If you don't have any experience screen printing, but you are ready to start selling. I'd suggest you buy transfers 1st. If things take off, then get you a small rig and learn to screen print your own transfers while you make some money. Screen printing has a serious learning curve for even the simplest 1 color printing.Hey guys.
I have an idea for a new Tshirt line, but am faced with the same dilemma as most are. How will the Tshirts be printed?
Screen Printing - Great for high volume, bad for starting out.
Plastisol Transfer - Great for reducing cost of Tshirt inventory
I've tentatively decided that I'll do Plastisol Transfers instead of screen printing hundreds of Tshirts that may or may not sell.
Now the question becomes: should I even buy the screen printing tools to make my own transfers? Or just buy transfers?
I'm sure the cost / shirt is lower if I print my own transfers, but the ease of just buying transfers as needed is quite attractive as well.
If the business does take off (and I was printing my own), I could easily transition into screen printing directly to Tshirts, but if I started out buying, I might continue down the lazy path and keep buying.
It really depends. I only print 1 color transfers for designs I sell frequently. If I need multi color(ex: I just did 100+ shirts for a church, they wanted 2 color. I created a 2 color design and sent my artwork to Versatranz - when they came in I pressed 100+ shirts in a few hours and was done). But later that day, I ran out of stock for a design I sell and I pulled out my screen and printed a few, pressed and shipped. Had I not been able to do that I'd been looking at 3-4 days for just a few shirts. I was finished in about 30 min (clean up and all).Thanks guys. Just wanted some kind of reassurance after doing tons of research, and yet it's still not enough.
Another thing that worries me is that there are tons of 'help me' threads in the plastisol transfers section.
Is it even worth it to switch over to screen printing / making transfers myself, even if it does take off? The prices of transfers seem to get much much cheaper with quantity.
