Our process
Six steps from a rough idea to a box of finished cards
No account to create, no portal to learn, no automated quote that arrives three days later. You send what you have, a person reads it, and you get a fixed price with a proof attached.
01
Tell us what the card has to do
Card type, quantity, and how it needs to work: swipe, tap, scan, or plain print. A photo of your current card and the make and model of your reader will save a round of questions.
02
Get a fixed quote — usually same day
We reply with pricing per card, material and finish options, lead time, and anything in your request that will cause trouble. The price does not move later because of “setup”.
03
Send artwork, or let us rebuild it
Print-ready PDFs are ideal. A logo and a photo of an old card also work — prepress is included. We set bleed, safety margins and the stripe or chip keep-out zone for you.
04
Approve the digital proof
Within one business day you get a proof at final size, plus a note on anything that will not print well. Nothing goes to press until you reply with an explicit yes by email.
05
Print, encode and check
Production runs 5–7 business days. Magnetic stripes, chips, barcodes and variable data are encoded during production, then a sample batch is tested against the spec you supplied.
06
Pack, ship and archive
Cards ship tracked to the US or Canada, sorted and banded how you asked. We keep your print files and encoding spec so the next reorder is one email, not a new project.
Turnaround
Typical timings for a standard order once we have usable artwork.
| Quote | Same business day |
|---|---|
| Digital proof | Within 24 hours |
| Production | 5–7 business days |
| Ground transit | 2–5 business days |
| Rush option | On request |
Timings start after proof approval. Orders with variable data or RFID encoding can need an extra day for testing.
Before you order
Four things that save a week of back-and-forth
01
Your reader model
The make and model of your door reader, PMS or POS tells us more about encoding than any specification document.
02
A photo of the old card
Front and back, straight on. It shows dimensions, stripe position and print technique faster than a brief.
03
The real quantity
Adding 20% headroom now is cheaper than a 100-card shortfall later, because reorders have their own minimum run.
04
The in-hand date
Tell us when the cards need to be at the front desk, not when they should ship. We work backwards from the deadline.
If something goes wrong
We would rather reprint than argue
Custom printing has a small number of ways to fail, and most of them are ours: a misregistered colour, a stripe encoded to the wrong format, a bad laminate. When that happens, the remedy is a reprint, not a credit note.
Where the error came from artwork or data you supplied — a typo in a member list, a low-resolution logo — we will show you exactly where it came from and quote the reprint at cost. Either way you get a straight answer, not a ticket number.
- Proofs are free and unlimited until you approve one.
- Encoding errors are our cost when we depart from your spec.
- Damage claims within 10 business days of delivery, with photos.
- One named contact from quote to delivery — no ticket queue.
Step one is a two-minute email
Tell us the card, the quantity and the reader. You will have a fixed quote and a free proof in your inbox within one business day.