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midnight · July 22nd, 2007

not happy with regular heat transfers. Thinking about Plastisol transfers. Should I invest in screenprinting equipment and print my own or pay a company to print them for me?(I have suggestions from Rodney on companies). Thing is I plan to stock over 100 designs and feel it would not be cost effective to pay another company do do for me.

Any ideas??

Solmu · July 22nd, 2007

Once you can print your own plastisol transfers, there's considerably less need to since you can just direct print. Obviously the not-holding-inventory advantages of transfers still apply, but the cost per shirt will be higher than direct printing.

Personally I think the question is less "Print my own plastisol transfers or not" and more "Print my own shirts, or outsource plastisol transfers". It can be cost effective to outsource, but obviously if you can do it in house there's the potential to save money. Either way works though.

All of this is kind of beside the point though... do you fancy yourself a printer? If so, give it a shot. If not, keep outsourcing. While it's easy enough to learn on a basic level, it will be a time sink. Not everyone wants to print, and there's no point taking it on unless you actually want to print.

midnight · July 22nd, 2007

I think you hit it on the head. No, I don't even know how to print, though I am an artist and feel I could learn. The thing is at what cost both financially and time. The other issue is I'd like to be able to immediately put my new designs online, this I could control if I print myself. Otherwise I'd have to wait for my outsourse to produce it for me.

Thanks for the advise. I may be coming to you again as I research further.

midnight · July 23rd, 2007

Not happy with heat transfers and want to do Plastisol on hot-split paper. Not a screenprinter as of yet. Should I outsource the screenprinting to produce my transfers of invest the time and effort into producing my own? I want to stock about 100 designs and have them available immediately, I feel outsourcing may hinder me. But learning to screenprint.....

Also who's selling the best hot-split paper for the money?

Please advise. I am ready to start business and this is holding me back!

rogueworks · July 23rd, 2007

if they are small designs with few colors, and you can gang them on the sheets then you might be better off outsourcing. If you have many different designs and colors, outsourcing will get expensive really fast unless you order hundreds of each.