cjt123

So here's my deal. I started my little tshirt business with a very strict budget. I put up a website, got my licenses, and screenprinted 4 designs. I am in the middle of my first show at a fair and I'm learning a lot.

Here's my problem: I spent most of my budget on getting a good quantity of my 4 designs screenprinted and now I'm deciding whether or not to invest in a hear press and vinyl cutter/inkjet printer and transfers.

This way I can come up with limitless designs and put them on my site and print as they come in and I have only blank inventory.

Here's my questions;

Will I be sacrificing too much quality for my budget?

And which one is better for my style and shows and what not to design and take orders on the spot?

Thanks

 

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2wicky

From the research I've done on this point it seems that the key isn't about how quickly or effeciently you'll be producing new lines but the time you'll need to devote to mastering this skill will take away from the other important points you need to focus on, marketing and sales.

Focus on what you do best and outsource the rest.

 

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veedub3

Quote: Here's my problem: I spent most of my budget on getting a good quantity of my 4 designs screenprinted and now I'm deciding whether or not to invest in a hear press and vinyl cutter/inkjet printer and transfers.

Before jumping in and buying all this equipment, have you thought about ordering plastisol transfers and using a heat press? This will allow you to have many designs on hand and you can just heat press them onto the shirt as the orders come in and not have pre-printed stock laying around that may no sell. Plus the cost is much cheaper than buying vinyl cutter, printers, and inkjet transfers which by the way pales in comparison to a screen printed tee in my opinion.

Quote: This way I can come up with limitless designs and put them on my site and print as they come in and I have only blank inventory.

This is how i like to do things. Let say you printed up shirts in mixed sizes. Let say you sell completely out of large, and x-large but no one is buying the small and medium so you have pre-printed shirts laying around the shop becuse they did not sell as quickly as the others. If you would have gotten plastisol transfers you press the design on whatever size is needed and shirts are not wasted.

Quote: Here's my questions; Will I be sacrificing too much quality for my budget? And which one is better for my style and shows and what not to design and take orders on the spot? Thanks

1. I don't no what your budget is or the quality tee you are producing so can't really answer that.

2. I don't no your style but plastisol transfers would allow you to print them as the orders come in.

Here is a list of vendors to check out to see if this method works with your budget.
Custom Plastisol Transfer Vendors, a list

Good luck.

Katrina

 

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cjt123

The only thing with this is that I can't design on the spot.

At the fair im currently working people keep asking if I can add text or change the color of a design and thats why I was thinking inkjet/heat transfers.

How much does a plastisol transfer cost each cause I can imagine you have to order in bulk to get a good price.

And do you need to order these online or can a local screenprinter do this?

 

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twistedmonkey

i just wanted to make a suggestion i am in the same situation. i came up with a solution which will alow u to do whatever u want on the spot with any color and any size up to 11x17 but only on the light colors. using a tabloaid color laser printer which is around 2500$ but can get a refurbished one with 1 year warranty for 1000$ and a heat press. paper is called imagclip self weding heat transfer paper. whatever you print thats the only thing transfers to the shirt. so no cutting around the images. if you go this route you can change the colors and add text and print on any sie tshirt with any customization on the spot. if you have any qiestion just email me i can explain every aspect to u good luck.

 

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itsnotthatbad

Quote: Originally Posted by cjt123 The only thing with this is that I can't design on the spot. At the fair im currently working people keep asking if I can add text or change the color of a design and thats why I was thinking inkjet/heat transfers. How much does a plastisol transfer cost each cause I can imagine you have to order in bulk to get a good price. And do you need to order these online or can a local screenprinter do this?

Wow, we're in an almost identical boat! I just posted almost the exact same question.

Transfers vary in price between the materials you use and the manufacturer. There's everything from a single color vinyl, flock, metallic to screenprinted transfers to digital printed transfers.

I just learned this all today!! LOL

Here is what I learned... (and we had about the same number of designs as you to start, with 4-5 colors each and have been paying for screenprinting):

It appears there are several approaches. With most screenprinted transfers, you are buying a SHEET (seems 11x17 is a standard) and you pay PER SHEET. The bang for your buck would be in how many designs you could fit per sheet. Our designs are tiny (3x4, 4x4) so we can fit a bunch. Then it works almost identical to regular screenprinting -- you pay per color and possibly for ink changes (same design, different color ink). They can PMS match colors if you don't want to use their standards. Ink changes and PMS colors were about $10-15 and $20-$50 respectively, depending on the vendor. We would have needed LOTS of PMS matching and the style of our designs would not have allowed an ink change. They would have been all different jobs. It probably wouldn't have cost us more than screenprinting.

I didn't bother looking into any single color applications, like vinyl, because I need 4-5 colors.

So, what we went with was Stah's digital transfers (I forget exactly what they're called) and there are still some more details within that I couldn't recite. They are priced by square inch of design and then the process you use. For smaller designs, it's maybe 8-10 cents per sq inch and for larger, it's maybe 2 cents more.

For us, it works out to about $1.00 per transfer.

So we started doing the math... Hmmm, $1.00 per transfer or several dollars for screenprinting. Now, we get a killer price on our screenprinting for the lower volume that we do (maybe 200 shirts at a time, with 3-5 different designs among them).

But we need an efficient way to get all of the designs without carrying so much inventory. And we'd like to have more variety of shirt colors and some style options. And we just aren't prepared to put that money into inventory at this point.

So within a week or two, we are looking to turn all of our art into transfers and invest in a heat press...

We want to be able to produce a wide variety of styles/colors/designs without carrying a ton of inventory. We don't want to have to order 36 min of a design just so that we can get the one XL that we need back in stock. And we don't want to have to wait 2-3 weeks to get that XL. We are hoping that the heat press/transfer option is the answer to our prayers.... for now at least!

I'm really excited about it. Let us know what you decide to do....

-K

 

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