What Should I Do? I've got 21 designs to start out with - that's a lot of inventory
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This section of the forum is for discussing the business and finance issues of the t-shirt industry. Which business structure to use (sole proprietor, LLC, S Corp, etc), how to handle billing, where to register your business and get the proper licensing, etc.
What Should I Do? I've got 21 designs to start out with - that's a lot of inventory
Re: What Should I Do? I've got 21 designs to start out with - that's a lot of inventory
Quote:
Originally Posted by BSApparel
I posted up a few posts that I print my own transfers. Well I did, until I had a few orders and wasn't able to apply them correctly. I spent the next week trying to make transfers that printed well and transfered well with almost no success, and now I'm back to printing individual designs. It's VERY hard to make your own transfers I've learned, so it's definitely not for everyone.
To make it easier on myself, I am only printing on the weekends now, which means that I can print all of the weeks orders of each design at the same time, so I only have to keep about 15 screens in stock. I still print in bulk, because I do all of the week's orders of design A, then all of the orders of design B, etc. This way I don't have to set up/clean up the machine for each individual order that comes in, and I don't need to keep 200+ screens in inventory - I just make screens for the week's orders. If I run out of screens, I reclaim a few after I'm done printing a design, and use them for the next one.
With a high-turnover business one weekend probably isn't enough time to print all of the orders, but it works for me for the time being.
Aaron, what kind of turn around do you tell your customers to expect? Do you have somewhere that orders will ship something like 4-10 days from order placement?
I'll be outsourcing my orders and was wondering about what to add for my site.
__________________
Hard labor kills, make t-shirts instead.
Re: What Should I Do? I've got 21 designs to start out with - that's a lot of inventory
Yeah exactly, my FAQ's say that orders will ship within 7 business days, but usually sooner. That leaves me plenty of time in case I have a busy week - I can stretch a Monday order out until Tuesday of the next week if I really have to.
Re: What Should I Do? I've got 21 designs to start out with - that's a lot of inventory
Good to know. I'm assuming that your customers don't have a problem with that. Have your customers left any feedback for you? I guess on most commercial websites the typical turn around is 5-7 days.
__________________
Hard labor kills, make t-shirts instead.
Re: What Should I Do? I've got 21 designs to start out with - that's a lot of inventory
Haven't heard anything good or bad, not sure how it affects my sales though. At this point I don't really have another way to do it, but it works well enough for now.
Re: What Should I Do? I've got 21 designs to start out with - that's a lot of inventory
Quote:
Originally Posted by BSApparel
I posted up a few posts that I print my own transfers. Well I did, until I had a few orders and wasn't able to apply them correctly. I spent the next week trying to make transfers that printed well and transfered well with almost no success, and now I'm back to printing individual designs. It's VERY hard to make your own transfers I've learned, so it's definitely not for everyone.
To make it easier on myself, I am only printing on the weekends now, which means that I can print all of the weeks orders of each design at the same time, so I only have to keep about 15 screens in stock. I still print in bulk, because I do all of the week's orders of design A, then all of the orders of design B, etc. This way I don't have to set up/clean up the machine for each individual order that comes in, and I don't need to keep 200+ screens in inventory - I just make screens for the week's orders. If I run out of screens, I reclaim a few after I'm done printing a design, and use them for the next one.
With a high-turnover business one weekend probably isn't enough time to print all of the orders, but it works for me for the time being.
Do you mind giving us an update on how your business is going? Are you still printing on the weekend? Did you get transfers down (lick the art of transfers)? I'm dying to know. It's like a soap opera.
Set up a wholesale account, and see how the shipping and pricing works out for you.
Actually, if you use TSC Apparel not only do they offer free freight on all American Apparel orders over $200 but if you order from their web site you also get case pricing on orders over $200. Their case pricing is comparable to AA's case pricing!
Re: What Should I Do? I've got 21 designs to start out with - that's a lot of inventory
Quote:
Originally Posted by jboitcet
Do you mind giving us an update on how your business is going? Are you still printing on the weekend? Did you get transfers down (lick the art of transfers)? I'm dying to know. It's like a soap opera.
That's actually my roomate - he's still printing over the weekends, but has adopted my method of using Vinyl over the screens that we make with a Roland GX-24 cutter, which allows screens to be made much faster and cheaper than using emulsion. So the orders have increased but the production time has decreased so for now he's still ok printing on just the weekends.
I print a few days out of the week and also use Vinyl to make most of my screens instead of emulsion - very accurate registration, half the work and cleaning the screen is as simple as washing off the ink and pulling the vinyl. Of course we can't keep screens "exposed" and use them over and over again, but for medium sized operations like ours it works perfectly. We're not endlessly coating/exposing/reclaiming screens, and we don't have to keep 200+ screens in inventory because the time it takes to clear a screen and set it up for a new design is minimal. For high detail work we use emulsion still, but for most of our stuff, especially the stuff I sell on my site, vinyl works great.
Re: What Should I Do? I've got 21 designs to start out with - that's a lot of inventory
Did you guys copyright all your designs first? I sell almost exactly the same way as everyone else on here but I am just now going through the whole copyright thing even though most of my designs are text based and probably will not qualify for copyright.
Re: What Should I Do? I've got 21 designs to start out with - that's a lot of inventory 
