Are you looking to print up some labels? Staples offers this service, but let’s see how good it really is.
Staples offers label printing through their IRG outsourced company. Standing for Integrated Resource Group, they have had a long relationship with Staples and produce many of their higher quality outsourced printing (nearly every product that is printed out of the store is from them).
Now, what type of labels are available? I will cover the less common first, and than the type that most people order.
Many shapes can be ordered from Staples. Ovals, circles, squares and rectangles. Most of these are also a large size, like 1″x2″, and can fit over large surfaces. They also have a variety of colors and fonts, along with clipart that can be applied. Usually quality is good, but there is a chance of typographical error.
They are good for your own products to show what the product is, the price, and a short blurb about its use or some useful information (such as one customer who created labels for his jewelry company).
However, as stated, these larger ones are not very common, and because of that there is a limited amount of options available for them. What is used more are small, rectangular, mailing labels.
They have three lines worth of information you can type up (before it was all done by hand, leading to more typographical errors, but now there is a computer that can be used. Make sure you type correctly, because if anything is your fault, then you will have to pay full price for a reprint. However, there is still a small chance that IRG will mess up because they think you typed something incorrectly, they try to fix what they perceived as an error, and end up giving you a bad label. This happened once when a customer had a very odd spelling of the name Michelle), which should be enough for most mailing labels. They also have a variety of clipart, backgrounds, colors, and fonts.
The common colors for these labels are: clear, white, red, blue, and metallics. Also, unless you are paying for higher priced labels, you can only get black font.
The backgrounds used represent standard themes. Nature, food, things of that nature. Unlike many products offered by IRG, the only thing you can readily customize is the text. While they offer to print your own designs and logos on labels, expect to pay a lot more and have a longer wait (usually labels take a week or two). This is because it is rarely requested, so the staff member has to ask for a quote, which takes a day or two, and then you can find out how much your design will cost to print. However, the designs IRG offers are usually good enough for most customers.
Beyond the small chance of a misspelling, the quality of these labels have always been good. Also the price is amazing. If you get the economy labels (which includes a simple background color like clear or white, no clipart, and text, good for many customers) 250 labels is about $10. Even the more expensive are easily manageable. Staples hits the mark here, so if you need labels be sure to order it from them.
