This is no blue sky, wishful dream. You can now shop for competitive bids from commercial printers in your area, or across North America, by clicking onto a print auction or bid site in cyberspace. That's exactly what the South American licensee for Pokemon did to find the best American printer to produce 500,000 sets of 150 Pokemon collector cards. That's a more traditional, closed bidding process. During the auction, which might last for a day or a week, printers can watch the bidding, see the prices quoted and jump in with competitive bids at any time.
Printers can change their original bids and submit new ones at a lower price.
As a buyer, you may want to evaluate the printers' bids not only on the basis of price, but other factors such as quality, specialization and location. Your Request For Print includes specs for the job and you select the number of bids you want to see. Shopping for a printer online can save time as well. You don't have to contact several printers individually and explain the job to each. You just post the specs for the job on the web site and wait for the bids to come in.