[gonzofast]

Hey all, I have a customer that does A LOT of shirts (thousands per year) for his pub. It is a biker type pub and he does a lot of multi color harley type shirts (multi color flames, skulls, girls, bikes..etc) He does both sleeves and often front and back as well.
I already do all his two color-front and back shirts with my screen printer...but the price he is paying for these multi color sleeves/fronts is crazy low??...like 2-3 bucks per sleeve. (is that low?) He already pays me more than that to do the other shirts because he wants to keep it local, and has said if I can get in the ballpark on these other shirts, he would do them all with me.

I am wondering what the best/economical process is for these type shirts? I am not against buying a machine (dtg?) for this type of printing as I know I can do a lot of other work with it..but..am curious if this is how I should be looking at it..or do I go with screen printed transfers? Can they be done in this kind of coloring at a reasonable rate?

I am linking an example that I found online..this is the type of printing..

 

[20vK]

We charge $2 per print location and print multi colours manually. It can be tough if you have a few flashes in there, but you can still make $400 a day.

If he's having thousands done, that's easy money on an auto. Number of colours does not matter on an auto, just setup time.

 

[gonzofast]

I should reiterate/add, in case it matters... he does thousands per year..orders a few hundred at a time. He also gets them with basically one day turnaround? Is that possible with your auto?
I am wondering if I can be close with a DTG? What he pays in freight I could add on.. I don't have room for a large auto screener.

 

[gonzofast]

Maybe I should also ask if a DTG can be competitive if we rule out the "time" factor?