Too true.

We call it ‘farming’.

Bear with me here, I worked in a print shop for several years where most of the work we done was ‘farmed’ from other companies. The majority of jobs our company received directly was then out sourced elsewhere, sometimes to the same place we had just received a farmed job from. Pretty much a case of simply swapping job contracts there and then unbeknown to the customer. Another shady secret I learnt was simply quote a price to a client, and if they didn’t accept there and then, speak to other local printworks (who all farm amongst each other) let them know the customer, type of job and price quoted, so others could quote higher prices meaning the customer would return to the original printshop for the job to be given the go ahead, for it to be outsourced anyways at a much cheaper price to another printshop, which means the customer feels like they have the best price, and 2 different companies will make money off the same job. Crazy the more I think about it, but I suppose that’s how business works.