eashonk

If the shirts are black or another dark color that will effect price, also whether the shirts are 50/50 and what color is the print to be, any color on a dark garment will require an underbase

You should bill her direct and treat her as the client, if she resells the end product and charges them for graphics, that's her business. If anything is wrong at that point it is her problem, not yours. She is the graphic artist, so she should be able to work any color issues with you. You should also insist that you print a small maybe 6" x 12" color proof for her to show the client before you print anything for her and maker her sign off on that proof in case she fails to show the end client. I would give her a break on the printing since she obviously is bringing you work, but let her know your prices are firm and that she is going to have to consider that when pricing jobs in the future. It sounds like she is quoting jobs without considering the true cost of the end product to produce. I think that would be a better deal for both of you, you can train her to deliver what you need, plus she is like an outside salesperson you don't have to pay or babysit, she doesn't run the risk of you cutting her out by contacting her clients directly.

Anything's possible. It's completely possible this is all just a dream.

Dude, you are breaking the law. You might as well be selling cocaine, check out the fines: https://www.lib.purdue.edu/uco/CopyrightBasics/penalties.html http://supolicies.syr.edu/docs/alcohol_penalties_federal.pdf Secondly, watching someone else break the law isn't an excuse to do it yourself is it? Larger companies may not be "caught" as you put it, because they have either gone through the proper channels and received licensing agreements to reproduce the logos or they are simply better at hiding like maybe not naming their item by the copyright holder's name (ie adidas widget). Secondly, you just got a letter, who's to say that the other companies didn't get the same letter and are just ignoring it, or maybe there's a pending lawsuit you don't know about, which would take longer than sending a letter. So, all in all, you're just being immature, you did something wrong, you got caught and now you feel singled out so you're trying to justify your actions by stating that "everyone else is doing it". A copyright judge wouldn't buy that and neither do I. So, once again, don't be a dunce.

I would be very concerned about the fact that it was paypal and not e-bay that is stopping you because that means that they probably have access to your sales and banking transactions with paypal which could mean that they are getting ready to launch a law suit. It's pretty dumb to blatantly sell trademarked or violate a copyright on the internet, especially e-bay and especially using pay-pal where all the transactions are tracked. If you're going to break the law a strictly cash no advertising policy is the way to go you dunce.

Well, if they're losing money just wait them out until they go bankrupt and buy all their inventory and equipment at auction prices. That's how I got most of my stuff. And yes, this happens all over place since the cost and learning curve to enter the industry is fairly small there are plenty of fly by night operations that crop up and then go out of business shortly after. For that reason, most people who get into this business are just not good business people and therefore don't last long. I stopped buying new equipment several years ago, there's plenty on craigslist and e-bay.

My name is Allan, I own a company called Studio413. You can find me on facebook at ShopStudio413. I do custom t-shirts as well as vinyl and sublimation graphics. I have a degree in graphic arts and just bought out another company this year and started working full time in my business. Check out my stuff and feel free to contact me with specifics and I can get you a quote. I will need to know shirt sizes and quantities, how many print colors and locations.

I started a topic below in the Buy sell trade section, a lot of the stuff has sold so I want to delete it and create a new topic for what is left, how do I do that?

I like to get the most that I can out of every job and focus on quality rather than what the dude down the street is doing. In my experience the people who undercut every job you do are usually stressed out because they aren't making any money, try to cut corners, make mistakes and eventually go out of business. Then I swoop in and buy all their surpluss materials and equipmentment on the cheap and wait for the next guy to come along and try to undercut me.

I have done those types of signs before. What you want to do is print that part on outdoor suitable vinyl in a solvent ink based printer, laminate it and stick it to it. Do any other text he wants in vinyl, but the graphic and text around it should be printed. As stated above, a clean digital copy can be gotten, so it shouldn't be problem to print clean. Also, you can get a lot more than $500 bucks if you install the sign on sight for him. For instance, you can set the posts in concrete and install the sign in a vinyl sign post system and even light it up. Don't waste your time digitizing, converting, cutting, weeding, taping, etc. Just not necessary and it won't be appreciated because it isn't what the customer really requires. Put your time into something that the customer will value and pay for such as the example above. It will make you more money and the customer will be happier because he is getting value where he wants it, not just because you are limited in your production capabilities. I'm sure someone on here would jump at the chance to print it for you at wholesale price as well. Also, as a side note, yes you can get that stuff from Grimco at that price, but don't forget about freight. They don't ship stuff that size by UPS, so you are going to be better off buying several sheets, even if you are close enough to drive and pick it up from either Chicago or St. Louis. The last time I had 25 sheets of PVC that size shipped to me by freight it was $350.

sounds indicitive of old vinyl, if it sits around too long the glue loses it's tack and the plastic hardens causing it to crack, might try getting a newer roll and see if the same thing happens

i wrote a program in compucal which is basically the open office version of excell which lets me customize markups and breaks down profit margins, for everything else you mention i use off the shelf software such as quicken, but any of these will work, it's not rocket science

In the t-shirt business I've found that it is mostly go big or go home. If you are trying to keep inventory on hand for those 1-10 shirt orders you're never going to make $ because all of your profits are always going to be tied up in trying to keep stock just in case someone comes in wanting 5 shirts by tomorrow. In my opinion, that's not really worth my time, so if someone wants something like that, I send them down the road to the other guy. I only do the high profit jobs in the time frame that suits my business. Rushing things only ends up with dissapointed customers and a small bank account. I am alost completely out of the t-shirt part of the business and may not ever really get back into it. It is just too involved to be doing it out of my house. Too many chemicals, to many things can go wrong with screens. Unless I'm doing a larger order, it just isn't worth it.

Well, not really, it is WRONG. Granted, it is rediculous for a company to come after an individual and costing them large sums of $, possibly bankrupting them just to make an example. However, it is not wrong for them to go after people trying to make $ or even just creating a 1 off shirt for themselves. I myself am a graphic artist that has had my designs ripped off hundreds of times. Every day I see stuff I know I designed repurposed for different team, and when I ask who made them, it is never the company that I had worked for at the time (even that bothers me, even though they do own the designs since I worked for them at the time) but it really irks me to see my stuff stepped all over and compromised by lesser "artists" (*who didn't go to school, who flood the market with underwhelming talent in my field, who don't have student loans to pay, and are the sole reason I can't get a design job at a t-shirt company around here for more than $12 an hour.) So, yes, you wanna be professional artists, it is wrong to take my work and repurpose it for fun or profit, I can't afford to sue you, so please stop.

yeah, you should outsource it to a screen printer, you will make more money, the overall job will be cheaper for your customer, and you won't have to do anything, just collect $ for instance, a 1 color single location screenprint quantity 100 would average just around 5.50 per shirt in my area, no way I'd pay $12 a shirt if I was buying 100. Maybe if it was like 3 color back 1 color front $12 would be reasonable. But, for that price, all you're going to do is tick off your customer when they do some calling around. *FYI 100 t-shirts isn't really a huuuge order, when you're talking 500-1000, that's more like it, in t-shirts that is. The average order for screen printers is 50 or more. It kind of depends on the market niche they are in, but that's about what I saw in the shops I've worked at.

you should probably get authorization, but the fact that he owns a franchize pretty much gaurantees that he is authorized to do this. Although, there may be some sticking points on his end as to where he purchases logo'd merchandise, some corporate franchizes require that their store owners purchase promo products and advertising directly from them. Mostly it's his responsibility in this case. and why the heck doesn't spell check work on this forum?

Too bad for her, make her pay anyway. You can't expect things for free. If you want to give or donate something to a family member, that is your sole discression. But, don't let them dictate who, what, when you will be doing so. Also, if she is doing this to you, probably others she would bring would also start doing this to you, especially if she tells them you gave it to her. I would also speak to the group she is involved in, or just wait. It seems to me that if she is such a poor business person that she expects other businesses to give her products on such shaky terms, that she won't be a part of that club or whatever it is very long. If you start doing things such as this, you won't be in business very long either.

The difference is, if you want to go around being "a bad ass" that just wants to offend people for shock value, you have every right to do so. But, you can't expect somebody else to accomidate your perversive sense of right and wrong by designing/printing whatever hurtful/dirty thing you want simply because you are going to give them money. Go get your own degree, go buy your own printer and you can make whatever you want. Don't expect the rest of us who actually have a sense of moral decensy that goes beyond throwing money at a problem to create it for you. (Like a bunch of bikers drinking and driving and being disrespectful to women for a good causee, ie a "Poker Run"). Sure, you say it's all for a good cause, but it is not always what you do, but how you do it. The bottom line is, it is not your reputation that is on the line when we, the producers, create such things for you to childishly brandish in public. It is our reputation and future business which is at risk because you want us to draw a three tittied woman having sex with a girraffe giving the finger to santa clause.

I made this in open office/calc for quick quotes. All you have to do is fill out the boxes marked in yellow, and it gives you a price you can quote your customer. You can even change the markups without changing any of the formulas, so you don't need to know how to use spreadsheet formulas to customize the form. The form is also set up to show you what your overall cost and profit of the job is, I am going to continue to add tables as I quote different types of jobs, such as vehicle jobs. I would like to make the markups variable depending on quantity values, but since I am myself new to using calc, I haven't yet figured out how to do that. I am thinking about including labor costs also. Any feedback or requested additions are welcome, the only thing I ask is that if you modify it in some manner, you allow me access to a copy of it so I may possibly integrate it into my original. I could see this evolving into a very useful file. Vinyl Pricing Calculator.zip

I dont really remember how I made it!! it was my first attempt, I did it from start to finish in one weekend, and never used the calculation functions since that time. However, I have found through experience that one person's costs and profit margins in this industry and very different, even in the same area. So, what i suggest, is carefully read this e-mail and sit down with a pen and paper and really evaluate your costs, no calculator is going to work correctly if you don't know your own numbers. First of all, notice all the boxes on the right that say "Markup Table". Those values correspond to the different quantity tables in yellow on the left. So, starting at the top in the markup table, value A effects only the yellow "less than 50" column, which is marked with an A on the left. Also, if the version you have has the yard sign calculator, it has its own markup table so you can change the markups on vinyl separately from the markups on yard signs. So, if you change the value in Markup A in the top section from say 50 to 75, you will only effect the end value in the less than 50 10x10 yellow column. I have adjusted these several times when i thought my prices was kind of low, so my markup table is as follows: A:75 B:50 C:25 D:15 E:5 F:5 Now, what you really need to do first before messing with the markup tables, is figure your vinyl cost per square inch. take the cost of the vinyl+shipping figured in square inches, do the same for application tape, add the app tape and vinyl cost per square inch together and that value will be the value you place in the red box titled "vinyl cost (per sq"). If you have the yard sign calculator, there is a separate vinyl cost box in that section. For the most part these values can stay the same. You should only change these if you are buying reflective or some sort of special vinyl where your cost changes significantly, which is why I left the values here where you could change them. Once you have figured your true vinyl per square inch cost and replaced these values, you can then freely change the markup values for each different yellow section until you get them all where you are comfortable. I often fudge with these if I am doing work for a friend, or someone i don't like. I'll go low or high, and since my cost is always shown while I am changing the #'s, I know I will never lose money. so, those two sections are the only two you really ever need to change, unless or course you have the yard sign calculator, then you can also update the stake and substrate cost as well depending on your situation and materials being used. once again, you need to figure and change the red "vinyl cost (per sq") values, and the stake "cost"/substrate "cost" values. then, you may freely change the markup values. These are the only boxes you will change, ever besides quantities and measurements anyway. I hope that was clear, I really made it for myself and didn't expect to ever give it away until people kept asking for it.

The truth is that this is actually a good thing, because the simple little jobs that anybody can do are the only jobs those who price gauge have the ability to do, so those of us that actually have a degree in graphic arts and can do the hard jobs will be more respected for our ability to create high quality multicolor custom graphics applicable across a variety of media. Things which the common hobbyist will never learn on their own.

run your cutter enough and you'll end up with this size scrap you can save and use, I dig through my scraps and complete entire jobs sometimes without ever loading a roll on my cutter. It takes longer, but it saves you a lot of $.

I was getting ready to say, $50 is very low, because I threw the design together using IMPACT because it is tall and skinny and came up with 56" x 20" minimum with 10" letters for name and 7.5" phone number, 2 for each dumpster, my calculator says $117 and that's just material. I wonder if this guy is giving the whole story, like the 12 dumpsters are spread out over a metropolitan area and you have to go to each one and put on the lettering. Or the lettering is some custom font that needs to be drawn, or each letter is 10" tall by 10" wide, or something stupid like that, which the customer never bothers to tell you when you are quoting a job.

My license for signcut expired and for some reason the software shortcuts stopped working on my computer, so I had to re download the software and reinstall it. When I did this, I lost all my settings, so i reinstalled the software, recovered the license, and purchased a new one, so far so good. However, when I plug in my cutter, and choose the com, I only get usb 1, or comm 7 as choices. When choosing either of these I go to try a test print, and the button is greyed out. If I choose to just cut, the cutting dialogue comes up with the progress bar as if it is cutting, however it never cuts. I know the computer is communicating with the cutter, because it can read width correctly.

When i set up this file, it was for my own personal use, so I used the costs as I determined them at the time. I used the price of vinyl I was purchasing from U.S. cutters, including shipping. I simply made the program calculate how many square inches of vinyl a job would require (ie. 2"x2"=4" square inches) multiply that times your cost of vinyl, times markup, times quantity, gives you quote amount, (minus sq inches required x cost x quantity = profit) I did not figure in tape because is is nominal, like .0003 cents /sq inch I think, and as far as labor, I just increased my markups until I found a range that I was comfortable with. With very little knowledge you could easily add in an estimated labor cost box (like entering the estimated amount of time you think it will take x how much you want to charge for labor per hour) and also add in the cost of tape to the base cost of the vinyl. You could also make the formulas reference cells which have these values in them so if you wanted to change them you could do so without modifying the formulas. for instance, if you wanted to make it easy to change the cost of vinyl, you could change the formula to say instead of ".0003" x blah blah blah, it would say value=a2xblah blah blah, so anytime you changed the value in cell a2, the formula would plug in that number and spit out a new result. Really just algebra with an 2 dimensional grid references. Pretty simple to figure out.