Paper and then more

As a small business, with many of my projects, I will do the printing. I like having control over the outcome of the product. Kinko's http://www.fedex.com/us/officeprint/main/ and such is a good backup but I just learned that they are outsourcing most of their design work to an Indian company. I have no problem with India but I thought that Paul Orfalea took pride in his American born company. I was going to apply for the $10 (what a joke) and hour position to have more experience, but they hired out with the other India design company. It is all fine with me but it puts a bad taste with wanting to do much business with Kinko's anymore.
On with the paper chat. Many people may not understand that there are sooooooo many paper choices. It can drive a person mad. I am partial to the regular ole HP photo stock. I will usually use the glossy for personal images since this allows for a much cleaner print of the photo and the matte for images that I design for not so personalized cards. For brochures, there is a great brochure paper also available; the same goes for newsletters. I like the 9mil, 52 lb bond for the gloss and matte pre-scored greeting cards. Through much trial and error over the years, I get the quality that I desire with these products used as my main supply.
It is also smart for me to use these since I can just buy at the store and not have to wait for shipments and such. I will use Office Max normally for my supplies of the paper and other office products since they have a really attractive incentive with their Max Perks cards http://www.officemaxperks.com/.
Boring as this all may sound, it is just one of so many challenges that are faced on any given day to a home based graphic design business. Thanks again for reading my posts.
www.chumneyvisualdesigns.com