Should you use DTG or screen printing? Different shops have different competencies.
The screen printing process starts with a nylon mesh screen with light-sensitive emulsion applied to it.
Interestingly, there are currently no "mid-range" DTG printers. For large orders (more than 24 pieces) screen printing typically costs less than DTG printing. Over time, the pre-treat may degrade meaning the ink won't adhere to the garment. No DTG printer is perfect for every application. Lawson, Equipment Zone and M&R all make pre-treatment machines for DTG printing (along with numerous other manufacturers). This is why screen printing is still a strong option for custom garments: it's simply much faster than DTG printingonce you overcome setup time. With decades of experience in embroidery technology, Ricoh has begun its acquisition and expansion phase. With most DTG printers, you can print roughly one shirt every two minutes. These are the "desktop" DTG printers that the overwhelming majority of print shops use. Of course, they apply the costs of their chosen apparel decorating method in place of direct to garment ink. A screen printing technician then washes out the negative image, leaving openings in the mesh for ink to pass through. 2022 ColDesi Incorporated. Printavo is simple shop management software. Many print shops specialize in small run DTG printing, complex art for screen printing, and making difficult prints come to life. Whats the difference between DTG and screen printing? The DTG printers are not where manufacturers make their profit: the consumables they sell you to support the machine are how these companies turn a profit.
Dont underestimate the importance of your pre-treatment machine! Their online store makes ordering supplies simple. 
Ricoh DTG not only specializes in manufacturing and supporting the best direct-to-garment printers in the industry; our team also prides itself on partnering with our customers. DTG prints can still survive 50+ washes and be acceptable to the customer certainly "good enough" for most customers!
Used heat presses are fine they can be had for hundreds of dollars (if not less). Despite pouring hundreds of millions into the print-on-demand space, Amazon is still not the dominant player in the market. There's a simple way to determine whether you should screen print or use DTG for an order! Another use? 10 Shirts/hour at $20 each = $200.00, $50 in ink and blank shirts cost is $150.00/hour. Should you buy a DTG printer? So when youre starting to price your own DTG prints, you should consider the cost of pre-treating, the cost of ink,and how large the image actually is. While there are a lot of ways to save money on screen printing ink, DTG inks are typically crafted for one specific manufacturer's printers. Don't use a customer's order to learn a new way to print. 
This coat acts like an underbase so that the ink is vibrant and longer-lasting. 
However, the most trusted brands for DTG printing areBrotherandEpson for desktop-style DTG printers. We urge anyone considering a new decoration method whether that's considering if you should buy a DTG printer or try out screen printing to worry less about the exact decoration method they use and more about whether they're printing exactly what the customer wants. You must meticulously maintain your DTG printers. One of the best, tried-and-true tips for drumming up business is to give away a free t-shirt. Direct to Garment Printing, T-Shirt Screen Printing. How about doubling the cost of thread or backing with freight because you ran out? Give our team a call at 1-877-381-9546 or contact us using the form below to request a deluxe sample print pack as well as information on pricing, eligibility for special discounts, and more advice on how to run your own successful t-shirt business using an award-winning Ricoh DTG printer. It costs a minimum of$20,000 to $30,000 for a complete and professional DTG printing setup. The cost for DTG ink is much higher than the cost for screen printing ink. There are multiple print shops that specialize in small orders it's their bread-and-butter. Brother has made a name for itself in the DTG space with their versatile and powerful GTX line of printers. As you can see from our example, the concept of making money with DTG is pretty simple.
When first starting out, many of our customers found this to be a highly effective method for building an initial customer base. Most experts don't recommend purchasing used DTG equipment since the maintenance and upkeep are so important (and you have no way to verify if it was done correctly). It could just as easily be rhinestone transfer material or screen printing ink. FAQS on Anajets Official Merger with Ricoh Printing Systems America, Inc. Ricoh DTG Virtual Road Show: Custom Face Masks & Live T-Shirt Printing Demo! Note: if you're a customer looking to purchase custom t-shirts and are looking for more information, you should trust your local print shop's judgment about how to print your t-shirts. Most models range between $15,000 and $30,000. First, consider what it will take to screen print the artwork that the customer has.
The most expensive DTG printing setups can easily exceed $250,000 though higher-end models often include a comprehensive warranty and maintenance package as well. Its still the first and best way to print a shirt. If the art is a photograph, lean toward DTG printing. Unless you specialize in printing complex art, lean toward DTG for things like photographs (unless the customer is requesting a large quantity). Pre-treating adds another minute of time to each garment you print.
While that is actually a good start to figuring out whether there is profit potential in the business, theyre a long way from figuring out what actually goes into the cost of that finished and delivered garment. Screen printing and DTG (direct-to-garment) printing are two of the most common ways to print custom t-shirts.
Nope. If you work 8 hours/day and multiply that by $150/hour thats $1200 every day in profit right? The actual equipment is expensive. Want to use DTG to get vibrant colors, to print with white ink, or to print on a dark t-shirt? Direct-to-Garment is just one method that people use to produce custom tees and start a custom t-shirt business, and these hidden costs apply to every one of them. Amazon tried to overcome this speed issue via scaling they bought thousands of Kornit DTG printers but their Merch by Amazon fulfillment business is still not fully operational after more than three years of development.
That labor has value! Every print shop has had someone walk in and get frustrated that they can't simply order one t-shirt. Omniprintis a leader in the DTG space. A rule of thumb: if you're printing white inks with a DTG printer, you must pre-treat your garments. Ultimately, there's no clear winner between DTG and screen printing. For small (12 pieces or less) orders with lots of colors, DTG printing is a great fit. This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged. So which is better? Israel-based Kornit competes in this space, backed by a sizable investment from Amazon's print-on-demand division. This is often a "blind spot" that screen printers encounter when they make the leap to DTG printing. You will virtually always need to pre-treat garments that: Think of pre-treatment for DTG like primer for painting a house. DTG printing is another tool for a print shop to meet the needs of their customers. Become the expert and guide your customers toward decorations and customizations that they'll love and that help you turn a profit. You can accurately calculate your costs. But no company owns the DTG market yet. Some awesome resources to estimate DTG pricing: We will be blunt: DTG printers cost tens of thousands of dollars.
What's coming with this update? Once you have an hourly labor cost youll attribute to yourself in these calculations you can apply it to the following Hidden Costs too: If youre a one-person business, especially if youre a one-person business, an hours worth of actual printing and production time might take 2 or more hours to administer. Its all about building your customer base and one of the easiest ways to get started is to sell to your friends and family. Here are just a few ways that screwing things up can impact the cost of doing business: These mistakes feed off of each other of course. You may need to print many test prints to achieve the look you want. If you build a business model that can accommodate small orders, DTG printing can be highly profitable andeffective. While many businesses have attempted this, the technical and labor challenges have proven tremendous (even for Amazon).
You may find a deal on used DTG equipment, but remember that DTG printers do not hold their resale value like screen printing presses do. Because of the ink that DTG printers use and the way that the ink is applied, the end customer will eventually see the print fade significantly from repeated washing and drying. There is definitely some animosity here! (Manufacturers, take note!). Custom Apparel Startups Podcast + Courses, Top 10 Business Killers in the Custom T Shirt Business, heres a great article on supply management btw, Ordering supplies and blanks you dont order enough blanks, or the wrong ones, and have to overnight them to make your deadlines. DTG printers range from small desktop sized models to units that require large climate-controlled garages.
Big updates for our webstore will roll out soon! DTG printing is the affordable way to print a few shirts. A pre-treatment machine typically costs between $3,000 and $4,000. Another problem?
Answer: It may sound like DTG is a futuristic answer for printing everything under the sun. The bottom line about quality: DTG prints are typically made for customers that have different demands than customers that place high-volume screen print orders. Ricoh is multinational corporation focused on providing digital solutions to businesses. Since you don't have to separate or burn screens, screen printers are able to use DTG printing on art that simply doesn't translate well to the screen printing press. There is still tremendous opportunity for a manufacturer to control broad swaths of the custom printing market with the right product we're looking forward to mid-range (less than $100k) DTG printers emerging as a viable option. Very few shops are throwing out their screen printing squeegees for inkjet printers! Yes and no. We created a simple infographic to help you understand how much money you can make printing custom t-shirts. The most frequent orders in many print shops are fewer than 72 pieces!
There simply isn't a mid-range price-point for DTG printers yet. For example, Andre Howard, the owner of Design 2 Ink, purchased a Ricoh DTG printer and started his side business printing t-shirts while he continued to work full time. Some customers want "bulletproof" plastisol prints, where there's a thick layer of ink while others want zero hand-feel. But if they need to print multiple designs, or do just a few prints, screen printing can be prohibitively expensive compared to DTG printing. Each DTG ink cartridge costs around $200. There's almost no question that a DTG printer will be faster for printing just one shirt. 7 Reasons Why Direct to Film (DTF) Printing is a Great Addition for Your Business.
Maintenance and R&D are expensive. Remember: DTG prints may not be as durable as screen prints, and may not be appropriate for every type of garment or print. The answer isn't so simple. If you see that artwork can easily be separated, lean toward screen printing. All of these brands put out high-quality DTG printers if they're purchased new. A 4-color design usually requires 5 different screens to print (since you need an underbase screen). Epson is famous for their large-format printers, and is a common household name with decades of experience in inkjet printing. In all the business calculations I see, the one line item that is typically missing from every category is one for Errors and Mistakes. Here's why: the extensive labor required to create, separate, coat, expose, and register screens makes the screen printing process inefficient for small quantity orders with lots of colors. There are large contract DTG businesses that never do screen prints and multimillion-dollar screen print shops that would never think of using DTG. Shops that do a lot of DTG printing will daisy-chain their pre-treat machines, DTG machines, and curing dryers to create a "pod." The good news is that direct-to-garment printing offers plenty of opportunities for increasing revenue and building a scalable home business meaning you can start small selling t-shirts to local schools and businesses and then even expand your business into a full-time enterprise.
Epson competes with Brother for the lion's share of the desktop DTG market in the United States. Print shops use DTG printers for specific applications but the most common is simply printing 1 to 12 shirts for customers that only need a handful of shirts. The GTX printers are notorious for their ability to print on a wide range of textiles. Let's say you want 20 t-shirts. Design a t-shirt, print it, and sell it for a profit.
This is a difficult question to answer. You'll need to pre-treat your shirts. Yes, it's true, DTG prints typically aren't as durable as screen prints. Since screen printing typically isn't profitable at small volumes, DTG printing offers a reasonable alternative for customers that want fewer than 12 pieces. In fact, because youre doing the research that led you here, your chances for success just increased!
It can cost $4 (or more!) The number one priority is fulfilling your customer's vision or connecting them with someone that can. If they do not have an infrastructure to handle the order intake, printing, and shipping then DTG can be a bank-breaking headache.
They are not maintenance-free machines and DTG printing is NOT a "push button" printing style. You can fire up the printer, pre-treat shirts, and send them off after printing & curing very quickly in a pinch. Steven Farag from Campus Ink in Champaign, IL showed us the difference between DTG and screen printing: Screen printing is the affordable way to print hundreds of shirts. DTG printing is often ideal for art that isn't great for screen printing.
But since many new direct to garment printing or custom t-shirt businesses start from a garage or home office, especially since the new Viper2 dtg printer will actually fit through a regular doorway, not dividing up the gas bill wont contribute too much to costs. The price of a t-shirt can range from $10 for a simple shirt to upwards of $50 for designer t-shirts. Regardless, Kornit has significantly advanced the entire DTG printing industry from a technological standpoint. IMPORTANT DIFFERENCE: Screens and setup make screen printing too expensive for low-quantity custom orders.
AnaJet by RICOHis Ricoh's DTG division. Direct-to-Garment has a few advantages of the other technologies that well point out here so youll know to calculate them differently if youre pursuing a screen printing business for example: Having gotten that disclaimer out of the way, lets take a look at some of the Hidden Costs that dont usually end up in the custom t-shirt entrepreneurs calculations.
Epson uses a formula similar to their large format cost calculator. A higher-cost machine may have lower-cost ink (and vice-versa). You are responsible for creating a custom experience that reflects the customer's needs. Remember, you need to follow the law and make sure that all that time and effort you spend, or the money you invest in a bookkeeper or accountant, makes it into your profitability calculations in some way.
With Printavo, youll work smarternot harder.
Now is the best time to switch to Printavo. By selling t-shirts to their network of friends and family, they were able to build up so much business that they had to purchase a SECOND Ricoh DTG printer to keep up with demand only one month after purchasing their first machine. they bought thousands of Kornit DTG printers, A post shared by NAV Design (@nav_customvinyl).
In screen printing and custom apparel decoration, you are more like a barber than a mass manufacturer. Both printing methods have pros and cons. This means they can print multiple designs at once, or raise their overall capacity to print larger orders. Expect to spend between $10,000 and $30,000 for a starter DTG machine. Their large DTG printers are priced at a premium but are known for excellent service, warranties, and generally high build quality.
On average, a t-shirt costs about $2.50 to $4.00 per shirt when purchased wholesale. One of the questions that we get asked most often is, How much money can you make with DTG? and Is direct-to-garment printing profitable? The short answer is: Yes, you can definitely make money with DTG! Some industry estimates say that DTG prints on garments last anywhere from 25% to 50% as long as screen prints. The big killer for many businesses is forgetting to collect sales taxes and pass that on to the appropriate authorities. In most shops, a DTG pre-treat machine applies a special coating to the shirt though many use rollers to apply pre-treat by hand. Some of our most successful customers ramped up their businesses simply through word of mouth. There isalways a print shop that has more experience than you do. This "break-even point" varies, but a common industry minimum is 24 t-shirts. Typical Brother or Epson DTG printers start around $10,000. The market is essentially low-end DTG printers and extremely high-end DTG printers. DTG printer, pre-treat machine, and a heat press. Yes, you'll hear screen printers trash DTG as "direct to garbage" and hear DTG lovers call screen printers old-fashioned. And many customers will not accept the variance that CMYK prints have. You will also be taxed directly on your income, depending on how your company is set up. They can cost $1,000 to $2,000 for a high-end model. And how many will you be able to sell? By focusing on networking and providing exceptional customer service, Andre found himself doing so much business that he quit his day job to focus on his DTG business full time all only two months after financing his first printer. A number of Chinese manufacturers are also beginning to bring their DTG offerings to market, either directly or by partnering with major brands. Do you or someone you know have kids in grade school, high school, or college? Because the shirt features their logo, they are likely to want to actually wear the t-shirt and because you included your business name and short sales pitch on the t-shirt, they will know exactly who to contact when theyre ready to purchase custom t-shirts. One shop in Las Vegas purchased nearly a dozen Brother GTX printers to meet their DTG printing needs.
However, once you need more than24 garments, screen printing becomes exponentially faster and more profitable while DTG printing stays at the same level of production and profitability. With hooping time and back and for to the heat press, etc you may be able to produce 10 shirts per hour. There are no "mid-level" DTG printers. These DTG machines are high quality, and many DTG manufacturers source many of their parts from China (then assemble the machines in the US). Tonya and Troy Ferguson of Honeybee Print & Apparel have a very similar story. We help you streamline your business, keep jobs moving forward and your team on the same page. If the customer wants a high-quantity print with complex art, you don't want to sacrifice quality. First of all, youll need to allow for paying the operator..even if its you.. something.
You can also take advantage of the following resources: Custom Apparel Startups Facebook Group (Americas), Custom Apparel Startups Facebook Group (International). Most DTG printing shops use a curing dryer or heat press to cure their products. This is what Amazon attempted to do with Kornit (mentioned above), though on amuch larger scale. What do local stores and popular websites charge? For small orders (less than 24 pieces) DTG printing typically costs less than screen printing. How does DTG feel compared to screen printing? While Brother focuses primarily on the desktop DTG printing market, some print shops "chain" Brother's DTG machines together and use them to print large volumes. Lets also assume that those original numbers are correct and you spend $5 between the shirt and the ink and in your market, you can get $20 per finished shirt.
You can achieve extremely soft screen printed t-shirts with the right tips. This doesn't mean DTG printing is inferior. For example, the cost of ink per t-shirt will vary depending on the image that youre printing. Taxes are another story altogether. When most people think about getting into the custom t-shirt, embroidery, bling or heat transfer business this is the way they estimate how much money they can make: Sale price of the t-shirt = $25.00 Cost of the shirt itself at $4.50 Cost of direct to garment printing ink $1.50 = $19 in profit. This kind of DTG printing is a premium service so charge appropriately for rush orders, replacements, and reprints. We're overhauling our webstore to give you a better experience! A newer method that utilizes a digital print head to print designs directly onto different surfaces, DTG printing is in a rapid growth phase. Similarly, the cost of t-shirts varies, depending on the t-shirts brand, quality, and style. Screen printing management software like Printavo can be used for DTG printing too. Direct to garment printing, just like most types of custom t-shirt business techniques, has propelled many entrepreneurs into very successful businesses, so dont let Labor Costs, Taxes, and Mistakes keep you from starting your own.
For large orders, screen printing blows DTG printing away. Lets say that you can print a particular custom tee for a customer in 5 minutes. Kornit is based in Israel and has been a longtime leader in development and research for direct to garment printing. Printing a small chest logo on a light-colored t-shirt can cost as little as $0.25 while a 16 x 20 image that is heavily saturated and printed on a dark shirt (which requires the addition of white ink) can cost upwards of $1.50. Omniprint also offers turnkey business kits for DTG printing a unique offering in the industry. Their print and embroidery division is just one example. We expect that there will be dozens more manufacturers and suppliers for DTG printing in the next 5 years. If youre just starting out and using your social security number as your tax ID youre still in for something new.. you STILL owe the government(s) income tax. M&R's Maverick exemplifies the high-end DTG printer market. You can print full-color photographs and other challenging high-color-count art with DTG printing easily. Finally, youll need a heat press. A post shared by NAV Design (@nav_customvinyl) on May 21, 2020 at 9:14pm PDT. If it costs $3.00 to print a custom t-shirt that you then sell for $13, your profit that you pocket is $10.00. You can simply fire off a shirt and send it out without remaking screens. So you now understand the potential profits you can make with DTG, but how do you actually start selling t-shirts? What is the best DTG printer on the market? DTG printing is inefficient at high volumes. The graph below shows screen printing prices in red, while DTG prices are in blue. The process is fundamentally the same: an image is digitized by the printer and then printed directly onto the t-shirt or garment. They also have invested heavily into hybrid screen printing, which mixes DTG applications with a screen printed underbase. Pre-treat chemicals cost slightly less than DTG ink but are still a considerable expense. Next Post: How do you decide? It takes much more time to create those 5 screens and set them up on the screen printing press than it does to actually print the 20 shirts! Yes, even if you work for yourself you still have to calculate your labor costs in order to get an accurate picture of how much profit youre going to generate. They're the experts! To be on the safe side, these are conservative estimates based on averages commonly seen in the industry.
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