 N00b with questions about what to buy
Hello all, I am new to this forum and I'm hoping to get some advice from the pros as to how to get started. I have spent several hours reading through existing forum posts, but there are a number of things I don't understand at all yet, so apologies for any dumb questions.
First, a bit of background. I have run a successful business via Cafepress for about 5 years now, selling mostly political and social commentary merchandise. About four years ago, I had some shirts screenprinted for an event, which turned into a major hassle as I ended up with a lot of extra merchandise, some of which I still need to sell off. We also screenprinted a few items ourselves and found it difficult and messy. We did, however, find a lot of success making and selling buttons.
Fast forward a few years, minus a couple of business partners and add a life partner, and the two of us want to start doing our own printing again. We bought a house and have converted the garage into a work space, so we have a decent amount of room for equipment, but not an enormous space.
We have realized that due to the nature of our product line, our budget, and our physical limitations, we need to be able to print items as they are ordered. We currently have over 200 designs and it would be impossible to have them all in stock in all sizes and shirt types! We'd love to go direct-to-garment, but the price tag is just too high right now, that is unless there are machines well under $10,000 that I'm not aware of. We only want to sell natural fiber clothing, so dyesub is out, right? So we are thinking heat transfers, but I am slightly wary. Back when Cafepress used heat transfers, I was not satisfied with the quality. The shirts felt awful, cracked easily, and had that ugly window around the image. They are a huge company; can we really do better? Based on what I have been reading here, there are better transfer papers that supposedly don't leave a window; is that really true? If we go with heat transfers, which is better, inkjet or laser?
The printer issue brings me to my second question. Via Cafepress, we actually sell more bumper stickers than we do t-shirts. I think that magnetic stickers would sell even better. What would we need to be able to print these ourselves? I know there is a way to do it with inkjet and a spray-on coating, but will that do a professional-quality job? Will laser do the job without spray-on?
Any info would be greatly appreciated. This site has been very helpful so far, thank you! | 
