Staples BCIM (Business Cards In Minutes) Program Review

About a year ago, Staples launched its BCIM program in stores. This stands for Business Cards In Minutes, and was a service aptly placed in the copy center. You could either place orders online, or in the store, and as the name implies it was quite a speedy service. However, as there are good sides to this idea, there are also bad ones.

To begin with, let's go with the good. Again, as the name implies, the service is rather quick. You can also get a matte stock paper, called Standard, or a glossy stock, called Premium. The Premium stock is slightly thicker and adds an extra $10 to the bill, not a bad increase really. Also, for those looking to get raised lettering, the Premium stock does have a small raise on the printing.

You can also easily design in store. They have several templates in the store where you can type as much as the card can fit. These in-store designs come with different placements of the logo and text, but are all initially a while background. You can choose, only if you go with a text only card, to have the background be a different color, but for those of you looking to get a logo you are stuck with white.

Speaking of logos, you can also add your own. In addition to the variety of stock logos contained within their system, you can take your own picture and use it. However, the photo/illustration has to be a perfect square to be useable, otherwise the system will deny it.

Also, online there are pages upon pages of card templates. Photo backgrounds, different colors, different text placement, et cetera. For those not pleased with what they saw in store, check out their online version to find much more templates. You can also choose to either have it printed in the store of your choosing, or have it shipped within three business days.

Now, the bad side of BCIM. While the service is quick, and from the side of the printer I hated this, it is rare to get these cards in minutes. If ordering 100 cards (the minimum order) in the morning or evening when there are no jobs being run and few people are in, then you can get these cards in minutes. Order any more and your chance of receiving these in minutes decreases further and further. Sometimes you can get them within an hour, but on busy days (and times of the year, like Christmas) expect to wait about a day or two for these cards to be yours.

There is also the stock of the paper. While it is enticing to get these cards quickly, the stock suffers for this time constraint. The printers Staples uses are only good for thinner business paper stock, in this case 10pt. Standard business cards are 12pt or higher, so watch your audience. If you are hoping to attract higher end businesses to your service or business, you may want to work on presentation. If you are attempting to bring in locals or small businesses, this stock should be fine. But be aware that it does damage easily, especially when held in pockets.

The cutter used easily malfunctions. While you can easily guess that this means, once again, that the M in BCIM is a lie, there is another problem. When the piece of paper containing your business cards is printed, it runs black lines across the page so the person operating the machine knows where the cuts will be. If the cutter malfunctions and does not perform the cuts correctly, you will find black lines streaking either the top or bottom of your cards.

You can design your own card and use that for the BCIM program, but the chance of it being cut improperly increases. In my experience, there were only about two or three cards designed by customers that worked, out of more than one hundred. Was this faulty designing? No, it was the cutter messing up on the cuts. To even come close to proper cutting, we had to bypass normal systems and run it through Publisher to play with the sizing, which could take hours by itself, then print a sheet, run a test, and hope all the other prints would cut the same as the test one.

Lastly, the price. While the price for 100 or 200 cards is alright, the price for anything more becomes ridiculous. Most real printers online offer you better stock, better quality, better colors, and all for better prices. The only drawback of having to order from the online printer is the wait. If price matters, and you have about a week to wait, go for the better cards from places like: PSPrint, PrintingForLess, VistaPrint, etc.

So, while the M is a lie, and the paper is thinner than standard, BCIM is a good idea for social networking cards for lower end businesses, services, or people who just want to give them to friends. It is also good when running on a tight time constraint when quality is the least of your worries. However, keep the cons in mind before ordering, because poor cards can easily make you poor.