Discuss the various aspects of heat press technology. Transfer paper, inks, plastisol transfers, vinyl cutters, printers, commercial usage, durability, suppliers, etc.
Alright... So, I'll suck it up and profess to be a complete newbie when it comes to the heat-transfer world. My forte is screenprinting. But I've recently had a client asking me about one-offs, etc. I must profess that I have absolutely no idea what "one-offs" was. (blush)
Can anyone drop back down to the basics and explain to me what "one-offs" means? Or, please direct me to the "preschool of heat-transfer" forum so I can ask the question there?
One offs means your're consuming al lot of time creating your art and very little time producing it. Unless he willing to pay for your time it not worth the hassle.
It is possible to make $$$ while doing one of a kinds. The customer just has to know it will cost more. Screening would be tough, we use cut vinyl. We also ask the customer to do some of the work if possible (design). They can sketch or use basic design software, anything to make it easier for us.
A good portion of our buiss, involves orders under 20 pieces.
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It is possible to make $$$ while doing one of a kinds. The customer just has to know it will cost more. Screening would be tough, we use cut vinyl. We also ask the customer to do some of the work if possible (design). They can sketch or use basic design software, anything to make it easier for us.
A good portion of our buiss, involves orders under 20 pieces.
Yep, that's what we call one and dones here too. I just spoke to a customer a couple of days ago that wanted 27 different one and dones all for the same event consisting of totally different front and back side graphics but only wanted to invest around 200.00 in total cost. I sent them another direction, seemed like just a headache waiting to happen.
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Creativity is your vehicle, profit the destination.
My definition of one-offs is slightly different than the one-of-a-kind or one and done listed above. I view a one-off as a design only being printed once during that production run. See there is no reason why the same customer will not come back and ask for the same design on the same or different type/style/color/size garment. But if you are only producing one of them each time, then you have to do the setup for the same job (which varies depending on the decorating application - screen printing, embroidery, transfers, vinyl, dtg,...) all over again.
As everyone else mentioned, one-offs are more time consuming and should be charged at a higher rate. This does not mean you should not do them if you are able to efficiently setup the job. You just have to determine if it is worth your time to do this job and make the money the client is willing to pay or if it would be more profitable for you to do something else (i.e. a larger run job, make a sales call,...).
Each different application technique is going to have the maximum profit range where you are able to cover the cost of setup and still charge a premium for the garment. In dtg printing, my experiences show that the maximum profit range is around 3-4 shirts. This is because you are doing a low number of shirts and you are just basically reprinting the same job multiple times. Once you hit the 6 to 12 number of shirts, the customer is going to want a discount.
I think one-offs are unique requests, one-of-a-kind one-time-only kinda things which usually means you can raise the price for your effort (and your wallet!)
To keep life simple, I keep my pricing the same whether doing 1 or 20.
The key is having a setup fee. As everyone above said, the prep time is the same no matter how many you print, so that is a constant I build into the pricing.
So, if I print a shirt for $10 and I have a $10 setup fee
then 1 shirt becomes $20 (10 + 10) and 20 shirts becomes $10.50 (10 + 10/20)
And make sure your invoices show the setup fee separate. It shows respect for your time. And it also hints at a lower cost for volume pricing without having to tell a customer who didn't ask about anything but one-offs.. but may be in the market for something else in the future.
__________________ Equipment: GX24, 15 x15 heat press, Corel 12 Useful Info: 2 years Epson tech support - Mac & PC
One-Offs.... What the heck is this? 
