T-Shirt Forums banner

T shirt costs when using a heat press.

4K views 2 replies 3 participants last post by  Mountain31 
#1 ·
I am new to the forum, so posted my introduction in the new members section
So far I have used POD sites, like zazzle, cafepress, and redbubble. And on my own website. Now I am becoming interested in the heat press end of the business, but I am very concerned about costs. I'm not looking to get rich quick, but I do want to make money, but from what I have been able to learn so far, it is cost prohibitive. Am I wrong?
Note: To me the cost of the press is not an issue. It is the cost of the screen printed paper, the shirts, and the shipping costs.
I can buy a shirt for about $1.50
Shipping a shirt about $2.75.
Paper???????????
How large of quantify of paper must I buy to get a profit-making price?
Basically, I would like to sell shirts for $19.99 with a profit of at least $7.00. Is that possible with minimum inventory? What would that minimum inventory be?
 
#2 ·
If you have a local distributor of blank shirts, use them! That way you can keep a very low, to no, inventory of blanks on hand. Else you get stuck in the trap of trying to order enough shirts to justify the shipping costs, or to qualify for free shipping (been there, done that!).

Charge your customer for outgoing shipping, so that does not come out of your $19.99 (or whatever your price is).

Sounds like you are talking about using Plastisol transfers, correct? Some companies allow you to gang multiple copies of an image, or images, on a single transfer. That saves printing costs on their part, and you just cut the images apart. Discount on volume also varies across companies, but you have to consider if that price is for one image on one sheet, or for as many images as will fit on the sheet, as well as how large the sheet is.

I haven't used Plastisol transfers myself, so can't recommend a company, and I don't remember what others have recommended in the past, but I have seen favorable things said about certain companies with regard to their sheet size and how many images could be ganged on it. You can probably turn up one of those threads with a search.
 
#3 ·
I am new to the forum, so posted my introduction in the new members section

So far I have used POD sites, like zazzle, cafepress, and redbubble. And on my own website. Now I am becoming interested in the heat press end of the business, but I am very concerned about costs. I'm not looking to get rich quick, but I do want to make money, but from what I have been able to learn so far, it is cost prohibitive. Am I wrong?

Note: To me the cost of the press is not an issue. It is the cost of the screen printed paper, the shirts, and the shipping costs.

I can buy a shirt for about $1.50

Shipping a shirt about $2.75.

Paper???????????

How large of quantify of paper must I buy to get a profit-making price?

Basically, I would like to sell shirts for $19.99 with a profit of at least $7.00. Is that possible with minimum inventory? What would that minimum inventory be?


We have a vinyl cutter. It allows for this price point. If you are using printer heat press sheets, you will be closer to $5 per shirt in printing costs (from my experience) plus the cost of the shirts. Vinyl cutting is not as inexpensive as screen press, but you can crank out 1 shirt or 50. It took some time to learn but has been a good way for us to get into the business. Now that we have grown, we will jump to screen printing.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 
This is an older thread, you may not receive a response, and could be reviving an old thread. Please consider creating a new thread.
Top