I just wanted to get the general view on this situation (and also to blow off some steam).
We used to work for a large national stationery company in the print side. We built up a large database of artwork and customers and things were good. The stationery company decided they didn't want a print department due to machine overheads and maintenance costs, so we were contracted to do most of their print work.
We took the artwork and customer database and continued to print for this company for a few years. Gradually they began to move some of the print to other print companies closer to their headquarters and the relationship started to deteriorate due to them not doing so well in the stationery side. Their ordering techniques became more aggressive in trying to reduce our pricing and to increase the hold they had over us.
Meanwhile, some of the reps from the stationery company left and started up their own stationery company. We agreed to give them preferential pricing and having some of the artwork helped them to take some of the business away from the other company.
As time went on, the original stationery company reneged on payments and became even more aggressive. We decided that enough was enough and told them we were not going to deal with them any more. They still owe us a substantial amount of money.
Anyway, the problem we now have is that the new stationery company started this kind of behaviour to us.
The biggest issue I have is that they are demanding that with every order they give us, we have to supply the print ready artwork to them for their 'files' and so that if they decide to get it printed elsewhere, they can.
Because they are our biggest client, we need the work! However, I feel uncomfortable giving them the artwork knowing that they may eventually take the work elsewhere. They make it clear that if we don't do this then we won't get the work.
We are a small company and in hindsight we should have gone after the customers ourselves, but we just don't have the resources. Unfortunately we have put all our eggs in one basket.
We have slowly been building our own client base, but the other company covers around 75% of our work, and we couldn't do without them at the moment.
Sorry to have such a long post.
If you're still awake, I'd love to hear your views.
I currently work for a printing company doing pre-press, design, running a digital press, dealing with clients, etc.
They may have to close down and outsource the work in a broker kind of fashion. They've told me that I can do the design work and invoice them for it. The problem I have with this is knowing what I can charge them for.
Currently I am salaried, so all the other general office tasks come into this, and I don't think I could make as much as my present wage just doing the design work.
Should I be able to charge them for speaking to clients, sending emails and all other admin type things? I'm worried that they wouldn't accept this because they weren't charging for this kind of thing before.
