Why DTG when t-shirt printing is not your main gig

The ability to do small runs or one of's. No screens to clean after the job is done. No need to charge any of the fees associated with screen printing except probbaly a design fee if a lo-res graphic has to be re-produced. I personally like the fact that I can market my services to anyone who wants a custom t-shirt quickly at not to bad of a price. They are even more excited to know that I can take any file that they bring me (as long as it is high res) and print it on a shirt in a matter of minutes...

No minimums, unlimited colors, and if printing just CMYK it is very efficient since you can just load and print. So even runs of 24-96 units can become printable for DTG. It really depends on their order flow and need for printing. I can't imagine a DTG printer to do 1-3 shirts per day (unless the company was charging a good bit to offset the DTG cost). But they could potentially be using DTG to not only bring in more business that they may have turned away before, or to reduce the pressure on the screen print department as far as taking the lower quantity jobs out of the equation.

They can also do novelty items like golf balls, mouse pads and such. So maybe they found a good way to market?