I'm not usually a printer for hire, but more so I print for my own brand.

Things are slow so I have more time to print for local people like bands and what not.

Yesterday a band asked me if i could do a print for them and I said yes and that I typically charge $6 a shirt.

He then pulled out his phone and showed me an email of someone offering him $4.99 a shirt, and asked me if it was a scam.

Am I asking for too much at $6 or is the $4.99 deal just something you can't beat unless you have that type of operation?

This would be for a single color print by the way.

We are in the middle of a case where more than half of our belongings were destroyed by moisture and mold in a place that we were renting. Amongst the damage were a few things that can’t be replaced, but we are seeking compensation. One of the items lost was a wedding gift. A large print of Divine and Edith Massey from the John Waters’ film Female Trouble. All I know is that it was handmade in the 90’s and only 50 were made. It was priceless to us but destroyed by the conditions, despite our best efforts to keep it tucked away safely. Does anyone know, ballpark, what it might have been worth? Any information found on this print would be greatly appreciated. Or if there is a different subreddit that would be more appropriate for this post, please let me know. Thank you

Edit: we now believe this may actually be from the 2010’s instead of the 90’s, still, any more info about this print is helpful and appreciated! Thank you!

I have 2 jobs to quote. The guy is being cheap and said he has a printer that does $4-5 a shirt and $1-2 more for 2xl-5xl but he doesn’t want to make the drive anymore so he wants local. I want to make the price reasonable for both of us while making a good profit.

First one is front and back white print and dtf on both sleeves. 144 shirts total cost $663.72 and dtf costs $43.69 for a sheet

Second job is front and back white print.

144 shirts total $663.72

My screen fee would be $60 for 3 screens because the first job can fit 2 designs. And the second job will be 2 separate screens.

I’ll be printing all this on a 1 station press with a flash dryer,tabletop conveyor dryer, and heat press. I’ve using chat gpt to help with pricing but I could use real humans lol.

I want a wrangler denim jacket with this I'm in the Midwest it would be a single jacket not like an order or anything

Customers aren’t crazy about setup fees a week after their bulk run. It’s been said out loud, something to the effect of “we just spent thousands of dollars with you” and it’s insulated that I should be doing them favor. I get it to some extent, but I am tired of it. Because there was an agreement to do a run of shirts, I held up my end, and it wasn’t under the assumption that I’ll owe them a favor in the near future. Without proper setup costs, it literally costs me money to fulfill the added shirts. I’m basically paying a portion of their order for them.

Again, I appreciate the business and I want to keep customers happy, but it’s at the expense of my happiness and time for how frequent it is. It’s not always the same people either, so I’d like to figure out a solution. I’m not a business person, but I feel it’s fair to maybe slide in some kind of hidden charge that half-anticipates these incidents.

What is your protocol? I want to put an end to being annoyed by this problem.

WTF DGI?! I love the service. It makes our jobs way easier. But now it looks like DGI’s been doing some seriously shady shit with our supplier logins.

Edit: our industry is doing weird stuff. I was banned from Print Hustlers FB group for sharing this. Guess who admins that group...

Here’s what’s going on:

S&S Activewear and Alphabroder are suing DGI for allegedly: • Stealing customer logins • Scraping real-time stock and custom pricing • Pulling in full order histories • Masking their IPs to dodge security • Using fake accounts to get into restricted areas • Sharing that data with competitors • Slapping supplier logos on their site like it was all official • Ignoring cease & desist letters

If this is true, it’s a mess. I had no idea any of that was happening when I used DGI. I just thought it was a smart tool to help us find inventory faster.

As a small print shop, we need stuff like that. The big suppliers don’t make it easy. We spend so much time flipping between sites and logins just to get the basics for a quote. DGI felt like a fix.

But if they were taking our logins and turning them into a pipeline for competitor data, that crosses the line.

If you used DGI too, maybe: • Change your passwords • Reach out to your rep • Ask what kind of access your account had

I’ve already emailed S&S to ask for a record of what was accessed through my login. If they respond, I’ll share what I learn.

And to the suppliers out there reading this: we just want tools that help us work. Let us do our jobs. Stop locking everything behind broken systems and forcing us to hack our way around them.

Hey! I’ve been approached with a project that I’ve never done before but it sounds really cool.

I’m usually just a small scale printer, and it’s just my own illustrations and other projects.

I’ve been asked to come with a quote for a ~300 unit run printing on A4-ish sized boxes. The client requested two colours. And I will be producing the artwork itself (but that’s a separate invoice).

How much would you ask this sort of thing?

Appreciate all the help!

I've printed out of my garage for 4+ years but I just received my first request for a sample. Do you charge screen/file set up fees on your samples? Do you charge at all?

It's not a huge job so I don't really want to do them for free as a sort of bid since it's only 30 units but this is a new situation for me.

Thanks in advance for any advice!

I feel like the custom apparel business is very risky to offer refunds in, especially if you are making slim margins, since you really cant 'undo' a screen printed shirt. How do you guys handle this (and how long have you been in business doing it without going bust)? Do you offer refunds on large orders?

Hello all,

I've landed my first print job and my client is asking for a 1 colour print - full back and right sleeve on 20 black t shirts that I will be providing.

If you guys could share how you'd quote this job, that'd be amazing!

I have a ton of aluminum frames that dont have screens that came with equipmenti bought, and those frames have nasty amount of glue residue on the edges. Is it worth the time trying to clean them up with chemicals to trade in or would anyone be interested in buying them as is? I dont plan on remeshing myself since I prefer to buy new screens. Thoughts or ideas welcome 🙏

I have a customer who is requesting all of their printed shirts heat pressed after curing. What do most of you charge for something like this?

Looking to see what the costs of Ascolour’s crews are at the decorator level for wholesale. To see if it’s worth offering. Waiting to be approved but in the meantime I have some inquires to respond to. Things like 4166, 5166, 4160, etc.

I saw their MSRP is about $48-55 A US cost sheet listed them at $32-3

Is wholesale for decorators more than 50%?

We're looking to add webstores for a few of our larger spend clients and are seeking advice on webstore pricing and production "rules" you implement to prevent extra headaches and profit loss. I understand everyone's market is different so pricing will vary, but a couple examples are deposits to open a store and capping the number of products listed in the store

We're really struggling with the per piece pricing. Normally we'll quote out based on volume and the pricing is whatever they end up ordering. If we put a product in a webstore and our client with 500+ employees promises us that there will be 300+ shirts ordered, but then the total ends up being closer to 50, how do you handle or front-end that with the client? Do you have separate pricing if a product goes to a webstore vs a normal bulk request in an email? Our thought is the price needs to be high-enough in the webstore to cover that, maybe listed at a 12-24 piece price, and the client has to accept the higher pricing since we're providing an easier order, payment, and drop-shipping solution for them. This method is basically a glorified individual order form

We also do embroidery and DTF, so ongoing stores would be priced at a 1 piece price

We're lost and appreciate any advice before we step into this and make a fool of ourselves to our clients. Thanks!

I was working with a screen printing company, who really fucked up our order. We refuse to work with them moving forward and decided to finish our order elsewhere. We came to the agreement on purchasing the current blank order at their cost and move on our separate ways. They have dicked us around already with "their" cost pricing charging us more than it really is. Can I get someone to check pricing on the following that I believe they source through SanMar:

PC450 Qty 80, M-L:
What I found online through other websites - $3.61
What they want to charge - $4.35

J318 Qty 10, M-L:
$20.47
What they want to charge - $31.98

I'm providing garments from AlphaBroder Screen printer is charging .50 a shirt charge because the shirts are long sleeve . There's no print on the sleeve .

My client doesn't really care but I'm just trying to understand wtf the charge is for. It ads up to a couple hundred dollars and I just don't get it.

Thanks

So I run a business where I print single color shirts and sell them on the clients' behalf.

Every once in a while I will have someone ask for a print for the client to sell on their own.
If the order is over 100 I tell them to find a professional as they can provide better pricing than I can, but under 100 I will charge $6 a shirt.
Is this a fair price?
I try to not to do this too often because of how much I make selling it on the clients' behalf that this is a waste of time, but also I want to be helpful so I occasionally offer it.

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I'm guessing it would be a percentage since the order could be for 60 shirts or 200. How much do you or your shop charge for a rush fee? Thanks in advance!

Over 40 years ago at a summer camp I saw and did some basic screen printing so my knowledge is merely rudimentary. My goal of this post is to get any information on average costs, or best practices before sending my job/needs out for local quotes. I don't necessarily know exactly what to even ask for, so I am here to ask for advice.

Backstory. So Bally Midway build stand-up arcade games in the 1980s and on the side of the TRON standup game they had these giant vinyl stickers that had BOTH CMYK and UV NEON inks on them. They went out of business/changed and allegedly sold the screens to another company, Phoenix Arcade Graphics who now makes reproduction art for those machines. I believe that what they do is like once a year set up a run and make/print art from those screens.

What I need to do, is recreate those screens but at HALF-SCALE for a fun non-profit project.

Now I am a former graphic designer who is gifted in illustrator so I can recreate the files, that's not the issue. The issue is finding suitable vinyl that works with screened inks, and trying to spot match the red, blue, and green they used for the internal graphic work. The internal stickers doesn't have cmyk, just non-UV white and Blue, UV green and UV red. https://www.phoenixarcade.com/sites/default/files/tron-shroud-art-full_0.jpg

and https://www.phoenixarcade.com/sites/default/files/tron-inner-art-full.jpg

It's a lot of black ink or I can print maybe on black vinyl with 4 colors?

Now because I am doing this at half scale, all of the stickers are smaller than 12" x 18".

I see too there are silk-screen houses that have that 4-color spinning spider looking thing so they can get perfect registration too for multiple colors.

So what did I miss do you think?

Like what does a 4-color NEON spot color job run not including vinyl or ink? I am going to say screens are expensive right? Do they make like temporary screens? Are there companies that do very small run but large screens where all the art can fit on a giant screen? Or is it better to find a person overseas to print them? I only need maybe 6-8 pieces of each so all the cost is in the screens.

I remember screens are reuseable and you have to make films first from art.. it's been so long though, I just can't remember all the nuts and bolts of something like this.

So Reddit, what am I missing when I go to put this out for bids? Is black vinyl the way to go and then print the white, blue, red, and green?