After many years of experience and hundreds of customers, I will tell you about the most common critical errors why printers often sell their used presses below its real value. In the meantime, the secret is simple: you have to choose carefully not only the seller, but also the buyer.

Do you want to know how to sell a printing press more favourably? We’ll share some tricks. We will also help you to deprive the other party of arguments to lower the price of the deal.

As an epigraph I will quote an old but capacious expression that roughly but accurately describes the relationship of the parties during the transaction:

There are two fools in the market – the seller and… the buyer

Or as Dr House used to say, ‘Everybody lies.’ I don’t use this expression to insult anyone. It’s simple: during a transaction, the seller always misspeaks, and the buyer always haggles. Whoever convinces whom with their arguments, wins.

When conducting a transaction, the seller seeks to embellish his goods in order to sell them for a higher price, while the buyer always tries to bring down the price in order to buy them back more favourably.

Printing equipment is no exception.

As soon as someone finds out that you are going to sell a printing press, you will literally start getting flooded with phone calls and e-mails.

Due to such abnormal activity, some print shop owners become aggressive and limit their availability to any kind of visitors. Recently, a representative of a Warsaw print shop called P., named Artur, rudely dropped my call three seconds after hearing my name. He had never spoken to me before, and he didn’t even know what I was calling him with. Well, that just speaks volumes about the manners of some members of society.

As a result of the huge influx of a wave of all sorts of sellers and middlemen, the owner has no time to mind his own business. In the end he agrees to not the best offer, as the most interesting offers he ignored.

So what are the main mistakes of printers who want to sell their equipment?

1. The main, and the most significant mistake of any printing house is to distribute their machine as widely as possible in order to sell it themselves and at a higher price.

It would seem that the wider I distribute my offer, the sooner it will sell, and the more expensive I will sell it. But the reality is just the opposite of what you expect!

Printers who maximise the distribution of their machines on the market will ALWAYS sell them cheaper than they could.

• Firstly, you will be bombarded with enquiries from all over the world that you have to divert and answer.
• Secondly, customers will terrorise you with cheaper offers on the market, forcing you to renegotiate your price.
• Thirdly, you won’t like having different people coming to your print shop to inspect your machine, while you need to work and make money. This will make you nervous and you will reconsider your price very soon.
• Fourthly, your competitors will come into the print shop in the guise of buyers and they will be happy to see your work and technology.
• Fifth, someone must be responsible for dismantling. And if people unknown to you come, will they pay if they damage the floor with oil. And it happens that a mechanic will injure himself, and the owner of the print shop for many months will be mired in disputes with the ambulance, police and other unpleasant organisations. Especially if the crew doesn’t have insurance.

2. Exaggerated price expectations.

In determining the level of cost of their machine, the printer goes to pressxchange or a similar marketplace, makes a couple of enquiries for similar configurations to a couple of dealers, and on this basis forms their price. But he forgets that the price includes the cost of dismantling – a couple of tens of thousands of euros. Plus the risks that the goods will be sent to the warehouse and storage will have to be paid for. And also access to the database of buyers, which is built up over decades.

Just as an equipment professional doesn’t have access to print shop customers, a print shop doesn’t have access to a database of print equipment buyers. If you are planning to sell equipment, we can do an equipment appraisal for you. And you also have the chance to get our certificate of condition for your printing machine absolutely free.

3. Choose your partner responsibly.

As you know, there are two types of dealers who is ready to assist you to sell a printing press.

The first type are small middlemen who have no money of their own. A mediator will come to have a coffee with you and take pictures of your equipment. He may even conclude a contract with you with the obligation to pay an advance payment within two weeks. You will get a high offer, even above market price. It is good if after two weeks they don’t disappear and will still get in touch more. But very often such intermediaries delay fulfilment of obligations or refuse the contract altogether.

Why do they do this? After reservation the printing press for themselves within a short period, you can’t offer it to anyone. During this time, he will offer your printing machine to all the big operators on the market – those who have the money. If he doesn’t find a buyer even within two weeks, it’s easier for him to evaporate than to be liable.

The second type is large companies, dealers, who buy back the machines with their own money. They usually evaluate the equipment more adequately, based on their costs of dismantling, storage, other risks. If the machine is not sold immediately and it has to be taken to the warehouse. Such companies always have access to financing, have their own warehouses and facilities for packing, loading and even pre-sale preparation.

Therefore, if you sell the printing machine through a small intermediary, you will get a lower price for it due to the commission to the small intermediary. You will not receive several tens of thousands of euros, which you could have kept if you would be more responsible in choosing the buyer.

After dealing with such an intermediary, the print shop is already waiting for offers of a certain level. Why? Because such an offer was once voiced to them by a mediator. They have never studied the market situation, or that level they have found somewhere on Pressxchange.

Meanwhile, your machine is still rotating somewhere in the marketplace databases, and the longer it’s there, the more it loses value.

4. The absence of a report on the condition of the printing machine.

If you didn’t order a report before the sale is a huge opportunity for manipulation.

Consider this situation: the buyer gives you a price, let’s say 100 euros based on the inspection results. Some person arrives, walks around the machine and turns his nose round: there is a lot of wear and tear here, and this node needs replacing. As a result, when you decide to sell the printing press to him, your 100 euros turns into 80. The buyer is motivated to lower the price by the huge investment in the printing equipment. But if you have a report from PressInspection, it will definitely serve as a trump card in the game for a higher price. The report will clearly indicate the date of inspection and the condition of the mentioned mechanisms.

The seller is as much interested in such a certificate as you are. It is his responsibility to adequately evaluate the equipment to understand the investment of the future owner. If there is hidden damage to something global, repair or replacement can cost the new owner 200-300 thousand euros. An example – the perfecting unit damage, or the reading bar of Heidelberg;s Inpress Control spectrophotometer. Accordingly, the dealer is obliged to take into account the cost of the repair and replace parts.

For example, the company ROEPA provides a guarantee of completeness and operability of the supplied equipment.

Most other dealers sell equipment ‘as is’, and once you pay for it, any potential printing equipment problems you overlooked become yours. Whether you want to buy or sell equipment, protect yourself from potential problems and order our certificate.

Options for available inspections of your equipment you can find here.

Don’t make these common mistakes and you will have the opportunity to sell your machinery for the money it deserves.