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Best way to go for shirts

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Wow, I've been out of the business for awhile and wanted to get back into this! My small office is looking for tshirts for our installers. Need about 30 mens on ash gray. The logo is pretty simple with just lettering..curious what's the most profitable way to get these done. I have a heat press but curious if it'll be worth the price of having to purchase the 3 colored rolls of siser weed at $35ea? Any thoughts?

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Wow, I've been out of the business for awhile and wanted to get back into this! My small office is looking for tshirts for our installers. Need about 30 mens on ash gray. The logo is pretty simple with just lettering..curious what's the most profitable way to get these done. I have a heat press but curious if it'll be worth the price of having to purchase the 3 colored rolls of siser weed at $35ea? Any thoughts?

at 30 shirts I think it would be alot better for you to sub out to a screen printer to do and you just mark it up to the customer. Let me know the details and I would be happy to give you a quote for it. rick@spydergraphix.com I offer wholesale to the site and so do a few others on here.

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If its only thirty shirts why would you have to buy three rolls of vinyl if its just a small amount of text? Many places sell easy weed by the foot so figure out how much you need get a little more and your in business.

If you have your own heat press why would you give it to someone else to do and have them make most of the money?

Nothing against the screen printers

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I agree with 300. Thirty shirts would be a breeze. I would not screen that quanity, Vinyl it!!

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How many colours in the design?....What size is the design?..How many locations?.....Have you considered heat transfers?..

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How many colours in the design?....What size is the design?..How many locations?.....Have you considered heat transfers?..

What she said

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Not just because I screen print do I say this but why would you want to heat press 30 shirts with 3 colors of vinyl on it? think of the time and material that you would have in it. When if you sub it out to a printer you could be doing something different like a few banners or whatever else you have to do that week and then just deliver and collect money on the shirts. You make twice as much. Even when I did not screen anything over 12 shirt I sub out just because I could make more money that way.at a 3 color one side print our contract price would be $6.00ea with the shirt. So then you could turn around sell for $9.00ea and make $90 and not have to do a thing but make customer happy. And in all the time you would be trying to press 3 colors on 30 shirts you just done a few hundred dollars in other work. Don't get me wrong I am all for keeping the work in house but sometimes you can make more money by sub it out. Just my thought let me know if I am wrong.

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I do understand what you mean spyder. And for many that may be the case. But myself for 30 shirts i would vinyl them. I have complete control over them this way, I can control exact sizing and position on shirt how I see fit per the customer and vary the graphic specific for the size of each shirt. Everybody does things different and some would like to see the time spent elsewhere. 30 shirts with 3 colors text would take a max of 2 hours. Less if able to press 2 colors at same time which is unknown. Even if it was a medium sized graphic cost on each item will be what? 4 bucks. so for a finished goods price of 9 each brings more into my shop than the hassle of subbing it out, paying shipping and waiting when i could get this done in less than a day turn around. And that is what keeps my customers in this area to me is a fast turnaround and attention to detail.

But if you don't carry the shirts on hand or the colors of the vinyl required you might be better off to sub it out as just ordering in material to do 1 job will outweigh the savings of doing it in house. So that in itself might me the deciding factor. Ordering just a few feet of each color will drastically affect the price and may eat any profit you would make by doing this in house.

You and only you can make this choice. Both ways are good ways.

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Everyone has good points but I like the idea that I control all of it the shipping the quality of the job so on and so forth. If the order is screwed up it's me. What I can't understand is if you are doing shirts or even vinyl then you should have the material on hand. I don't understand a lot of the folks on this forum that don't seem to have any type of stock on hand. They want to buy vinyl but the foot etc.?? It like owning a auto garage and then not having oil in stock and when a customer comes in you run to walmart and pick up five quarts of oil. Or call your brother and ask do you have five quarts of oil I can borrow.

A great point on the size of the graphic in relation to the shirt. I know nothing about screen printing but right now I am doing nine shirts a 18 month old a 6t and a 5XL all the same graphic along with a design on the sleeve. I make the design the best size to fit the shirts, I don't even know can you do that with screen printing?

If you cant stock the basic material like a roll of black & white vinyl then your in the wrong business!!

And I don't sell any shirt for $9.00 I do custom shirts and my price is lowest at $12.99 and up....

And in all the time you would be trying to press 3 colors on 30 shirts you just done a few hundred dollars in other work.
On a final note you are assuming that customers are knocking down everyones doors and we are all swamped with work, I bet many are very bored with nothing to do right now.....

Again nothing personal and I am sure there are many cases that it does pay to have them screen printed....

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For me it is about whether it is the best use of my time and how can I make the most money. Production time takes away from selling time (or dog walking time).

Vinyl is usually more costly than screen printing and/or heat transfers once you get over a certain number. Although heat transfers can be more costly up front they can often give you more profit potential in the future. I gang sheets with extra designs and always order extras. if these extras get used up they earn you extra money. But you need to figure out whether your clients have the potential to order more in the future. Not every design has this potential.

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I always try to do everything in house if possible. Too many bad experiences with inferior printing when subbing out. Just recently purchased a direct to garment printer. Just size the graphic on the screen, put the shirt on the platen and hit print. On the 30 shirts, of you think you can get more in the future, think of it as an investment and go ahead and order the vinyl. Or use this order to pay for supplies and go out and sell more shirts to make profit off of.

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I'm a screen printer, but if you want to maximize your time I'd use Transfers. You print all colors at one time and heat press them.

You can buy 50 for 50cents to $1 each, lite

And 50 for darks $1 to $1.50 each and about $20 to ship

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I always try to do everything in house if possible. Too many bad experiences with inferior printing when subbing out. Just recently purchased a direct to garment printer. Just size the graphic on the screen, put the shirt on the platen and hit print. On the 30 shirts, of you think you can get more in the future, think of it as an investment and go ahead and order the vinyl. Or use this order to pay for supplies and go out and sell more shirts to make profit off of.

dtg just isnt as vibrant as screenprinting after a few washes.i wish i had a dtg printer for a low run of shirts(11 or less),but for 30 i would print them.i dont think 3 colors of vinyl would be very soft to the touch or wearing it.

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If you don't think DTG can be as vibrant after a few washes, then you probably haven't been around it enough. If the garment is properly prepped and the ink heat pressed properly they will not fade any more than screen printing. You may have seen some printed on white shirts that looked less vibrant. This could be because many don't pretreat white garments because it isn't necessary, however going ahead and pretreating helps the vibrancy alot. Also a light coat of white ink (even on a white shirt) can make it even more vibrant. I was basically just saying either pay someone to do them for you or use the job to pay for supplies that can also be used on other future jobs.

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Good or bad results is so dependent on the person doing the work....Any kind of printing can turn out bad if the printer does know what he/she is doing....

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Well you have many options, and all work just as well as the other.

If you want to screen print, and keep control, you can get a s 4 color 2 station screen printing press for a very low price.

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If you don't think DTG can be as vibrant after a few washes, then you probably haven't been around it enough. If the garment is properly prepped and the ink heat pressed properly they will not fade any more than screen printing. You may have seen some printed on white shirts that looked less vibrant. This could be because many don't pretreat white garments because it isn't necessary, however going ahead and pretreating helps the vibrancy alot. Also a light coat of white ink (even on a white shirt) can make it even more vibrant. I was basically just saying either pay someone to do them for you or use the job to pay for supplies that can also be used on other future jobs.

i wont disagree with you boomdawg.it may be operator error.i used to have a guy do dtg printing for me,but it seemed like after a few washes the cotton would come through the print(looked fuzzy like if you looked at it real close).i wish i could see some of the good dtg stuff,it would make small runs so easy and more profitable to do.might have to request some samples,lol.

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i wont disagree with you boomdawg.it may be operator error.i used to have a guy do dtg printing for me,but it seemed like after a few washes the cotton would come through the print(looked fuzzy like if you looked at it real close).i wish i could see some of the good dtg stuff,it would make small runs so easy and more profitable to do.might have to request some samples,lol.

What your describing is fibrillation. It's the cotton fibers breaking and showing through the print. It's not a fault of the print method but the material.

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