Sample rounds
Nothing prints until you’ve held it
A sample round is how a bespoke envelope gets spec’d: you describe the club you have in mind, we spec the options against it, and the paper comes to you in the post. We go round again until it is right. Only then does issue 1 have something to be measured against.
Why sampling comes first
There is no catalogue here and no template pack. Every club is spec’d from scratch: stocks, formats, finishes, and the envelope engineering that keeps a whole set inside a letter rate. None of that comes off a dropdown, because the right answer depends entirely on what your club is for and who opens it.
So we start with samples rather than a price list. Spec’ing carefully once is a great deal cheaper than changing your mind in public, an issue at a time.
It is also where pricing happens. You will not find a calculator on this site, and that is deliberate: a per-envelope price is a read-out of a spec and a run size, so quoting one before either exists just anchors a number that has nothing to do with your club. We would rather tell you what each choice costs while you are holding the alternatives, and tell you when the cheaper option is the better one.
If you want the shape of the maths before we speak, the worked examples walk through the full cost stack for three club sizes. They are illustrative on purpose. Your numbers come out of your sample round.
How a sample round works
Four steps, in this order, however many times it takes.
Step 1
The brief
Your niche, the items you want in the envelope, the feel you are after, and the budget you have per envelope. Rough is fine: “six things, tactile, roughly this much” is a brief we can work with. What matters is that the budget is yours, so we spec towards it rather than quoting into a vacuum.
Step 2
Options
We come back with stocks, formats and finishes spec’d against that brief: what suits it, what each choice does to your £-per-envelope, and what we would not spec at all. Weight and dimensions are in the conversation from the first round, because the postage band is decided at the spec stage rather than at the postbox.
Step 3
Physical samples
Then paper arrives in the post. Printed, trimmed and finished on the same Ricoh Pro C9500 digital press your issues will run on: not a PDF proof, not a screen mock-up, not a colour you are asked to trust on a monitor calibrated differently to ours. You hold the thing your subscribers will hold.
Step 4
Refine
Almost nobody gets it exactly right from a first description, and there is nothing awkward about saying the card wants to be heavier, the print wants to be uncoated, or five items work better than seven. Say so and we spec another round. We would rather spend that round now than have you discover it on issue 1.
When it is right, issue 1 locks it. The agreed spec becomes your reference sample, a physical copy of what “right” looks like, filed against your club and checked against every run that follows, so the envelope you signed off is the envelope your subscribers keep getting.
Some of this is easier in person. The samples table in Wembley, London is a faster way to rule things in and out than any email thread, and you are welcome to come and use it.
Switching printers?
Plenty of the clubs we talk to already have a printer. Sometimes the print is fine and the rhythm is not; sometimes issue 6 came back a different colour to issue 2, and nobody could say why.
You do not have to switch to find out whether we are better. Run a sample round with us while your current printer carries on with your issues, then put the two envelopes side by side on the same table: same artwork, same club, two sets of paper. That comparison answers the question far better than a reference or a portfolio can.
If ours wins, give us one issue rather than a year. There is no contract to sign, no minimum term and no notice period to serve, because we do not have any of those. That is what makes trying us cheap: the most you are ever committed to is a single run, and the only thing keeping you after it is the work.
A sample conversation costs nothing to start. Tell us what you are making, roughly how many envelopes a month you have in mind, and we will tell you what we would spec for it.
We earn next month's run by delivering this month's.
Request a sample conversation
Not ready to talk?
The playbook's sampling chapter shows exactly what to ask any printer for (us included).
- Niches & the envelope
- Pricing & the real cost stack
- Scaling past 500