Place any order with us before the end of February and you will receive 4 units completely free.
Add the code FEB4 in the special code box as you check out and we will add FOUR FREE UNITS to your order.
Order online: https://www.duplicationcentre.co.uk/prices.html
Duplication Centre celebrates 15 years of successful business this year.
We are a family run, small business which allows us to work closely with our customers. As the business has grown we have discovered that probably the most important thing in our work, after producing high quality and professional products, is that we listen to and try to help and advise our customers one to one.
Good communication in any aspect of life is so important and we try to always work with our customers to understand and help them acheive what they want with their order.
We find live chat really helpful along with the phone lines that come directly to experienced staff.
We always aim to respond to emails as quickly as we can and will proactively notify customers if we spot a problem with their order.
If you order this month we are adding 5 Extra Free units, just put FREE5 in the special code box when you check out.
Give us a call or chat online via the website:
We are often asked about selling CD’s and DVD’s online with companies like Amazon.
Many of our customers do this very successfully and use us to duplicate their CD’s /DVD’s and send their bulk orders direct to an Amazon Fulfilment Centre.
Selling on Amazon couldn’t be easier and there are a variety of selling plans available to choose from.
Depending on how much you think you will sell you can either have a monthly subscritption fee or a pay as you go (per item fee); you set this all up with Amazon when you register.
Once you have registered you just list your CD or DVD, and then use either an Amazon Fulfilment Centre to deliver to your customer or you fulfil the orders yourself.
You get access to the millions of customers who browse Amazon, a secure and trusted market place for selling and dedicated support to help you along the way.
Give it a go !!
https://www.amazon.co.uk/b/?_encoding=UTF8&ld=AZUKGNOSellC&node=2374298031&ref_=nav_cs_sell
Selling Online
Playing our small part and being responsible for our own footprint, is our starting point with environmental issues.
CD, DVD & BluRay has traditionally been a very plastic orientated industry, with the CD Jewell Case and the Standard Plastic DVD box being for many years, the norm for packing and presenting your discs.
Over the last few years, and in conjunction with current responsible thinking we have been keen to promote our Eco-Friendly casing options.
We have developed our own templates and sourced FSC certified Sustainable card stock to provide our customers with a high quality, low price, ecofriendly range for CD, DVD & BluRay packaging.
These include:
CD Lancing Pack with 4 page booklet
Cd single card wallets
As a result of this we have noticed a huge shift in the choice our customers make when deciding on their cases.
Our card wallets by far exceed the popularity of all our plastic options.
At the same time we are very respectful of peoples right to choose and still stock all the traditional case choices. Where possible and where the quality is good enough, we use eco plastic versions like the ecolite Amaray cases for our traditional dvd packaging.These are both fully recycled and recycleable.
All of the templates for designing any of our card products can be found here:
https://www.duplicationcentre.co.uk/artwork-pdf-guidelines.html
People often forget that a Blu-Ray can be played on a PS3, PS4 and XBox so you do not need to own a Blu-Ray player in order to buy and play Blu-Ray Discs.
Many of your customers may not even realise that they have the ability to play a Blu-Ray via one of these consoles!
Most families nowdays have one of these in the home.
We are promoting the Blu-Ray and have reduced our prices for you!!
What extra benefits do you get with a Blu-Ray over and above a standard DVD?
Greater Storage Capacity: Singe Layer BluRay can store approximately 25Gb data,this equals 2 hours of high defintiion information or 13hours of standard definition information.
Better Laser Technology: Blu-Ray players use a Blue Laser to read the stored information;the waves lengths are shorter and smaller in diameter than those of a DVD player, this allows for a closer and more precise reading of information on the discs.
Better Disc Construction:The Blu-Ray has a protective layer designed to resist scratching and in addition a harder coating than the DVD that makes it more scratch resistant.
Better Image Resolution:The Blu-Ray was designed for the high definition 1080 display. BluRay currently has the best image resolution on the market and looks amazing on HD TV, they are one of the few sources that display in Full HD.
Lastly and very importantly Blu-Ray can handle 4K (Ultra HD)….we dont need a new type of disc for our new Tv’s…you can have it all with the Blu-Ray.
Here’s a little bit of inspiration and interest for our customers this February!!!
Featuring our Managing Director Martin Johnson.
Martin who was formerly a professional musician, is well known in the Jazz world as one of the best Hammond B3 players in the Uk.
He is distinguished particularly by being one of the only players to use the pedals for bass rather than the left hand.
Check out his webite:
or visit you tube to see some incredible tracks with Drummer Davide Giovannini and Percussionist Snowboy .
We duplicate many DVD’s for School’s and College’s in the run up to Christmas.
It is a great way to give families a lasting memory of these special production’s and a brilliant way to raise funds if you decide to sell them.
Give us a call to see how we can help you get this organised for your School or College.
Congratulations to Country Music Social Media, one of our regular customers who recently won UK Country Radio Awards for both male & female country singer of the year and had 14 other nominations.
The British Country Music awards take place on 25th November this year and includes nominations for artists on the Cd we recently duplicated for them.
All of their awards and nominations are on their website:
www.countrymusicsocialmedia.com
If you care about ecology and the careful and efficient use of our worlds resources you will be interested in reading read this article.
We have always viewed our general efficiency, in all aspects of our work as part of being an eco-friendly and responsible British Company. This includes the responsible choice and use of our own suppliers and supplies, careful budgeting and careful use of power (mainly electricity) and associated machinery. In addition to this we have internal policy regarding the recycling of any waste material.
This article is an informal piece about our most recent thoughts and practices.
From the start we use high quality casing for our Cds,Dvds and Blu-rays with the philosophy that in the long term these will provide the best protection for your discs and although some are plastic, will last a life-time so do not need to be replaced. This is slightly counter culture in what has become a throw away society in many walks of life, but there is common sense in choosing quality which will last; and despite this we still remain one of the cheapest, if not the cheapest for all of our products. There is a great deal of inferior quality, cheap packaging out there that is never use for any of our customers.
Over the 12 years that we have been in the duplication business we have noticed a large shift in the casing that our customers choose for their orders. From the days where nearly all CD’s were packed in a plastic standard jewel case and all DVDs packed in a Amaray plastic DVD cases, we now find that a much larger percentage of customers choose the more eco-friendly options of card wallets/digi-paks.
The card/paper we stock for all our printed parts is FSC Certified and sustainable. We feel this is a better option than recycled paper as research shows that due to the high volumes of bleach used to whiten the paper this is not as environmentally friendly…..which is not good. Responsible sourced and properly managed paper is a green industry, encouraging the growth of trees in the worlds forests. www.fsc-uk.org
In addition our, experience and the feedback our customers give us tells us that paper based products are less susceptible to damage in transit and less costly to courier, deliver and store compared to plastic cases.
Customer choice is highly important to us however and whilst there is a demand for the plastic standard jewell and standard DVD case and we continue to provide these on our web-site.
A large part of our recycling programme is to reuse all the incoming boxes and packaging to supply our out-going parcels.
Protecting orders is our top priority so this comes first however where possible we re-cycle all cardboard, jiffy/mailite bags and packaging, always removing any personal information on them first.
Good House-keeping in the production room means less waste, however on every order we do produce 1 or 2 over-runs of discs. This enables us to keep a control copy here of every order. We have researched widely the re-cycling of CD’s, DVD’s and Blu-Rays and have yet to find a highly sustainable channel for these.
We do however supply unburned discs to artists and students of design free of charge for sculpture or artistc projects.
There are also an increasing number of designers who use discs as the raw materials for projects like garden mosaics, lamps, dishes, picture frames, flower pots, mirrors, coasters and even a disco ball!! See www.zerowasteweek.co.uk for DIY ideas on how to recycle discs.
Another great use for discs is as bird scarers on allotments, they catch the sun if hung and will deter without harming birds who would eat delicate crops.
We minimise the use of paper by having an efficient invoice emailing and chasing system; although we will always send hard copy invoices if requested. We shred all paper that we can and this is re-used for animal bedding and then composted.
In short we view ourselves as a very eco-friendly company and we constantly update and re-visit our processes to see where we can improve and evolve in a productive and conscientious way.
Gained knowledge and know-how is the key here to keeping an efficient and eco-friendly approach in balance for our industry.
It gives an overview of a band looking at the different ways of selling their cd’s to fans, outside of selling them at gigs.
Getting started releasing my own music was a learning curve. Not only did I have to write all the music (which was fun!), but I had to look at everything that a record label traditionally does, and take figure out how to implement it myself. One aspect was figuring out how to ship a CD. I looked over the different options and figured out a solution that works for me.
I’ll give you a quick overview of those options and why I chose the method that I did.
There are three options available to you:
I’ll quickly outline what these different options are:
Drop shipping is when a third party company creates and ships a product on a per order basis. For example, let’s say Fred buys your record. Your drop shipping company will print a record just for Fred, and ship it to him.
This is when you take care of every aspect of order fulfilment yourself. Your turn your office / bedroom / house into a warehouse to store and ship your records / merchandise. If you choose to do self-fulfilment, then you need to consider:
So as you can see, there is already a lot for you to consider.
How are your users going to buy your CD online? You could use third party solutions such as Bandcamp or Shopify; or you could use a solution which integrates with your own website, such as Woo Commerce. Both have advantages and disadvantages depending on your situation and what you want to achieve. I’ll write an article in the future about these options. I’ve tried Woo Commerce and Shopify myself, and personally, I prefer Shopify.
You need to find a company that will physically create a CD for you. When it comes to CDs, you have two options:
Duplication is for small jobs (usually up to 1000 copies). This is the same process as you would use to ‘burn’ a CD on your home computer, on a more industrial scale. Duplication also has a fast turn around time.
Replication is for bigger jobs (500 units upwards) and while it has a higher setup cost than duplication, at higher volume it is cheaper. Replication involves creating a glass ‘master’ disc and then physically stamping blank CD. It takes longer than duplication.Please see our sister company www.replicationcentre.co.uk for more information on this.
The best company I have found in the UK for duplication is The Duplication Centre. They usually ship my order within a couple of days and they give things a once over to make sure the order is ok. They also keep your order on file, making it really fast and easy to get a second printing done. If you sign up to their mailing list, they usually send out some special offers for free extra units every few months.
If you are in the UK, they are highly recommended and you can check them out here. Check them for yourselves – their policy or approach may have changed since writing this article.
How are you going to post your CD? You need some sort of packaging. You want to balance having something low cost, with having something that can protect your product – if your CD turns up smashed, scratched or damaged; even if it isn’t your fault, your fans will be pissed off.
The best packaging solution I found are card wallets from lil packaging. They are durable, protect from light impact, scratches and drops. They also ‘expand’, so you can put a thin card wallet promo CD in, and have a slim package; or you can put a full size jewel case in there and the card wallet will ‘expand’ a bit. Check out the photos.
Finally, they are pretty cheap per unit, and the price per unit crashes with scale. Check out low cost durable packaging for your CD here. Price per unit is anywhere from 30p/unit to <1p/unit depending on the quantity purchased.
Here are some photos of what the CD mailers look like (got a big box of 150 I think it was, to hit the price break and get a cheaper per unit price):
There are a few options for this. For most people getting started, taking a bag of packaged CDs down to the local post office is probably the best solution. Get yourself a sharpie and write the addresses on the front of your card wallets by hand. You will want to check postage rates so you don’t get any nasty surprises and set up your shipping on your website / online store appropriately.
A great way to check the weight of your item is to grab a cheap set of digital weight scales that are accurate to roughly 2g (and if you use imperial will switch to ounces). Then you can accurately measure the weight of your CD / merch and make sure you don’t get any surprises at the Post Office.
As you might have noticed, one aspect of self fulfilment is that, when compared to drop shipping, there are upfront costs to handle. Rather than having a CD made per order, you now have to buy 20-100 units at a time and the packaging to go with them… and your sharpie. So you start to need a bit of capital. However, you will find that your profit margin is much, much higher per unit, than drop shopping.
You should be able to get the CDs created and packaging for less than £3 per unit, so if you are selling your CD for £10-£15, that is a profit per unit of £7-£12.
While it is a bit more work, this is probably the best way for most musicians getting started to go. The work involved is not really that much at all, and you make more money per sale.
Third party fulfilment involves setting up your own supply chain. This is similar to taking self fulfilment, and taking it to the next level, turning it into a miniature business. You take your manufacturer and you connect them to a shipping company, or, you take self fulfilment and you pay someone to run it for you. Paying someone to run your self sfulfilment is pretty simple so I’ll give you a quick overview of third party fulfilment using an external company.
Orders come through from your website and are automatically sent to your shipping company. The manufacture(s) ship directly to your shipping company, who put your items into warehousing. Shipping company takes incoming website orders, takes the appropriate items from the warehouse and boxes them up (this is referred to as “pick and pack”) and ships to the consumer. They sometimes have in house packaging solutions, so you don’t have to worry about that either.
A third party fulfilment will typically charge you a warehousing fee and a ‘pick and pack’ fee.
I would have thought for most independent musicians (if you have a record label, all this is taken care of for you), starting with a self fulfilment model and then ‘graduating’ to a third party fulfilment model will work best for you. I’m still in the self fulfilment phase.
This is a quick round up of the companies I’ve used that offer a great service with a great price (that are UK based):
These guys offer solutions for all your packaging problems, not just CDs! They do boxes for shipping your merch, boxes for books, boxes for this and that. They got you covered. A vital company for any band (or individual, small business) shipping their own products. Check them out
Whether you want card wallet CDs, digipaks, jewel case CDs, these guys have you covered. Their website looks a little bit old school… but it works. You can get a fully customised quote in minutes. Price per unit decreases with order volume which is nice. Check them out