Paper and Cardboard Engineering must be kept simple if it is to be Commercially Viable

It seems that every week we get at least one enquiry for between 100,000 – 1 million super-intricate pop-up cards. The lead time will typically be 3-4 weeks. The enquirer is invariably gobsmacked when he or she hears the price and is equally amazed to hear that the job might take 4 to 6 months for us to complete.

In nearly every instance, the agency will be pitching for business having shown the client a very intricate pop-up structure that has been copied from a pop-up book or the client will show the agency a pop-up assembly saying, “We want one of those shaped like our product”. There are some fantastic creations by world leading paper engineers such as Robert Sabuda but if you take a look at the small print on the back cover you will see that all pop-up books have one thing in common. No matter where the books originate, the UK, USA or Europe, all books are printed and assembled in China.

It’s not that we don’t have the skills to make such pop-up structures in this country, it’s just that if the books were printed and assembled in the UK no-one would be able to afford to buy them! The nature of a pop-up assembly dictates that the work is done by hand and labour costs in the UK would send the cost of the books sky-high.

Unfortunately, the same rule applies to promotional pop-ups and in order to keep costs affordable we keep the cardboard engineering content relatively simple. As it is, an order of, say, 1000 of some of our more intricate pop-ups and interactive products will take many hours to assemble. Our best-selling pop-up card features just one V-fold pop-up. A Robert Sabuda creation might contain as many as 20 V-folds!

So here’s the rule for custom made pop-up promotions – keep it simple, keep it affordable!