Going CRAZY!!!! HOW TO PRICE!!!

PositiveDave said:

What if there are no words in the design?

Click to expand...

those ones are free.

but really, you need to look at your costs and overhead and what you want to make per hour over that.

i will leave you with this, for every big and complex problem, there is a simple answer that is completely wrong.

here is the simple answer to your question.

Per screen charge: $50
Art Charge: $85/half hour
Press Charge: 30c per touch
Shirt Charge: Double the price you paid (remember to add for shipping to you)


Apply discounts at 24/48/72/144, maybe 5% on each.

Minimums are 12 per color, remember that dark shirts get an under base and that counts as a color.

Press rate: You want to be averaging $250 per hour to gross $500K per year. Anything less is just another job.

Good luck.

"Per screen charge: $50
Art Charge: $85/half hour
Press Charge: 30c per touch
Shirt Charge: Double the price you paid (remember to add for shipping to you)"

Binki, no offense... but are you the only person with in 600 miles of you that screen prints?

pinkchoclate29 - At the end of the day you have to cover your cost and make a little on top of that... You also need to be competitive with the printers in your area. Don't get into a bidding war with them, it just hurts everyone and the new guy almost always loses in the long run. But contact them as a customer and get an idea of what they are charging. Then you know where you want to be. Just below, just above.

I made a spread sheet in excel that calculates my overhead, the number of shirts I print on adv a month, the cost of a shirt, the average cost in printing a shirt, etc.

on the average job I would say my rates tend to be about 110% of the cost of the shirt. I like to use a premium t-shirt over the cheap low end gildan shirt everyone use. (not bashing, it has its place.... just not in my shop) If the shirt is $3.00 the end price will probably be around $6.00 to $6.50... depending on the number of colors. That's shooting from the hip. If you don't have to worry about rent your going to be ok with that, until you get some more experience and figure out what your cost are and how many shirts to divide that over.

Find a good shirt supplier, and find out how to get discounts / better rates from them... When I started out I was using jiffyshirt.com , but was getting out bid left and right because I couldn't get my cost low enough. Other shops were quoting prices lower than what I could buy the blank for. The big suppliers (Alpha, NEW, Broders, Etc) will have volume discounts, that's when you start getting traction. It also helped that I moved out of my store front into a building adjacent to my house and no longer pay rent. 98% of my customer were coming from the web site anyhow.

Don't get me wrong, That is freaking great!!!! if you can get it...

I know in my area there are just to many printers, and they love to undercut each other.

My strategy is to, know my cost... price myself competitively, and publish my rates (almost no one around here does that). Hold strong to my rates.

Around here screen charges are anywhere from $5 to $20 dollars. Mine are $10, but I never tell the customer... I roll up all my cost and give them one price... the per shirt cost. Its how I would want to be treated, and it works well.

Doesn't it tick you off when you want to go see your favorite bad, tickets are $40 buck then TicketMa$ter charges you another $15 bucks on top... that's how I see the screen charge.

At the end of the day you need to know your cost and your competition. You can Charge $100 screen fee if you don't charge for anything else, the final number is all the really matters to the customer. Those jokers that hide there fees until the end, only see that customer once and never get a referral.

Not saying Binki or anyone else is doing something wrong, but each shop charges for different things, why not take the confusion out for the customer and earn their respect and repeat business by just giving them one price.

If you charge $100 for a one color job on 12 shirts
or you charge $80 for a one color job on 12 shirt plus a $20 screen fee... its the same amount in the end, but the customer does not feel as raked over the coals. Sure you can advertise a lower rate, kind of like the banks give free checking accounts but you can only write 3 checks a month.

Don't hate me because I'm beautiful. Nearly every customer that comes in brings a screen printed shirt from their last supplier to show the awful job. Cracking, fading, and ink that comes out in the wash. I know they got a cheap price on it and they thought they were getting a good deal.

We give an unconditional guarantee on our products. If they don't like it we will buy it back or do it again at our cost.

We don't charge screen, setup or art fees. I was just giving the OP a sample of what he could do. We charge an 'out the door' price that is all inclusive. It is the same effect but from a marketing standpoint it beats the competition. Our prices are lower on some items and higher on others than our competition but we are a full service shop so one stop shopping counts for something.

Need more information? Here you go:

Most businesses never gross $1 Million a year, 95% or more never get there. In this business after cost of goods, fixed costs, and salaries (including yours) you should have about $350K left in cash after that million.

There are 260 days in the year for working on a 40 hour week, 8 hours a day.

Here is what you need to sell to make that Mil.
Monthly: $83,333
Daily: $3,846
Hourly: $481

Now if you break it down by piece here is what you need to do

$50 Per Each - Monthly: 1,667, Daily: 77, Hourly: 10
$30 Per Each - Monthly: 2,778, Daily: 128, Hourly: 16
$20 Per Each - Monthly: 4,167, Daily: 192, Hourly: 24
$10 Per Each - Monthly: 8,333, Daily: 385, Hourly: 48
$5 Per Each - Monthly: 16,667, Daily: 769, Hourly: 96



Now that you know the price per each to make a million here is your average order size to do the same.

$5,000 Per Order – Monthly: 16.67, Daily: 0.77, Hourly: 0.10
$2,500 Per Order – Monthly: 33.33, Daily: 1.54, Hourly: 0.19
$1,000 Per Order – Monthly: 83.33, Daily: 3.85, Hourly: 0.48
$500 Per Order – Monthly: 166.67, Daily: 7.69, Hourly: 0.96
$200 Per Order – Monthly: 416.67, Daily: 19.23, Hourly: 2.40
$100 Per Order – Monthly: 833.33, Daily: 38.46, Hourly: 4.81
$50 Per Order – Monthly: 1,666.67, Daily: 76.92, Hourly: 9.62


As you can see not only is having a price per each higher bettor for you but also having an average order size larger. Each single order comes with a lot of issues and cutting down the number of orders is as important as increasing the price of the average item sold.

Small orders grow into large ones. More than 50% of our orders are repeat but 75% of our income is repeat. We know where every customer came from and track their entire history with us and we can see that we have been able to offer extra services to them and thus increase order size and $ volume.

Why give a first time customer with a small order a price break? To get future business? How about offering value?

Again, the OP asked for a sample, I explained simple answers to complex questions are often wrong and gave a simple answer that while not completely right has some truth in it. He will need to adjust for volume but this gives him a starting point.

Here is a more realistic sample:

Single T's, DTG or Vinyl: $15-$25 for 2 locations, 2 colors.
Team T's with name/number drops for 14 members using vinyl: $14 each
Same T's, light color, one or two color, 2 locations: $7 each for 50 or more.

That is what we charge right now, it may change but we charge it and get it. How do you get that volume up? Ask if they want hoodies to match. You make $10 more on each hoodie and your profit margin is the same but the profit $$ are more.

Feel better now?

There are 8 competitors within walking distance of us. 2 have gone out of business and one other is just about there. Of those remaining, two are across the street from us directly. I can see them as I type this, one is down the street one block, two others are 2 blocks in one direction and one is two blocks in the other and those are the ones I know about.

We have several hundred in our small city so there is a lot of competition. We are in a retail location with a lot of walking traffic so that helps.

We have done the following to help out our sales
We registered with the school districts to become a preferred vendor and we offer them wholesale pricing for their fund raising efforts.
We are a member of the Chamber of Commerce and attend their functions
We do cold calling at sports fields, schools, businesses, clubs, etc. to gain traction.
We offer our customers a 10% referral fee on any customers they refer for their first order.
We are on the top of the search engines of google, bing, yahoo, and a number of others without paying (our little secret!)
We have partnered up with some very active charities and they give us a lot of business and referrals.
We participate in citywide events.
We offer a discount on tshirts if we get all of their other business like embroidery, awards and decals.

So, better pricing does not come free but once you have a happy customer they will not shop you around.

So rather than look at every customer as the same try to price differentiate them. If someone wants their stuff in 7 days you price them higher than the one that wants it in 30 days. The 7 day guy doesn't have to to shop around.

Offer upsells. Ask if they have women in the group and want womens shirts. You can have the same margin (% profit) on the shirt but you will have a greater $ profit. We always offer a Junior Tultex V or scoop neck which costs 20c-50c more than a mans T but we charge anywhere from $2 to $6 more each. If we go to a womans sized shirt then those have a base cost that is double or more than a regular T so just our normal markup gives a $4-$8 or more profit on each shirt.

So, by just offering the level up you get a better price, the customer is happier, and you are no longer offering a commodity but a premium product. Cool, huh?

Finally, consider this. If your fully loaded cost of a T is $2.50 and you sell 3 orders of 33 shirts each for $5 you will make $250 in profit (rounded) but if you up your price to $10 you only need to sell one of those orders to make the same profit. BUT, if you recognize that one of those customers will pay the $10 and the other two will pay only 5 you just doubled your profit on the same amount of shirts.

Just remember that your costs are more static than your pricing and the faster you can escalate that sales price the more you will make in less time, less inventory, less space, all of which will have less capital tied up.