Hi all, I have been asked to bid on several large orders. Not sure if they are for real or not.
2 color front and 1 color back. 5.4 oz white t. 15,000 17,500 and 20,000 pcs
4 spot color front and 2 color back. 5.4 oz white t. 15,000 17,500 and 20,000 pcs
Need help with pricing and a guess on what I should schedule for real produciton time. Am I crazy to take this on? We just installed a 8 station 6 color auto a while back but have never done this size of order.... also have 3 manual presses...
You need to know how many prints you can do in a day. You need to know what your costs will be during an 8 hour day. And then you need to decide how much you think you deserve to make in profit for this job.
You might ask the customer if they have done this size of job before, and how much it was done for then. What brand of shirt was used etc.?
If they tell you a price that doesn't come close to what you figured you would need to make, then still submit your bid, but don't compromise just to get the job or you will swiftly be out of business. Also, don't assume that you can go faster than you are going right now. When you do a big job like this, you will slowly get faster as you continue to run the same thing over and over, but you will also have a bit of a learning curve right at the start.
You need to base the bid on your capabilities, your speed, and your level of experience. Too many new guys think they can dive into a large order and find out quickly that they didn't think it all the way through, or don't have the experience to think it all the way through.
Also, I wouldn't run a lot on your manual presses for large orders. You will be trying to be very competitive price wise, and manuals tend not to be fast enough to keep up.
Make sure you completely understand what the customer's time frame is.
In your bid, make sure that you restate everything very clearly so that there is no confusion later on.
Matt, thanks for the reply...points well taken. Assuming I figure this all out based on your comments, do you think $.75 is a good price for the 2 cf,1cb and $.90 for the 4cf, 2cb for the printing part only. Is this too low or too high. I run the shop from my garage and It would be just myself and 2 helpers.
When you start dealing with that many pieces, you are dealing in pennies. If you were bidding against me, you would be high for the printing. Now, if you are providing the shirts, you might be able to get a little more on the markup. Again, if possible I would check with the customer to try and find out what they might have been getting before.
unless you know the source of this 'customer' i'd vet the information first.....there are so many scams running rampant on the internet and targeted at small-medium business owners that i'm automatically skeptical of anything that seems too good to be true...
__________________
it's not what you gather, but what you scatter that tells what kind of life you have lived!
unless you know the source of this 'customer' i'd vet the information first.....there are so many scams running rampant on the internet and targeted at small-medium business owners that i'm automatically skeptical of anything that seems too good to be true...
I'm not sure what that has to do with anything. There are plenty of big orders of this size out there. I bid on them all of the time. Some I get, some I don't. Of course you should be careful of scams, but that doesn't mean that you don't bid on legitimate orders.
Pricing help for a large order 
