Welcome to Heat Press Henry, the blog all about new Tshirt & gift printers getting the very best, easy to understand information about garment and giftware printing.
I have been involved in heat presses and other T shirt & giftware decorating equipment for years – and, I’m a blogger.
I came to realize that my experience puts me in quite a unique position in terms of being able to understand all of the questions that new T shirt & giftware printers will need answering, so I decided to create this blog in order to help as many new printers as possible.
The T shirt & gifts printing business is an incredible business.
Many people just don’t quite get how much opportunity there is for profit with this business, from such a low investment.
Actually there are not many businesses which come anywhere close. But the great thing about this business, is that as well as being potentially very profitable, it can be really enjoyable.
So if I can help lots of people to get set up in this business, while avoiding the many possible pitfalls, I’ll be happy.
Without further waffle, lets get onto the main point of this post – and answer the question which brought you here:
Actually, one of the main inspirations for me to create this blog, was to deal with his question. Invariably the first question I’m always asked when I get a phone call or email from someone who is considering setting up in the business, is which is the best T shirt printing machine for them to buy, usually followed by which is the best heat press?
Every conversation goes almost the same, with me asking them to take a step back and figure out more about where their business is heading before trying to answer this question.
So let me ask you a few questions:
Direct to garment, inkjet transfer, laser transfer, dye sublimation, cad cut vinyl, ready made transfers…
You see, there isn’t just one method for printing T shirts, there are many different methods, and the correct method for you depends on the types of T shirts you’re wanting to print, the types of designs you’ll be working with, and the specific part of the T shirts market you’re going to be selling within.
So if you don’t know the answer to this question straight away, we need to take a step further back with the following question:
IMHO, if you can’t answer this question straight away, it means you’re not quite ready yet. If this is the case, I would strongly recommend that you hold off, and don’t invest anything until you’ve done a bit more research. This post should help!
You see, if you’re not sure what process you’re going to be using, it’s usually because the decision hasn’t been clearly made yet concerning exactly what kind of business you’re going to be starting.
If you don’t know this, then you’re not ready to start.
So many people take the plunge and start buying equipment without knowing exactly what they’re doing. As a result you will regularly see T shirt printing equipment, heat presses etc., being sold used on eBay, which has hardly had any use.
This represents an opportunity, by the way, in terms of getting set up for a reduced cost by buying used printing gear with very little use, and with warranty remaining, but I’ll talk about this a bit later.
So if you’re not quite sure what kind of T shirt printing business you’re getting into, this next section should help you to decide.
The main markets for garment and giftware printing, are:
This is a very popular business, in which the customer tells you what image and/or text they want on their Tshirt, what colour and what size they require, what style of garment they want (Unisex Tshirt, muscle top, ladies vest top, hoody, etc.) and you then produce the Tshirt for the customer.
Most of the time you would be printing just one garment at a time, when it comes to Tshirts for gifts. Although, there are sub-markets within the personalized T shirts market you can focus on which would turn into bigger orders, such as printing Tshirts for bachelor & bachelorette parties, events, parties, small organizations and clubs.
If you’re printing personalized Tshirts, this rules out screen printing.
Screen printing involves developing a new screen for each colour, for each new design.
The time and expense of creating new screens for each individual Tshirt print just wouldn’t make sense to use screen printing for personalization.
It also rules out ready-made transfers, as it would cost too much and there would be too much time involved in getting a transfer printing company to produce your transfers each time for individual orders.
So this leaves direct to garment printing, laser transfer, inkjet transfer, vinyl cad cut & dye sublimation.
We’ll get into how to make the decision between these processes shortly.
If you’re wanting to develop your own brand, by printing your own designs onto T shirts, you’re more than likely going to want to print the same design onto many Tshirts.
In other words, you won’t create a design and sell just one T shirt with this design printed on it, you’ll want to sell as many T shirts and other garments as possible carrying your designs.
This opens you up to the potential of buying in your transfers, screen printing, and all of the other processes.
It also opens you up to the idea of outsourcing all of your production.
If you’re a designer, yes, having your designs printed on items that you can sell is a great move. But you need to ask yourself whether you want to get into printing in-house, or whether it would be a better decision to work with an experienced garment printing firm to produce your products. That way, you can focus your time and efforts on what you’re good at, and let the printers do what they’re good at.
This would mean sacrificing some profit margin initially, but it also takes away the cost of setting up to Tshirt printing, and all of the time and effort required to get set up.
Once your sales kick in, you’ll be buying in better quantities, your unit costs should drop, and there’s nothing to stop you getting set up to print in-house further down the line.
If you don’t want to fully outsource your T shirt printing, a step away from this is to outsource the transfer printing, and buy in stock of your designs on transfers.
You’ll then just need a heat transfer press in order to heat press the transfers onto your garments.
The benefit of this is that you don’t need to buy in stock of T shirts, just transfers, and you can then buy in your garments as and when you need them.
The downside of outsourcing your production is that you have to buy in stock, while if you’re printing your own garments, you can buy in blank Tshirts as and when you need them, print to demand.
We’ll get deeper into how to make the decision on what process or processes to go for if you’re printing your own designs, shortly.
This is where a printer produces T shirts in larger volumes, usually for trade customers.
For example, if someone is looking to have T shirts printed for their company or brand, and they don’t want to bring the production in-house, they would look for a T shirt printer to buy their T shirts from.
The margin on individual T shirts is less when you’re printing T shirts in bulk, but the volumes are larger. Your average order quantity may be 50, 100 or higher, so you’ll be working with larger individual purchases, so higher volume lower profit margin.
Most bulk T shirt printers print via screen printing, as it’s the lowest cost method for high quantities.
Some trade Tshirt printing firms will add digital printing processes to their setup for when it may be needed, and it’s fair to say that as direct to garment printers become faster and more cost-effective. Screen may be overtaken at some point in the future, but it’s not happened yet.
Screen printing is still the most cost-effective process (both in terms of setup costs, and Tshirt printing costs) for bulk printing Tshirts and other garments.
So if you’re going to be setting up as a bulk Tshirt printer, it’s more than likely you will decide screen printing is the best process to focus on.
Do you already have a good idea of which kind of Tshirt printing business you’re going to be getting involved in?
If not, then here’s another post that may help you to make the decision: Which kind of Tshirt printing business is right for you?
If you already have a good idea, then the next step is to decide which print process or processes you’re going to be utilizing.
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