about maintaining quality. For many shop owners, these growing pains represent the next phase of business growth.

While you may agree with everything above, it’s important to separate good reasons from emotional ones.

Buying a printer to improve margins, increase speed, and expand your offerings are all valid reasons to explore this move. Buying a printer because a competitor has one, a pushy salesperson got you excited, or you feel like you’re missing out can lead to greater financial strain and business challenges, making your situation harder than it already is.

This is the first mindset shift: bringing printing in-house is not just a purchase; it is the addition of another department to your business. Do you have the bandwidth, finances, and time to add a print and production department?

Evaluating Your Current Workload

So how are you supposed to know if you’re ready? This is where many shops become overwhelmed and close the door before asking the most important questions:

How Much Will This Cost Me, Including Running Costs?

If you don’t know, this is your first homework assignment. This number becomes the baseline for your ROI. If your outsourcing costs meet or exceed an average monthly printer payment, that is a strong indicator it may be time to evaluate ownership sooner rather than later.

Is my print volume consistent, or just occasional?

Consider the type of work your shop primarily handles. If your primary focus is tinting, color-change wraps, and other non-printed services, a plotter or continued outsourcing may make more sense for now. Printers perform best when used consistently, creating a steady income stream and ensuring they don’t become a large paperweight that isn’t paying for itself.

Would in-house printing actually reduce turnaround times for my shop?

If print production is the bottleneck, in-house printing can significantly speed up delivery. If approvals, design, or installation are the real delays, printing faster won’t solve the problem.

Am I prepared to take full responsibility for my print quality?

Once printing is brought in-house, quality control becomes your responsibility. It’s a double-edged sword. You gain direct control over quality, consistency, and materials, but you also bear accountability. If you need to reprint, the cost is yours: ink, media, and labor. With the right equipment, proper training, and solid print profiles, mistakes should be minimal. However, there is always room for human error, and understanding that reality is part of being ready for in-house production.

Who will be responsible for running the printer?

Do you have a designated person who can run the printer? There is a learning curve with any new equipment or process, and overloading employees with full workloads can lead to burnout. If you plan to run the printer yourself, consider your current responsibilities. Are you also installing, managing the shop, or handling sales? Being realistic about time and capacity is critical to keeping production running smoothly.

How do I see this printer fitting into my business in the next 2–3 years?

The right printer should support long-term growth and act as a backbone for your business, not just a short-term solution. Consider how in-house printing could open doors to additional markets, including banners, stickers, wall graphics, decals, and more. 

How Much Will This Cost Me, Including Running Costs?

The initial purchase price of the printer is only one piece of the puzzle. Deciding whether to pay cash or preserve cash flow through financing is an important consideration before pulling the trigger. Once the printer is purchased, installed, and set up, there will be ongoing running and maintenance costs that many shops overlook.

Depending on the model, most printers come with a one-to three-year warranty, often extendable up to five years. Extended warranties vary in cost but are generally around ten percent of the printer’s price. That coverage can pay for itself quickly. For example, if your extended warranty costs $2,000 and an average printhead replacement is $3,000, you’ve already saved money, not including labor and additional parts. It’s also worth considering who you’re buying from. Are they local and knowledgeable, or will they charge a large trip fee with limited technician availability?

Consumables are an obvious and consistent expense. Ink, media, laminate, and regularly used parts like captops and wipers all add up. While printing in-house is almost always cheaper per square foot than outsourcing, those savings depend on efficient material use and proper setup. Utilizing color management and custom profiles, for example, can save up to ten percent on ink costs.

Maintenance is another underestimated cost. Printers require simple daily and weekly maintenance to perform consistently and stay in good health. Captops, wipers, and other wear components are part of normal operation, not optional extras. Skipping maintenance to save time or money often leads to clogged heads, poor print quality, and costly repairs. Listen to your printer’s needs.

Labor is one of the most overlooked running costs. Paying someone to load media, monitor prints, edit files, and perform routine maintenance incurs a cost. Even if that person is the owner, their time still has value.

Return on Investment

Return on investment (ROI) is one of the most important factors to consider. It takes some math, but in future articles, we’ll break it down into simple, easy-to-understand numbers. A printer should earn its place in your shop by reducing costs, increasing efficiency, or opening new revenue streams (and hopefully does all three).

The simplest way to evaluate ROI is to compare your current outsourcing costs with the projected cost of printing the same volume in-house. When monthly outsourced jobs approach or exceed the cost of a printer payment plus operating expenses, ownership becomes a realistic option rather than a risk.

Financing can help ease the transition and absorb the shock of purchasing a printer outright. In many cases, a monthly printer payment is less than what shops are already spending on outsourced printing. The difference is that you’re building equity in a production asset instead of paying another vendor.

ROI isn’t only about savings. In-house printing can increase revenue through faster turnaround times, better quality control, and expanded services. These added capabilities often generate income that wouldn’t otherwise exist, shortening the ROI timeline even further.

Making the Right Move, at the Right Time

Bringing printing in-house is a major step, and it should be made with clarity, not pressure. There is no single right answer for every shop, only the right decision based on your workload, goals, and readiness.

We’ve seen how the right equipment, paired with proper setup and support, can take a company from its garage to a full-blown print shop. We’ve also seen how rushing the decision can create unnecessary stress and a downward spiral.

Our role doesn’t stop at selling equipment. We work closely with shops to provide real support, from installation and service to color management, profiling, and workflow guidance, because owning a printer should help you make more money, not create more problems. 

This article is just the beginning. In upcoming issues, we’ll take a deeper dive into choosing the right printer technology: eco-solvent, latex, resin, UV, and more, along with insider tips on workflow, pricing, maintenance, and scaling your operation. The goal is simple: to give you the knowledge and confidence to grow your business on your terms.  

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