Traditional Spending Habits That Can Drive Your Small Business into the Ground

One good turn deserves another, so we’re re-blogging part of Forbes’ Jessica Bosari’s article mentioning our ink and toner recycling efforts!

Rein in Your Printing Expenses Printer cartridges are expensive and environmentally-unfriendly. In fact, Xerox asserts that from 1991-2008 the company recycled 2 billion pounds of spent toner cartridges.   Whether you use an old-fashioned ink jet or a fancy new laser printer, you’re probably not happy with your current printing costs. Fortunately, most cartridge manufacturers and retailers participate in cartridge recycling programs. These serve dual purposes: They can reduce your ink or toner costs and may keep millions of non-biodegradable cartridges out of the country’s landfills each year. There are a few different ways to recycle your ink toner for great results. Major office supply stores like Staples and Office Depot offer in-store rebates of $2 to $3 per used cartridge. Dedicated cartridge wholesalers offer even more robust programs that permit business owners to exchange their unusable cartridges for an equal number of freshly-recycled devices.

Image: Wikipedia.org

Thanks Jessica! And she’s right. Reining in a small business’s printing costs is almost crucial these days. Aside from the obvious benefits to the environment afforded by recycling your ink and toner cartridges, the other way to save on printing costs is to…save money on ink and toner! 

Forgive us for the exclamation point and italics, but we’re still just a bit surprised at how many small business owners buy their ink and toner at a retail location like Staples or Office Depot. Terrific companies both, to be sure, but they simply can’t compete with third-party sellers on price and service when it comes to buying ink and toner.

Here is an example of the potential savings:

Epson T126120 Black:

• Staples: $19.79
• Ink Technologies: $13.00 

Not six cents. Not sixty cents. Not even a dollar, but six dollars in savings on one ink cartridge. And our price goes way down the more you buy, with our volume discounts. Pick up a dozen or more and they’re $10 a piece. Multiply this over the course of a year or several years for even a  small business and you’re talking thousands of dollars; thousands of dollars that are far better spent elsewhere growing your business.

Couple that with free shipping on orders over $50, a brand-new rewards program and free recycling? Kind of like a dream…

In Jessica’s words:

Make this dream into a reality by jettisoning your old-fashioned spending habits and building a leaner, brighter business.

We couldn’t agree more.