DCMoney

I gave up on a lot of the free vector stuff a while back, the specific ones I needed were just bad traces. Bought a few items off vectorstock.com even some of them still need touch up but its a much better starting point.

T-Shirts, HTV. Excel sheet says as of today, 82% of money comes from shirts, 15% decals, 3% etched glasses.

This is the seller I've been buying from since August. Check other items for sale for smaller rolls. http://www.ebay.com/itm/131507028065?_trksid=p2060353.m1438.l2649&var=430879479915&ssPageName=STRK%3AMEBIDX%3AIT

Personally, I stock 50-100 yards of white HTV, 5-10 yards of black, and <5 of anything else. My internet item options are limited to black and white graphics, majority being white HTV. Buy my HTV off ebay, cheapest delivered price I can find.

After some research on the Summa DC4, looks like its about $1.50 a sqft for ribbon, then what ever material you print on, which depends on what you buy. I really like that I can print directly to inexpensive 651. This forum has some pretty impressive examples of what can be done with the Summa thermal printers. http://www.digital-graphica.com/phpBB3/viewforum.php?f=9

I forgot about thermal printers! Looked at a Gerber FX a while back but the single color at a time was a negative to me. The Summa will hold multiple colors, DC4s look like they are reasonably priced for a used one, just look like they are slow, they don't have the same resolution as a printer, but lamination isn't required. That seems debatable from what I've read. Need to find a good price per sqft calculator to compare printed vs thermal.

In all the research I've done, (Have still yet to buy a printer because of start up cost, material cost, and maintenance.) the Roland VersaCamms are a great value, another option is the Roland BN-20 its slower and smaller. I've looked at just about everything, and because of dakotagrax experiences with the Rolands makes me look more toward. I would prefer to have print/cut as well.

Did this with my CE6k-60, no issues doing small detail.

These guys are local for me, purchased a few of their pillows. http://www.rjsign.com/PILLOWS.html

Yep, amazon had a DYMO 4XL on sale awhile back for $115 I picked it up, couldn't operate without it now!

When you have 4 times as many customers, what's word of mouth advertising worth? Project 5 years out, shop number 2 now has 20,000 customers, 300k in sales while shop number 1 has 5k customers and 250k in sales. And that's with no growth due to sales. But I get why people want to be shop 2, I've all but quit selling small decals, there's no money to be made in them. Yet I keep some on ebay and etsy because it's a gateway to similar items, and it's cheap advertising. I get people that buy decals and shirts all the time in the same order. Work hard to get a large customer base while providing a top quality product and get repeat customers for life. They'll tell their friends and the cycle will continue, slowly raise your prices and your customers will understand the quality of the product they are getting is worth the cost. Your dad sounds like a smart man.

If you can afford it, go bigger get a 16x20. Used a cheap ebay china 15x15 swinger for about 6 months before upgrading to a 16x20 Geoknight. Never had any issues with the cheap press but the Geoknight is in a totally different league. Same with this http://www.hotronix.com/heat-press-laser-alignment-system, completely worth it, really sped up my shirt making process. Shirts - Jiffyshirt.com unless you have a resellers license etc. This for those times you forget to weed something. http://www.uscutter.com/AlbaChem-Vinyl-Letter-Removing-Solvent HTV falls off with this stuff. I've had great luck using it applied to a Q tip and applied only to a specific location to remove unwanted HTV. Removed an entire design just to see what it does, there was a faint outline left of a few letters. I too use siser easyweed, keep Black and white on hand, everything else is a special order. I wouldn't order a ton of material till you know what you're selling. Right now I'm running through a 50 yard roll of white in about 3 weeks. 15" wide, found this to work out best for me with minimal waste. Tips: Don't forget to mirror. Check the temp of your press, verify what the readout says. When layering HTV a few seconds is all that's needed to get the base layer to stick to the shirt, so the final layer can be the full siser recommended time. I press a center line in all my shirts and same with the transfer. Folding the design in half lining up the weeding box as long as the weed box is in the center of the design. This gives you two center lines to align to. Using the laser alignment makes for quick consistent placements with the center lines, but it's not necessary just a time saver and time is money. Use the backing (what you peal off the shirt once it's pressed) as a scrap catcher when weeding more HTV.

I pulled all glasses due to the time it takes. Interesting idea using saran wrap, still seems like too much time though.

My personal experience with HTV. Pro's: Not a lot of overhead: Equipment doesn't have to be expensive to make a HTV shirt, made lots of shirts on a cheap china press. More on the low overhead. I buy a lot of shirts from Hobby Lobby. Mainly because I don't want to have a ton of shirts on hand that may sit for months before getting used and they are cheap. Not having a business license means I can't buy shirts at discounted rate. Jiffyshirt.com is great but at $2.75 a shirt for a Gildan 100% cotton shirt its not super practical to order a bunch of green mediums that may never get used when I can go to Hobbylobby and pick one up for $3.02 after tax. Same for the 2xl's and 3xl's, right now its actually cheaper for me to buy them at HL than Jiffyshirt. I do carry Small-XL White, Black, Red, Blue that I buy through alphabroder through my works account. May eat into my profit but it's not a ton, I calculate like $200 lost in profit because I use HL and not alphabroder for all my shirts. Yet to have a HTV shirt peel even after 40+ washes my first shirt graphic still looks like it did the day I made it. Have plenty of DTG (direct to garment), screen printed etc shirts the fade and crack after a few washes. Apparently this is in relation to the maker of the shirt not doing things correctly. Cost: When I started HTV I was shocked at how much more expensive HTV was compared to something like 651, now I buy it in 50 yard rolls and don't blink an eye when buying it. Easy: Think it's really easy to make a HTV shirt. Made my first shirt in February of this year after only reading on forums like this and watching youtube videos, currently at 1456 shirts sold. Con's: Large graphics with a lot of solid material on the shirt doesn't feel as good as a screenprinted shirt, ie too thick doesn't breath well. Personally I've never had anyone complain, but I tend to design around less material transferred on a shirt. Example if someone wanted the plane below on a shirt I would make an outline of the plane instead, just an example. Weeding time: Time is money. I try to design around ease of weeding. I like to use stencil fonts to decrease weeding time. Not having to go back and pick out the inside of letters or numbers saves time. Finally, the way I look at it if I got out of shirt making tomorrow, I could sell everything and not be out of more than $600 and I've made way more than that this year alone.

Havent broken down the sales between Etsy and Ebay but if I had to guess its about a 4 sales on ebay to 1 on etsy. I had similar thoughts about it mainly being females which I still think it is, but they are buying shirts for their boyfriends, husbands, kids, etc. I get quite a few messages asking about ETA's because they need it as a gift.