Hey Munchies, I don't think CoolHandLuke is trying to give you a hard time. He actually gave you a compliment on your sales and tried to give an example in a way that might help you make even more sales, so you might be taking what he said the wrong way.
I too think screen printed shirts are probably a little better, but as long as you are doing the best transfers you can do, then the quality is very good with transfers also.
To me, I think it depends on what is practical. I would not want to make a hundred heat transfer shirts of the same design if I knew they were going to sell based on previous sales. Screen printing them would be cheaper, leaving you with more profit.
On the other hand, until you have enough experience with what designs sell well, and what sizes you will need, I personally would not want to have the inventory of dozens of designs in several sizes and colors laying around waiting for a buyer.
Perhaps many of us would better understand those that screen print everything if one of you could give us a walk through of your process, and I guess I mean those of you that do not do the screen printing yourselves since that would give you much more flexibility I would think.
For those that have others do your screen printing,
Do you have a lot of inventory laying around?
Do you start every design with a small quantity of screened tees or do you just have a set of screens made and saved, and then have them printed on demand?
What do you do with all the tees that don't sell? I'm sure after a while you must end up with tees that are not the right size, color or design for good sales.
So, when a design pops into your head, what steps do you take?
