Some businesses come to decide that they would be better off outsourcing their transfer printing, and just do the finishing part in-house, the heat pressing.
The pros of outsourced transfer Tshirt printing
- No Tshirt printing equipment required
- Simple
- Fast production
- Test the market without significant investment in printing machinery
- Choose the best process for each job/design
No Tshirt Printing Machinery Needed
If you’re outsourcing the transfer printing, you don’t need any form of printing equipment or machines, other than the heat press. This means you need to invest less money setting up.
Simplicity
All you’ll need to do is pick up the required transfer, and heat press it onto the garment in the desired position, really not much to it.
Fast
This is a faster print process than printing your own transfers and then pressing, as the transfer production has been done for you in advance. It’s not as quick as screen printing, but working with bought in transfers is going to be quite a bit quicker than all of the other Tshirt printing methods, since there’s no printing involved.
Test the market without significant investment in equipment.
If you’re starting off with outsourced transfers, the only investment you’ll need to make in Tshirt printing machinery, is a heat transfer press. This means you can get started without the same level of investment that would be necessary if you were going to be printing your own transfers.
Choose the best transfer process for each job or each design.
If you’re printing in-house, you’re restricted to whatever transfer methods you’ve set up to use. For example, if you’ve got a dye sublimation printing setup, and a contour cutter & inkjet transfer printing, then you can print via dye sublimation, and contour cut vinyl, and injket transfer for light and dark garments.
So if you’re producing your own designs, or producing a job for a trade client, and you decide that this particular job would be best done by screen, it’s unlikely that you’ll consider getting setup for Tshirt screen printing for this one print job.
If you’re outsourcing your transfers, however, you can choose the very best transfer method for each job without being restricted by budget, space or experience.
The cons of outsourced transfer Tshirt printing
- Less control of production
- Longer lead times
- Higher production costs
Less control
If you’re not doing your own transfer printing, you’re losing some control over the process vs doing everything inhouse. Although, if you’re working with an experienced supplier, and if you’re very clear with your specifications, and if you ask for a sample prior to production, there’s no need for this to cause any problems.
Longer lead times
When you’re outsourcing any form of production, you’ve got to consider lead time, due to the fact that you’re going into a production queue. You may be quoted a lead time of a week or more, in some cases it may be two or three weeks, or longer. This isn’t due to how long it will take to actually print your transfers, it’s about how long it will take until they can start your transfers, due to the other work they already have. Just beware the obvious busy periods, such as the run up to the holidays.
Higher production costs
It’s fair to say that if you were to use the same production method that your transfer printer is using, then it should cost you less in-house as you won’t be paying their profit margin.
However, it’s not quite as simple as this – because outsourcing your transfer printing enables you to have your transfers printed using techniques that may be way outside of your budget. For instance, if your startup budget would only allow you to print your transfers via inkjet or laser transfer, then it’s very likely that your production cost when outsourcing your transfer printing, will be lower.
What kind of Tshirt printing businesses use
outsourced transfer Tshirt printing
Outsourced transfer printing is usually more cost effective in larger volumes of the same design, so for this reason, it’s mainly own brands and bulk/trade Tshirt printers who would outsource their transfer printing.
