Market Flooded with Vinyl Cutters

Market Flooded with Vinyl Cutters
I’m looking at vinyl cutters and am blown away with the vast number of these units being sold on eBay alone. It appears that literally hundreds of these cutters are being sold every month. Other than personal use, it seems the market is flooding very quickly. Maybe I should think about being on the other end of this game as selling the machines seems to be a better proposition than finding an open market to sell vinyl cut products.

In the recent years of economic issues many sign shops have gone under, in our area I know of 4. meanwhile, the Chinese manufacturers were starting to build them , and like lasers, at a much lower cost. I would think that selling them is a losing proposition, because those sign shops left will need replacements only after 6-8 years. My oldest one is now 7 years old and going strong. I paid $4,400 for it but can replace it now with the newest version of the same model for less than half that, or buy a larger Chinese model for under $500.

There has also been a move toward more full color digital printing which has gone down in cost. I don't know who would be buying all of those plotters.

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Originally Posted by Joe Pelonio

In the recent years of economic issues many sign shops have gone under, in our area I know of 4. meanwhile, the Chinese manufacturers were starting to build them , and like lasers, at a much lower cost. I would think that selling them is a losing proposition, because those sign shops left will need replacements only after 6-8 years. My oldest one is now 7 years old and going strong. I paid $4,400 for it but can replace it now with the newest version of the same model for less than half that, or buy a larger Chinese model for under $500.

There has also been a move toward more full color digital printing which has gone down in cost. I don't know who would be buying all of those plotters.

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I spent $4400 on my first 24" and now can get exactly the same one for $650..... (SignWarehouse)

I have a Chinese one at home, cost a couple hundred dolllars, wasted tooo much time playing with, on the other hand the Roland
GX-24 I bought has done nothing but make money, don't us eit a lot but It paid for itself in the first 3 months. Wished I could
of affordde the print/cut version, but this actually suits my needs today with the optical cutter.

I don't know, Tim... years back when I got mine, they appeared to be selling like hotcakes then, too.

I guess the question is whether they are selling like hotcakes, or being offered for sale like hotcakes. Something I discovered yesterday in the course of work in my daytime job was very informative. I was looking at a site that displays the ships here in Seattle, at the various terminals, and we had one container ship coming in. Have a look at what's going on in China. Cargo vessels are green. Sorry for the small pic, am on the little notebook with no graphics software.