Frequently Asked Questions

We are local. 

We deliver to you.

Our turnaround times are the best in the business.

Not only do we have the latest cut-off time for you to send your file - by far - but we don't play word games. When we say 24 hrs we mean 24 hrs! Not 24 hrs in production...plus shipping...plus the day you send your file doesn't count...plus a whole bunch of other things. Postcards in two days or less, means less than 48hrs they are ready to ship. And if you happen to be in our delivery areas, we will deliver to your door that same day!

We have a customer service team that surpasses any other trade only printer in the business. We will answer the phone and work with you. We understand you have your customers to answer to and we will work with you to keep them happy.

Our quality is second to none and we stand behind our product.

Our capabilities are far wider than just a printer. We have full finishing capabilities to give your piece that extra pop. We can foil, emboss, diecut, fold, convert, bookletize - we are basically a printer and a full-fledged bindery all in one. We can even print commercial envelopes on a very economical jet press for your next mailing.

We are reliable and straight-forward. Did your customer forget to submit their art on time or went through multiple unplanned revisions? Call us! We'll do our best to help you make your due date.

BCE (Business Card Express) is a locally owned, wholesale printing company that has been operating since 1986. We provide spot (thermography) and full color offset printing, as well as many finishing options, such as folding, die-cutting, converting, bookletizing, etc.

As a strictly wholesale company, we are fanatical about protecting your information and your customers, and we never sell direct to end users, unlike many other printers. Each and every new dealer request is thoroughly vetted to ensure that they are indeed print resellers and not an end user looking to get wholesale pricing. 

If anything you are looking for is not in our extensive catalog of offerings, please do not hesitate to call or email us, as we can do much, much more than we can list on a website. We would love to help you with your next project!

BCE tries to keep its pricing as low as possible by partnering up with our dealers. Our pricing is based on print-ready files, assuming that we are working with print resellers who have their own graphic artists they work with and would rather keep those services in-house. 

However, we do offer more than your average online printing company. We have a dedicated customer service department, who will communicate with you any time there's a question on your order. We do not wait for you to contact us - rather we are proactive in communicating any changes/issues with your order to ensure that you get the best product possible for your customer. 

If you so choose, we will check your files to make sure that they meet our minimum requirements and advise you if we find low res images, or other problems with it.

By offering more service and more communication, we hope to help you keep your customers happy and coming back to you. Making you successful makes us successful.

We are faster than the competition. Our 24 hour service items deliver in 18 to 24 hours and not on the third day. Our stated turnaround times are always a day or two less than the competition for the same product.

    24 HOUR SERVICE

THEM - 10 am order deadline Monday. Tuesday is production day. Wednesday is delivery (shipping*) day.

BCE 24 HOUR SERVICE - 6 pm order deadline Monday. Product delivers (ships*) to you on Tuesday.

    48 HOUR SERVICE

THEM - 10 am order deadline Monday. Tuesday / Wednesday are production days. Thursday is (shipping*) delivery day. 

BCE 48 HOUR SERVICE - 6 pm order turn in deadline Monday. Product delivers (ships*) to you on Wednesday. 

*Note: For UPS shipping customers the product is packaged and ready for pick up by UPS on the shipping day and then requires time for shipping.

At BCE customer service is when you want it and not when it is convenient for someone else. Call and a real live person answers the phone. We don't require "phone call appointments", "call back requests", or require that you leave a message for a return call later. 

BCE offers a full line of popular full color printed products, spot color printing and rubber stamps. We are continually expanding our product line and would love to hear any suggestions and ideas that you would like to have available from us. If you don't see a specific size or product on our site don't hesitate to contact our customer service department and let us know. We have many additional products and processes that are not featured on our web site but have been produced by us over the years. Give us a try, we want to be your full service print source.

Paper can come in a coated finish or uncoated finish. 

Coated paper can come in a glossy or matte coating (BCE's house coated papers are glossy, but we do have access to matte coated papers if that's what your project requires - just give us a call!). Gloss coating has a nice, shiny finish to it. It is more resistant to the elements than uncoated paper which is why it's used more widely for brochures, books, business cards, etc., - things that will get more use and handling. The coating on this type of paper also restricts the amount of ink that is absorbed into the paper, which results in more accurate reproduction of color, and sharper, crisper images. 

Uncoated paper has no coating on its surface, hence it absorbs more ink. Because the ink is absorbed into the paper, this type of sheet also takes longer for the ink to dry and the fibers of the paper - which absorb the ink - make the image look less sharp.

Request a quote when you want to

• Order a product that is not listed on our web site.
• Order large quantities of an existing product.
• Place an order with custom specifications.

An example of the above may be a custom size booklet or magazine.

Or custom die cut product with foil stamping or embossing.

Maybe you need 100,000 postcards

Or maybe you want to produce a product that looks like a LP record in full color with raised "grooves" printed.

BCE has a wide range of capabilities that you can take advantage of.

Contact us and lets see what we can do to help you.

Our file specification requirements are as follows:

Resolution: 300dpi or better for Full Color printing and 800dpi or better for Spot Color printing or rubber stamps.

Color Mode: CMYK for Full Color printing and separated in spot colors for Spot Color printing. Do NOT supply files for Full Color printing using Spot Color swatches. There are known bugs in Adobe Illustrator where using spot colors with some transparency effects does not produce the desired results.

Bleed: Minimum 1/8" bleed on most products where the design goes to the edge. For some products, like books, the more pages the more bleed is required to accommodate for creep. 1/4" bleed is recommended on most books.

Margins: 1/8" minimum margins are required. That means any critical information (like a name, phone number, or email) should be at a minimum of 1/8" away from the trim edge of the final product. For the same reasons as with bleed, any items closer than 1/8" to the trim edge risk being cut off or giving the appearance of the product being off center. Again, this is due to manufacturing variances beyond our control.

Transparencies: All transparencies must be flattened in the native file before creating a PDF or submitting to us.

Layers: All layers must be flattened in the native file before creating a PDF or submitting to us.

Fonts: All fonts must be outlined or embedded in PDFs during the PDF saving/creation process.

RGB vs. CMYK

In order to answer this question we need to first go into a little bit of detail about RGB color vs. CMYK color. The CMYK color model (process color, four color) is a subtractive color model used in color printing, and is also used to describe the printing process itself. CMYK refers to the four inks used in some color printing: cyan, magenta, yellow, and key (black). In additive color models such as RGB, white is the "additive" combination of all primary colored lights, while black is the absence of light. In the CMYK model, it is the opposite: white is the natural color of the paper or other background, while black results from a full combination of colored inks.

Scanners, digital cameras and computer monitors use red, green and blue (RGB) light to display color. Commercial printing presses print with cyan, magenta, yellow and black (CMYK) ink, called process printing, instead of RGB light, and therefore produce a different range of color. The CMYK color gamut is smaller than the RGB one. Certain RGB colors that you can see on your monitor or camera (in particular, bright vibrant colors) simply cannot be replicated with standard CMYK inks. These unachievable RGB colors are said to be "out of the CMYK color gamut." That's why it is recommended that, if you are creating a piece for print, you work in CMYK mode.

Blue vs. Purple

That brings us to the problem of Blue vs. Purple. A color value of C=100 M=100 Y=0 K=0 shows up as a nice deep blue on screen. But when you print those values using 4-color printing, it will print purple. Remember when we said above that ALL computer monitors use RGB to display color? That is why you see blue on screen even though you are working in a CMYK color space.  But when you print, those values are destined to give you purple.

The best rule of thumb to use in order to avoid this discrepancy is to keep the value of the magenta 30% less than that of cyan. So if C=100 then M=70, and if C=90 then M=63. Keep in mind when you get to lighter colors (when your cyan value drops below 50%), then that difference between the two should be greater. Adding yellow to your values also shifts the color more towards blue than purple, but keep in mind that yellow also makes the blue duller. So how do you get a nice dark blue without breaking the 30% rule? You can achieve a darker blue by adding black to your color mix.

Easy enough to make these color changes to your Illustrator file, but how about a Photoshop image? A little more involved but not much.

• Under your Window menu in Photoshop click Info to bring up the Info palette.
• Then go to your Image menu, and under the Adjustments submenu, click Selective Color...
• The Selective Color window will show up. Under the Colors dropdown menu select Blues and make sure at the bottom of the window Relative is selected. This ensures that any changes you make using the sliders will only affect the blue colors in the image.
• Now using the sliders manipulate the Cyan (increase) and Magenta (decrease) until you get the desired values.

At any point in time while the Selective Color window is up, simply move your mouse over a blue area. The Info palette that we brought up at the beginning will show you where the CMYK values were before the adjustment (before the slash) and where they would be after the adjustment (after the slash). We say "would be" because the adjustment does not really take place until after you click OK.

Here at BCE, the way we can provide you with the lowest price possible, and quick turnaround, is by printing multiple products on one large sheet. These products are 'ganged' based on paper, quantity, coating selections and a few other variables. That is what allows us to keep our costs - and as a result your price - low.

Because we cannot always control these variables (the amount of orders or quantities or coating selections) that come into our shop, we have to print to a printing industry standard using standard ink densities striving to achieve a pleasing color. What that means is that your postcard may print right below or next to a solid black postcard today, and below or next to a white postcard 6 months from now. The amount of ink required by the products around your postcard will affect the color on your postcard. Hence, you might see a slight difference in the color of your two postcard orders printed 6 months apart, even though the art is exactly the same. Achieving exactly the same color year after year on a particular product would require that product to print by itself on a whole sheet in order to allow us to control the color without affecting any other products, which would drive the cost up immensely. 

Thermography is the name of a post print process that is achieved today using traditional printing methods coupled with thermography machines. Thermography machines consist of multiple sections with a through conveyor.

The process applies thermographic/embossing powder to the paper. The areas selected for raised printing are printed with slow-drying inks that do not contain dryers or hardeners so that they remain wet during the application of powder.   The product then runs through a vacuum system that removes excess powder from areas of the sheet that were not printed.  Finally, the process conveys the product through a radiant oven where it is exposed to temperatures of 900ºF and greater to set the ink. 

Thermography or thermographic printing produces the classic look of raised print on fine papers commonly used on wedding invitations, letterheads, business cards, and greetings cards.

You must be a printing professional with the required skills to provide artwork in the form required.  We do not sell to the general public.  

We would be happy to put you in contact with one of our registered customers who can provide you with the services you need.  Please contact our customer service department.