Economies of Scale
There is a significant overhead in setting up a print run. This overhead is reflected in the prices in the following table. These prices are from a vender I have personally dealt with. The prices do not vary much from vender to vender. The size of the print run is far more important than who you buy from (at least for mail-order venders). The prices below are listed as total cost/unit cost.
| Quantity | 50 | 100 | 250 | 500 | 1000 | 5000 |
| 14"x22" 1 color | $138, $2.76/unit | $165, $1.65/unit | $230, $0.92/unit | $313, $0.63/unit | $505, $0.51/unit | $1830, $0.37/unit |
| 14"x22" 2 color | $210, $4.20/unit | $238, $2.38/unit | $308, $1.23/unit | $405, $0.81/unit | $610, $0.61/unit | $2138, $0.43/unit |
| 22"x28" 1 color | $180, $3.60/unit | $235, $2.35/unit | $335, $1.34/unit | $515, $1.03/unit | $875, $0.88/unit | $3475, $0.69/unit |
| 22"x28" 2 color | $270, $5.40/unit | $325, $3.25/unit | $435, $1.74/unit | $615, $1.23/unit | $1025, $1.02/unit | $3850, $0.77/unit |
| 16"x26" double side with wire frame 1 color | $232, $4.64/unit | $323, $3.23/unit | $538, $2.15/unit | $892, $1.78/unit | $1545, $1.54/unit | $6590, $1.32/unit |
| 16"x26" double side with wire frame 2 colors | $237, $4.74/unit | $443, $4.43/unit | $673, $2.69/unit | $1047, $2.09/unit | $1750, $1.75/unit | $7190, $1.44/unit |
The prices above are for coated paper signs. They suffice for limited duration exposure outdoors (one or two months) or for indoor use. The single-sided signs require the additional purchase of wooden stakes, which run somewhere around 50 cents a piece if you cut them yourself from 8 foot faring strips. It is easy to place two or even four signs on a single stake. The latter is only useful if the stake is visible from two directions.
Reading two signs on a stake at high speed is problematic. However, if drivers go by multiple times, they can read one sign during one pass and another on a subsequent pass.
Stakes, of course, are reusable.
I don't have prices available for plastic-bag style signs, but I believe they are cheaper than the double-sided paper signs and last longer. However, they are only cheaper if bought in huge (by LP standards) quantities; i.e., on the order of tens of thousands.
If a national organization were to bulk purchase issue signs, plastic bag signs are probably the way to go. It should be possible to swing a deal with the supplier to provide the wireframes in smaller lots directly to the campaigns at a reasonable cost. This way, the national organization would have only to deal with the plastic bags, which should be relatively easy to store and ship. They are compact and wrinkle-proof.
However, some single-sided paper signs should also be available for indoor events, and for hand-carrying at rallies.
Even if the national organization were to introduce a markup on the signs it would still be far cheaper for small campaigns to purchase small lots of multiple issue signs from a national organization doing bulk purchases than it would be for them to order small lots themselves.
Of course, the individual campaigns would still have to order small print runs from their name signs, but these could be paper signs for smaller campaigns, even if they use plastic bag signs for the issue signs.
Savings Summarized
Bulk-purchased issue signs purchased at the national level offer the following cost savings.- Issue signs in general are a very cheap way to saturate a district with the Libertarian message.
- With large enough bulk purchases, it is possible to go with weather-proof plastic-bag signs at a cheap price.
- Unlike name signs, issue signs can be reused over several years.
- If there are multiple campaigns in the same area, then the same issue signs in the district support all campaigns.
- If low-level campaigns share issues with the presidential campaign, then the campaigns can easily help each other by mixing both name signs in with the shared issue signs.
