# How much should custom transfers cost?



## GN

I've been shopping around and the costs of custom transfers seem very high to me. So much so that I cannot understand how, really, a small business/start up can get custom transfers... case and point:

I have about 25-30 designs to start with. about 10-12 of them are "one sheeters" (too large to gang) .. Most of the these designs have only two colors, so I've been going off that. If I wanted 10 sheets of each design then each design would end up costing me on average $25+ ... so I said ok.. I'll order more sheets... Basically I'd have to order $800 worth of ONE design in order to get it to a managagble price point _per _design. I can afford that $800.. BUT I cannot afford to do that 10 times!! Sooooo how do people do this? I know not everyone has that kind of cash. I've been gettign quotes from the top vendors on this site.

At this point I'm tempted to make all the designs just one color because F&M has a special. (not sure about quality though)

So is this how everyone does it? They just shell out this much money per design in order to get the price of the complete shirt down? (I have a hard time believeing that) Or am I really missing something here??


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## superD70

custom transfers are best for small quantity customer jobs, not for starting your own brand. yes they are expensive but look at what it would cost to burn all those screens and print them yourself, they look pretty affordable now.

there are set up fees for each color on transfers as they have to screen print them too

F&M's special one color deal is for a limited size, much smaller than the full sheet you are after


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## royster13

I order a minimum of 150 sheets for anything that will be a stock design for me.....


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## wormil

GN said:


> I've been shopping around and the costs of custom transfers seem very high to me.


Relative to what?


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## GN

wormil said:


> Relative to what?


Relative to the average cost of a tshirt for sale : between $15-$20. 
If a shirt is $5 wholesale (USA made) plus another $5 is misc costs like freebies, tags, labeling, labor, packaging etc... Then we are up to $10 right away... If the custom transfer is $6 or more... Then I don't see how these companies are staying in business- or maybe they don't realize Thier losses and will eventually fail? With a $6 custom transfer it brings us to a $16 overhead price point.

And in order to get to a $6 transfer price, u have to but a ton of sheets, for just one design. My question isn't why is the cost of custom transfers so high- my question was, with this formula how are these start up companies that have little capital doing this -and staying in business? I've come to the conclusion that they are underselling and losing profits to the point that Thier business will implode as they run out of inventory. Either that, or I am missing something .. Like are most of these companies making Thier own transfers? DIY transfers I'm not familiar with costs.. So this is my second guess.


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## royster13

The point you are missing is you can not make shirts cheap enough if you are doing such small quantities...I do not think you can start with such an ambitious plan with money you make working part time at McDonalds....For 25 or 30 designs you will need 10s of thousands of $s....


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## GN

royster13 said:


> The point you are missing is you can not make shirts cheap enough if you are doing such small quantities...I do not think you can start with such an ambitious plan with money you make working part time at McDonalds....For 25 or 30 designs you will need 10s of thousands of $s....


I don't think you understand what I'm saying... I see websites in which they have 6-10 designs and are selling thier shirts for $15-$20... now I don't know if they are doing heat transfers or not but if they are.. I don't see how they are staying in business. I cannot believe that these sites are spending upwards of $1k on each design in order to get the design to a profitable price point. If they are... how are they doing it?

For the record I make about $75k+ year at my current job and have already sunk a great deal of money into my company. THis is my second comany and my first company I I made 6 digits in my first year and sold that after 3 years, so I've been around the block a few times and haven't worked at McD's for about 20 years (actually I never worked at McD's but I did work at BK  ). I've been working on this company for a year and just now got to the stage where I can order 20-30 designs to launch and after doing the math don't see how these other startups are fareing well. Either their math is wrong or they know something I don't. I believe it to be the latter. I don't see how a heat transfer company can afford or should afford to drop thousands on one design that_ might not _even sell ... to me that is not sound business. I can pay the piper and shell out $5k and get all my designs - in fact I will probably end up doing that tonight... but I cringe at the business risk I will be taking. Thank goodness for schedule C


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## royster13

I suspect many online sellers are doing inkjet transfers, cad cut heat press vinyl or dtg.....Or they are screen printing their own shirts....All which cost far less than 6.00 per shirt.....Also, I do not think they are paying 5.00 for a blank and 5.00 for misc. stuff.....

As far as spending 1,000 per design, I think you are way off.....100 sheets of a 7 colour designs will run under 400.00...

Seay Graphics Custom Screen Printing Heat Transfers and Embroidery
SEMO Imprints - Pricing
silver mountain graphics Ltd.

And without risk there is not much chance of reward..

But as a last thought maybe they are making next to nothing for their efforts....


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## GN

Oh contraire... Do tge math for am 11x11 design with just 2 colors that is good on both lights and darks AND buy enough sheets to get the price point down to $2 per design... U end up paying well over $400 and end up with a ton of sheets that may or may not sell. I'm not trying to argue, I just want to make sire we are talking apples to apples. 

Most USA made t's -that I've found- are between 4-6 each wholesale. I realize that u can get a white t made in Haiti for under $2. I also realize that not every company has hang tags, and awesome packaging etc... But in my opinion the ones that do fare better in tge long run. And I agree that I suspect many are not making much profit... But I suspect just as many are actually losing on each shirt sold. 

Ps the $5 fee also included merchant fees worst case scenario of$1.09 if some used American Express


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## royster13

I am not in the same league as the shirts you are talking about....I am not getting rich but I am making money...

I sell my 1 colour designs for C$12.50.....I use shirts that cost me less than C$2.40 each (and some on sale for as low as C$1.40)....I use transfers that cost me about C$0.75 each for 100 sheets....No fancy packaging or hand tags......I am up to 8 designs targeted to very specific niches....some tourist related and some event specific.....


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## uncletee

go with sublimation for your designs, you can print to order! good luck uncletee.


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## wormil

GN, have you done market research to determine if all 30some of your designs will sell? Not friends and family but potential customers in your target market?

Also, people selling shirts at $12-15, or any price, are not buying transfers a dozen at a time. They are buying in quantity or doing their own printing. I recommend continuing your research before buying printing and keeping an open mind as you are appearing argumentative.

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## treadhead

I understand you position GN....I've been trying to figure out how to make $$ with custom tranfers for a whitle now...lol. I do my own screenprinting and have my own line of t-shirts. My cost per shirt is under $3 with colored shirts which I purchase for less than $2 normally. I run a smal shop with very low overhead so I can easily get to the $15 price point retail and $7 wholesale. The USA made shirts are usually twice as expensive. If you are using USA made shirts, you may have to use that as a marketing tool to justify a higher price for your shirts if your market will bear it.

I LOVE the idea of being able to convert my designs over to transfers but, aside from the difference in feel between direct screenprinting and transfers, the cost has been prohibitive. With transfers, for 3 and 4 color designs, I could probably still do ok retail but would have a hard time meeting a reasonable wholesale price. I thought about transitioning 1 design at a time but am also concerned about the perceived difference in feel between those and the others that have not been converted. I do use them for custom jobs when I am super busy and at capacity on my screen printing press. I am able to pull in additional marginal $$$ by just putting somebody on the heatpress to press the tranfsers when they come in. 

I think the best route to take would be to limit the number of designs you offer in the beginning and increase the quantity of each purchased. Maybe pick your top 10 designs (or what you think might be your top 10) and go from there. You can be succesful using transfers vs. purchasing all of the equipment to screen print your own but you will really never be able to compete on price with those direct screenprinters out there that have modest to low overhead.

Good luck on with your new biz.....


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## GN

Well.. I figured out how to get the price point where I wanted at a reasonable (to me anyways) price. I was looking at a grid and seeing that you could only get ONE 11x6 (or larger) design on a 13x19 sheet.. I was interpreting that to be just ONE design_ per_ sheet.. so in order to get the price point to under $2 per design (like I wanted) it was going to run about $800 for ONE design for 2 colors... waaaay too much and seemed impossible for business's to do this and THAT is why I thought the prices were high.. however, last night and ALLLLLL day today I basically started from scratch with a 13x19 template in photoshop and figured out that I can get at least 2 sometimes 3 or 4 designs _per_ sheet.. when I order 50 or more sheets I end up under my $2 price point. I knew about ganging, but I was thinking it would only apply to smaller designs. Some designs I was even able to get down to .70 cents per sheet!

.. soooo if I did this correctly (I'll know tomorrow I guess) -then I see how it's done. I got all 20 designs done for a few thousand dollars but more importantly I got the costs down to the price point I wanted. If I did it correctly then I'll order the designs tomorrow (yay) and *hope* (fear) that the quality is what I'm expecting for my company standards. And... I will post a thread on how to Gang for newbies like me because man I was racking my brain for about a week!


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## royster13

4 designs on a 13 by 19 sheet will be quite small....I get a max of 2 on that size and sometimes I can fit in a couple extra things....Like a name drop or cap crest....

But I am still not seeing your math......If you are doing 2 colours 100 sheets 12" x 14" will run you 1.50 each (or 1.95 for 12.75 x 19 from F&M).....No need to gang to get them under 2.00 per design....


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## wormil

If I hadn't been posting from my phone last night I would have gone into more detail. I can only think of two companies off the top of my head that offer 13x19 and neither are very economical for 2 color transfers, for both you need to order around 150 sheets to hit the $2 ea mark.

Did you price with any companies that offer super-size sheets? Dowling for example, offers 25x38 sheets onto which you could gang 10- 11x6 designs, or 6- 11x11 designs. They have additional ganging suggestions on their website. Minimum order is 100 sheets, my price sheet is out of date but you would be under $1 per 11x11 design according to it.


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## vicsign01

as to customs fee, a nice declearation is quite important, good luck


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## GN

wormil said:


> If I hadn't been posting from my phone last night I would have gone into more detail. I can only think of two companies off the top of my head that offer 13x19 and neither are very economical for 2 color transfers, for both you need to order around 150 sheets to hit the $2 ea mark.
> 
> Did you price with any companies that offer super-size sheets? Dowling for example, offers 25x38 sheets onto which you could gang 10- 11x6 designs, or 6- 11x11 designs. They have additional ganging suggestions on their website. Minimum order is 100 sheets, my price sheet is out of date but you would be under $1 per 11x11 design according to it.


I did.. Dowling was more because of set up and art fees. I got a quote from them directly and did comparisons.


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## wormil

They must have raised prices considerably. I need to call and see if I can get a new price sheet. You would only have been at 76 cents per 11x11 design for qty 100 including set up costs a couple years ago. F&M also has huge jumbo sheets though they don't advertise it and I have no idea of the pricing.

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## wormil

Also, Dowling won't charge you art fees if you gang the images, unless they changed that too.

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## royster13

But Dowling does add a screen and film charge....


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## wormil

wormil said:


> ...including set up costs





royster13 said:


> But Dowling does add a screen and film charge....


I included them. On my old price sheet they only charge art if they do the ganging, screens are free on 25x38 sheets, and films are $25/color. My sheet is dated 2008, I called two-ish years ago for a new sheet and the person on the phone told me it hadn't changed. I know I shouldn't post their prices but since my sheet is outdated, I don't think it matters. I was just guessing they had only raised prices by about the same as everyone else which would still make the transfers under $1 each, well below the $2 target.

Companies I know of that do jumbo sheets: Barber, Instagraphic, Dowling, F&M, Air Waves, M&M, and Global (but their website isn't working correctly for me). There are a few others that do in-between sizes. Might also be worth calling Wild Side, they don't advertise custom on their website but they do through emails. Don't know their pricing but they've been on a big sales push the last several months.


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## mmonk

I resurrected this cuz...I just got a quote for 4 color process transfers from Dowling. $1.00 per sheet for my 10x12 design with minimum of 300(its called tag sheet printing)...1/2 price films with camera ready art...they do have an initial $175 charge for set. so for 300 4c process I am at $1.65 per design...add "real Wholesale" priced shirts and I am in the ball park with traditional screen printing. Not bad for shop who doesn't do 4c process printing...


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## GN

mmonk said:


> I resurrected this cuz...I just got a quote for 4 color process transfers from Dowling. $1.00 per sheet for my 10x12 design with minimum of 300(its called tag sheet printing)...1/2 price films with camera ready art...they do have an initial $175 charge for set. so for 300 4c process I am at $1.65 per design...add "real Wholesale" priced shirts and I am in the ball park with traditional screen printing. Not bad for shop who doesn't do 4c process printing...


Is that 300 of the same design? Can u gang different designs?


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## g.lupo

I started where you are at now, my opinion and advice take your best 5 designs and start with those. Buy enough transfer for say 50 pieces. only make 15-20 of each. if they sell than print more. this will elimate the loss of the cost of the shirt if they dont sell. id rather lose a $3 print than a $6 print and shirt. Just have blanks available to print up after they sell and it wil help guide you in what sizes are selling. Once you start selling those designs than add some more. I had many designs when i started but limited to what i though was my best. 5 years later over 50 desgins and a NeoFlex printer so I dont have any wasted left over. If your interested in DTG printing let me know.


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## mmonk

GN said:


> Is that 300 of the same design? Can u gang different designs?


You can. Heres a quick how it works...once a week they have a "tag" sheet printing means when they print orders on big big sheets they sell you an available space. My space was whatever I could fit into an 11.5x11.5 space. At min. 300 sheets its $1.00 per sheet. Best thing to do is contact a rep, mine is Diane Chavez...tell her I sent you. I get nothing but she'll take care of you.


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