Commercial printing can be a complicated business because it is not just the mere buying and selling of things. It requires sales, marketing, customer relations, creative work, editing, technical, and eventually logistics.

This is needed to come up with a single piece of work that will get to hands of clients. That is why, when you want to become a commercial printer, it would be good to have an experience working at a printing company first before putting up your own so that you will know the ins and outs of the trade and you will successfully run your own company. For example, you can work for a printing maybe as a machine operator or a layout artist. After some time, you may probably fill in the shoes of production supervisor handling printing personnel, scheduling of work, requisition of supplies, and ensuring that the finished product goes out on time. While you are in the production area, you can also try your hand at trimming, laminating, collating, folding and packing. Learn the different tricks of the trade. Get yourself involved. During this time that you are working, learn all the things that you need to learn about running a printing operation. Familiarize yourself with the process from the time a client signs a contract to the delivery of the orders. These are some of the things you should take note of:

1. Suppliers - These could be the sources of the equipment, machineries, as well as consumables, like paper, ink, plates, laminating film, containers, or die cut molds.

2. Formula for computation - There are many things to consider while computing costs such as materials, labor, electricity, delivery, and profit. You also have to include commissions for sales agents, purchaser of the company that gave you the job, the terms of payment (the longer the terms the higher the cost), and overtime pay. You have to put all these things into consideration when making a quote for your jobs. Moreover, if you get to work in a real printing press, you will know the actual rates for printing jobs.

3. Salaries - You can probably ask around and know how much the rates of your co-workers are. Some of them may be working full-time while others are just working part-time or by commission basis. Learn the differences in their jobs and work assignments. Observe why some are hired full time and some are not.

All these information will help you as you start your own business. It would also help that during this time while working for a printer, do save up your salary so that it will add up to your capital when you open your own company. Since starting a new printing company entails many capital expenditures, you may have to file for a business loan with a bank. Nevertheless, if you already have some savings in the bank from all your salaries and bonuses, then you will only need to loan a small amount and not pay so much in interest rates.

Commercial printing is a good business to start because there are just so many printing requirements nowadays. However, since it is a complicated operation, it would be good to learn first-hand how the trade works so that you will know what works and what does not. That way, when you become a commercial printer yourself, you will eradicate the problem areas that you already identified when you were still working.