How to Get Five Printer Quotes From a Single RFQ Instead of Phoning Round All Day

You need five printer quotes by end of play, and right now your afternoon looks like a spreadsheet of phone numbers, three voicemails, and one printer who's "just stepping into a meeting." There is a faster way — and it doesn't involve calling anyone.

Why phoning round is the slowest way to price a print job

Ringing suppliers one at a time made sense when your little black book of trusted printers was your only sourcing tool. But the maths is brutal. Five printers, ten minutes of chat each, plus the time it takes them to work up a quote and email it back the next morning — you've burned the best part of a day and you still don't have anything you can compare side by side.

Worse, every printer hears your brief slightly differently. One quotes on 150gsm silk, another assumes 170gsm. One includes delivery, another doesn't. One prices litho, another quietly slips in digital because the run length is borderline. By the time the quotes land, you're doing more admin normalising them than you would have spent writing a proper brief in the first place.

The real cost of a scattergun quote hunt

Beyond the wasted hours, there are hidden costs to the phone-round approach:

• Inconsistent specs — every conversation drifts, so quotes aren't truly comparable.
• Relationship pressure — once a printer's spent an hour quoting, saying no gets awkward.
• Limited pool — you only ring people you already know, so you never test the market.
• No paper trail — verbal quotes evaporate, and you can't share them internally.
• Deadline creep — every hour lost on sourcing is an hour off the production schedule.

The one-brief, many-quotes model

The fix isn't a better contact list — it's changing the shape of the request. Instead of pushing your brief out to one printer at a time, you publish it once and let capable suppliers come to you. That's what a Request for Quote (RFQ) marketplace does: one clear brief, multiple competitive responses, all in the same format, in one place.

On ZeozGig, posting an RFQ costs a flat $1. If nobody responds, the fee is refunded automatically — so there's no risk in floating an unusual job to see who bites. Printers who have the right kit and capacity for your spec see the brief and quote directly. You compare, shortlist, and open a direct connection with the supplier you want to talk to for a one-time $5 fee. No commission on the deal, no percentage skim, no mark-up hiding in the price.

What a good print RFQ actually contains

The quality of your quotes is a direct function of the quality of your brief. Vague briefs get vague numbers. To get five printers responding with genuinely comparable quotes, cover these basics:

1. Product — flyers, brochures, business cards, packaging, garments, wide-format, etc.
2. Quantity and run type — one-off, short run, or repeat; digital or litho likely.
3. Size and page count — flat and finished size, plus pagination for booklets.
4. Stock — GSM, coating (silk, gloss, uncoated), and any named house stock if it matters.
5. Colour — CMYK, CMYK plus Pantone specials, or spot-only.
6. Finishing — trimming, folding, binding, laminating, foiling, die-cutting, sewn edges — whatever applies.
7. Delivery — where, when, and whether split deliveries are needed.
8. Artwork status — print-ready PDF with bleed, or do you need pre-flight help?

A brief that hits those eight points will pull quotes you can drop into a comparison sheet without having to email anyone for clarification.

Five quotes, one afternoon: what it actually looks like

Here's the practical workflow when you swap the phone for an RFQ feed:

• 09:30 — write the brief once, using the checklist above.
• 09:35 — post it as an RFQ. $1 to publish, refunded if nobody responds.
• By lunchtime — a handful of printers with matching capability have submitted quotes with pricing, lead time, and any spec caveats.
• 13:00 — you rank the responses on price, timeline, and confidence in the supplier.
• 13:30 — open direct chat with your top pick (or top two) for $5 each. Ask the sharp questions: makeready charges, proof rounds, delivery windows.
• 14:00 — you've picked a printer, agreed the number, and briefed your studio to send final artwork.

That's a full sourcing cycle done before the afternoon coffee round. Compare that with playing phone tag until Thursday.

It works for one-off buyers too

This isn't just a print-broker workflow. A sole trader ordering 500 wedding invites, an event organiser needing pop-up banners next week, or an artist commissioning a short-run zine faces exactly the same problem: too many printers to ring, no easy way to compare. Posting a single RFQ pulls the same competitive quotes without the buyer having to pretend they know the trade lingo — and without paying the aggregator mark-up baked into web-to-print portals.

Stop dialling. Start comparing.

If your default sourcing move is still "I'll ring round a few printers," you're paying for it in hours you don't have. One well-written RFQ, posted once, will out-perform a morning of phone calls on speed, comparability, and — because there's no commission on the deal — on final price too.

Got a print job that needs quoting today? Post an RFQ on ZeozGig for a flat $1, get real quotes back from capable printers, and keep 100% of the margin on the other side. Printers and finishers: list your capabilities from $1 and get in front of buyers who already know what they need.