nocrid

I come across this thread Startup costs: design by humans, threadless and other sites

and others recommended by the system but I couldn't find what I want. I hope I am not repeating those threads here.

I am starting a website/portal doing competition of t-shirts design only for students from some design school design school in my place. Something what Threadless and DesignByHuman is doing.

I am wondering how Threadless (those started from small) have their stocks ready for selling. I mean if there are 10 designs per day coming in, and they decided to print it out. A dozen of each design will cost them huge fortune. I don't know if they really print it out all of them but for me I would like to minimize the stock/inventory as low as possible. I was hoping to print upon order.

I owned a heatpress and some printers doing heat transfer tees but heat transfer only comply limited designs' criteria.

I know some of the printing ways that offer cheap sampling such as DTG, but the quality is not that consistent due to the infancy of the technology (correct me if I am wrong).

 

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splathead

Threadless does about $30 million in sales a year, so they can afford to print and stock the vast number of tees they produce. I believe their blog may have some pictures of their warehouse. It's huge.

How many designs do you anticipate having available for sale at any one time?

Screenprinting multiple color designs on-demand will bankrupt you.

You could do plastisol transfers. These are screen printed designs on paper instead of directly on the shirts. You would need a heat press to apply them. This way, you could keep stock down to a minimum, and heat press the designs on shirts as orders are received. It would also allow you to offer designs on more than one color shirt without having to worry about warehousing a large inventory of shirts.

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nocrid

Quote: Originally Posted by splathead Threadless does about $30 million in sales a year, so they can afford to print and stock the vast number of tees they produce. I believe their blog may have some pictures of their warehouse. It's huge.

Yeah...but during their day one when they started it and with the concept of print on demand on any approved/winning design, how they keep the stock to print on demand?

Quote: Originally Posted by splathead How many designs do you anticipate having available for sale at any one time?

Once the launch is done, it will be around 50-100 designs a week because we have reached a deal with the lecturers and teachers of these design schools to make it as an assignment/curriculum.

Quote: Originally Posted by splathead You could do plastisol transfers. These are screen printed designs on paper instead of directly on the shirts. You would need a heat press to apply them. This way, you could keep stock down to a minimum, and heat press the designs on shirts as orders are received. It would also allow you to offer designs on more than one color shirt without having to worry about warehousing a large inventory of shirts.

It's a good idea using plastisol but then again, there is a minimum quantity that I need to comply as it is screenprint only now we "delay" one of the step of putting it on the t-shirts.


Thanks for the reply.

 

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ReThink Clothing

Printing on order you will never make any money. After artist fee's and all other expenses print on demand only works if you are huge and can use others to do everything for you. It might help you start, but printing 50-100 designs a week is going to be incredibly time consuming and overload the customers who already have too many options.

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