When I worked in a print shop we marked up the shirts a bit but the nice thing was if we goofed up one of our shirts it didn't cost the customer anything, if we used customer shirts then the customer had to eat any mistakes.
When I worked in a print shop we marked up the shirts a bit but the nice thing was if we goofed up one of our shirts it didn't cost the customer anything, if we used customer shirts then the customer had to eat any mistakes.
Good point. May I ask, when you did mark them up, were they still under retail?
Also, can you give an idea out of a run, approx how many got goofed? Would you say it the mark up far exceeded any costs you ate for goofs? Just curious, thanks.
Good point. May I ask, when you did mark them up, were they still under retail?
Also, can you give an idea out of a run, approx how many got goofed? Would you say it the mark up far exceeded any costs you ate for goofs? Just curious, thanks.
Unfortunately the last time I worked with textiles was in the early nineties and I was a pressman back then, not management. I know we marked up the shirts but even if I knew how much, I don't remember now. There may have been a mark-up on customer shirts as well, I don't remember. Like most printers we hated working with customer shirts. People would bring in all sorts of mismatched crap or cheap shirts that would shrink a lot under the flash or cause no end of problems. We always had more problems with customer shirts and then there are the freak accidents. Too many variables... we might have no mistakes or several.
Personally, I'm not a fan of marking up the substrate in printing. I know it's common but to me it presents an extra complication and point of issue with the customer. If a printer really needs additional profit it should just be built into the printing cost. When I started doing that with flatwork I started winning more bids. If a customer tries to be slick and surprise me with their own stock and expect a discount, I just tack on a per piece surcharge (letting the customer know of course).
Now, to contradict myself a little bit... I will probably soon be back into textiles and in some situations I might pad the price a bit or I might put it into the printing instead, I'll cross that bridge when it comes. Just because I can remember that we bought some textiles (jackets for example) substantially below retail price and it's not really right for the customer to buy printed jackets for the same price (or less) as the jacket alone at retail. This issue is fairly specific to textiles because 95% of flatwork substrate is never purchased at retail anyway.
Dear Wormil,
Thanks for the great post. You pointed to a couple of things I wondered about. I am sure printers have preferences on brands they like to work, that seems natural. I've seen printers discuss lint in shirts being a pain. Thanks for elaborating above with other issues you faced as well. Even in pigment ink, we have our favorite shirts to use, and I would not like it if someone gave me a 100% not preshrunk cotton shirt to use.
That's anther thing I wondered. Since printers are getting stuff wholesale, and the customer may be reselling, was there room for the customer to still mark up without being out of their market range. But there are also retail customers who should pay you directly full retail price, regardless of your pricing. I guess that divides your customers into your wholesale customers and your retail customers and their respective price tiers.
Would it be reasonable to offer a list of acceptable shirts for customers to bring in on their own, so no duds show up. Again, I guess this is on a printer by printer basis.
Okay, thanks again for the great post. It's wonderful to be able to ask you guys stuff and figure things out before heading down a road untraveled. Thanks again.
I'm now thinking it's b/c an unknown shirt is more difficult to work with, but I'll wait to hear from the actual printers here. I thought bringing your own in was a pretty good idea. I guess if you work on a regular basis with your printer and you both like the quality of shirt, it could work dandy. Let's wait to find out more...
Personally I never cared what the customer is doing with the product, whether they are reselling or not doesn't affect the way I bid jobs. I price a job based on the usual... quantity, difficulty, etc. What makes a reseller more attractive is the repeat business, so I'm more likely to cut them a break to get their business next time. But there are customers who are not reselling that do a lot of repeat business and they will get good prices also.
A little more about customer supplied shirts, and this goes for almost any substrate even in flatwork, there are generally two types of people who supply their own substrate: cheapskates and folks who have access to a specific product that may not be available to the printer. Cheapskates will always bring you crap to work with that makes your job more difficult and of course they are usually PITAs in general. Efficiency is a big factor in profit and unknowns decrease efficiency.
Printers want to sell you the shirt because it's another profit center for them.
It makes absolutely no difference in quality, if the customer supplies ABC shirts to the printer that cost $X.00 - or if the printer sells the ABC shirts to the customer for $X.00 + 25% or more.
If the customer is using untagged, knock-offs out of a third world county, that's "crap." But you can hardly call American Apparel (or the other big name brands) crap. And I would say that the vast majority of members of this Forum use name brands.
Why you would want to sacrifice your profit just for the convenience of buying your shirts from a middle-man (the printer) is a mystery.
By the way, I'm not saying it's a bad thing for printers to sell shirts, if the customer is willing to pay the higher price, then they're the ones who will have the skinny wallet.
Who will print on my shirts? 
