First of all, it seems like a very natural transition to start printing your own merchandise after a period of time. If you have a clothing company that is doing pretty well, you are going to say at some point or another, “Hey, I could save so much money if I printed my own shirts.”
That is true. Kind of. It is also the only benefit, and it might be worth the difference in money you’d be saving not to have to worry about it.
I started off with Heartcore (www.heartcoreclothing.com) and was doing really well for a period of time. Really well. It seemed like I was doing everything right, and it was paying off. I didn’t think that I would ever have to worry about money again. I got the notion in my head that printing my own shirts was a great idea.
When you start a screen printing company, you lose focus on what is really important - your bread and butter - your clothing line. If your line is making good money the absolute WORST thing you can do is start screen printing.
Instead of focusing on designing, promoting, and improving your brand, you are now focusing on a completely different business. You now have to learn everything that goes into screen printing. You have to find a place to keep a press, a dryer, a flash, a washout area, an exposure unit and a dark room. If you don’t have a bunch of extra room, you have to rent a place.
That’s what I did. I found a nice affordable warehouse right off of the interstate. It was a steal! The problem was, I had to build a dark room in it. Then I had to tear the dark room down if I moved. So what did I do? I rented a second warehouse that was smaller so I could use the office area as the dark room. I figured that since Heartcore had a bunch of stock, and we were doing a lot of wholesale orders we could use the extra space anyway.
From running my own clothing company — I knew the basics about screen printing. In fact, I was a pretty decent screen printer as a result of working and printing at Fueled By Ramen. I was printing 3500 shirts a day for bands, so I knew my stuff. At the time I worked there, I was the only printer for a while, so I had to do it all. That includes screwing up a bunch of AA shirts and expensive AA hoodies. The learning curve on screen printing is a tough one. You will screw things up, and you might not even notice until everything is done. Then you have to go back through and, if you’re lucky enough to have a spot gun that blasts out spots, fix every single shirt. Or if you had the dryer temperature too high and didn’t notice — throw away a bunch of burned shirts.
Back to the warehouse - I was paying a lot for my space by the end of a couple years. What happened? I was paying the same amount of money, but I was making a lot less. Why? Because I wasn’t focusing on my brand anymore. Every day I had to print films, prepare screens, emulsion screens, burn screens, setup the job for printing, pull and count shirts, print the shirts, count the shirts out, individually fold them for fulfillment, shelve them, break down the job, clean the screens, put up the ink (holy crap a huge task all in itself, keeping ink that never dries around), blast out the emulsion from the screens, etc … etc … etc. Not to mention all of the money I was spending on ink, tape, emulsion, glue, electricity, water, rent, emulsion remover, de-hazer, de-greaser, squeegees, goop scoops, etc … etc … etc. I wasn’t saving money at this point. I was spending a lot more money on different things!
Once I realized I wasn’t spending enough time on my brand, I decided to hire some people to work for me and print the shirts. Well that really defeated the purpose. By the time I was paying them, I was now paying MORE than I was to just get my shirts printed somewhere else. Yes, I was selling a whole lot of shirts, so I didn’t really have a problem paying them, but I didn’t do the math at the time either. Also, even if I wanted to stop printing my own stuff, I couldn’t. I was stuck in a lease and was wishing I never got into it to begin with.
So fast forward to today. My brand is basically on the back-burner permanently. I am now a printer and own my own company www.printmytees.com — no longer really recognized for the brand I own and operate. People come to me when they want shirts printed. I love printing and making other people’s artwork come to life — but then again, I really miss my brand! Printing is a lot more work than running a brand.
So take my advice. Get someone else to print your shirts. You will do much better for yourself and your brand if you focus on sales, designs, and marketing. Let someone else deal with production.
Related posts:
- Design To Print (a quick video about making t-shirts) Here's a quick video by AKT enterprises about making shirts. AKT also runs merchspin which offers great print quality at affordable prices....
- Your First Printing Experience: How to Prepare This article assumes that you (the reader) have already started your company, have designs that you would like to print and have found a...
- The Importance of Taking Professional Looking Pictures of your Clothing Line So the moment has come, either through word of month, a blog post or even possibly an ad you placed. A customer is on your...
- How To Start a T-Shirt Company - Printing Basics Warning: I have done my best to explain the screen printing process but I know there are a lot more knowledgeable people out there. If...
- Printing it yourself VS hiring it out My buddy David Murray over at SEIBEI wrote this great article about doing screen printing vs hiring it out. I get e-mails all the time...
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May 27th, 2009 at 3:18 pm
This is one of the best articles I have read, it’s like the kind of knowledge you get from hanging out with people who used to do this for a living. It’s all real-talk, not the kind you expect to run into on a blog. Amazing.
May 27th, 2009 at 3:51 pm
Good read Jimmy!
I think we’ve all thought about printing our own shirts at least one time or another..
May 27th, 2009 at 10:24 pm
Awesome! Thanks guys!
May 28th, 2009 at 8:02 am
Great post. We have been toying with the idea of printing our own and this is some of the things i brought up to my partners. Keep up the good work.
May 28th, 2009 at 7:37 pm
There is one thing you left out from this article that I think is important. Most artists enjoy experimenting with their medium. I think if you are that type of person, printing your own shirts can open up an entire world of possibilities. It is true that will proper documentation and a great communication with a 3rd party printer you can achieve the same outcome but it can be costly and wasted time if you make a mistake.
May 28th, 2009 at 7:52 pm
Hi Jake. I screen printed when I first started out and it was fun. I did my one color t-shirts for my Missing Turtle shirt and they turned out good. I realized in the process all the equipment I needed to get better prints and it was a long learning experience to get everything right. It would have been a lot less expensive if I just had some one print the shirts instead of buying all this printing equipment.
“It is true that will proper documentation and a great communication with a 3rd party printer you can achieve the same outcome but it can be costly and wasted time if you make a mistake.”
I don’t think you grasp the learning curve of screen printing. It is hard to achieve the same outcome as a professional printer starting out. Do you know how to separate the file properly, mix colors so the they match the pantones exactly, trap the colors so everything lines up, use inks that will be soft and bright at the same time. I’m just glad I have found some quality printers that can do things that I can’t and make beautiful prints.
May 29th, 2009 at 6:35 am
In no way did I want to indicate it was an easy process. Screen printing does have a decent learning curve in the details. Maybe I should have added an extra sentence saying generally I agree 99% of companies will not benefit from printing their own shirts.
July 20th, 2009 at 7:58 pm
i really feel ya here and the problem with most of us is that we become close minded to the other options which might be more efficient or suitable for a business. i would like to add that we should never make any hasty move. we should always look into 10 other options before settling on to the one that is just right for the business model
July 27th, 2009 at 10:33 am
What about a transfer machine to make your t-shirts, I saw this guy on a video talk about one:
http://vimeo.com/5699741
August 11th, 2009 at 2:03 pm
Thanks alot dude, was playing with the option for a while now and you made my mind up….cheers
September 22nd, 2009 at 10:48 pm
Awesome advice. Thank you. I have been wondering about this for a while now.
Cheers,
Mara
November 9th, 2009 at 2:38 pm
Wow. best advice ever.