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CxCthreads · December 27th, 2008

Hi guys,

This would be my first official post after lurking for a couple of weeks now.

My question is trying to find out which printing method I should go with: a screen printer or through purchasing a Heat Press and doing it myself

As most people, me and my partner are on a tight budget. We are looking to start off with 5 designs and will be printing 50 of each which we feel is a decent amount to start with due to us being new and on a limited budget ($2,000). The designs range from 1-3 in color amount.
We would like to go with American Apparel or something comparable in quality/ethics but possibly cheaper in price, any suggestions here? We are going to put our own hang tags in as I discovered on the site and would like to have a screen printed tag put in on the neck.
I figure if we go with a screen printer that it will cost around 7-9 a shirt at most. Then there is screen set-up, shipping and turn around time etc. The major PRO here is that everything is taken care of for us where we can focus moreso on marketing/building our brand.
The Heat Transfer sounds interesting to me as the printing aspect is in your hands and basically printed upon request. You buy the press (which I’m estimating at about $500), send off the designs to get turned into the transfers and then purchase the shirts in bulk and put the shirts together yourself. The con I noticed here is that you need some sort of Tax ID if I’m not mistaken to get wholesale pricing. Is this costly?
Here are my 2 main questions:
Of the two methods and given the above info, which do you think would better suit my situation in terms of price and efficiency?
Which route did you go with and why?
I know this was a rather long post and I hope I’m being specific enough but I appreciate ALL of your advice
Thanks guys,
Gavin

proworlded · December 27th, 2008

Gavin. I think the transfer route would be the best way to start with. You can print the shirts as they are sold and will not have any dead inventory as might happen with screen printing. I would suggest contacting www.transferexpress.com or www.acetransfer.com for more details.

JO53PH · December 27th, 2008

The way i see it is quite simple. If you start off with say for example a design on a t shirt which you want to market. You go to a screen printer and explain you want to put this on to a t shirt........ ok....... he'll do this but to make it worth while he'll have to do alot.....and to make it even cheaper..alot-lot....so you have sh1t loads of t shirts....then you suddenly have to shift them...... month later you have a better design...........but still loads of the 'old' design to shift.....

Or you get a heat press................... do design.......print t shirt, if it sells, great, make another........ if it sells alot...screen print it......point is...for me, i started on heat press with vynil, and i still love it, i enjoy to make still t shirts, but when i get big sellers, i will screen print.

Screen printing by its very nature to make it cost effective, needs high volume, so can mean a big risk factor. Anyway thats my take on it. For me, heat press vynil is great for 'testing' a design before a risky screen print run....

treadhead · December 27th, 2008

I would definetely go with the heat transfer method. You'll get very similar quality as a screenprinter with the ability to print your shirts on demend according to the size and color ordered without having to order a bunch of shirts.

CxCthreads · December 28th, 2008

Thanks, How much did that run you? I'm looking for the biggest possible size as my designs are going to span the front of the shirt.

jkonen · January 1st, 2009

i've got a roland gx 24 and it works great. A little over kill maybe for just tshirts but I also do vinyl work as well.

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