# Advice Needed on Heat Press and Vendors



## true genius (Jun 9, 2006)

Hi All,

Thank goodness I have found you! I’ve read through lots of posts here to gather information and try to answer my questions – though excellent, excellent info here, I still haven’t found all of the answers I need. I’m looking for some great advice to move forward.

My sis and I are starting a kids clothing business and we have a line of tee-shirts that we would like to do (dozens of designs). Silk screening is out due to the cost and minimum inventory requirements. We just haven’t been able to find anyone willing to work with us on creating as orders come in. 

Questions:


Heat press. What is your opinion on the quality of heat press produced materials vs. screened materials? Excellent, fair, etc.

Is it the general rule of the business to require minimum orders for production regardless of screening or heat transfer? We would really love to outsource the production of our products, but need someone to work with us to produce as orders come in until our business grows. Can anyone recommend a vendor in Arizona (preferably) or the U.S. that works with their business customers this way with heat transfer (I understand this is much more user friendly than screening)? Working with a fulfillment center like cafépress, etc. is out of the question for us.

Can anyone recommend a great graphic artist for tee-shirt designs? Again, we would prefer someone in Arizona, but are willing to work with anyone in the U.S. that is legit and has references. We’ve interviewed lots of graphic artists when seeking a screener and we haven’t been too jazzed about any of them. We have the sketches, just need the designer. Our marketing graphic designer charges an arm and a leg and has no experience with tee-shirt designs.

If we are left to our own devices, is it easy to learn how to heat press, and is it cost effective? I’ve found through the postings here the best equipment to purchase should we have to go this route. I’m just wondering how viable of an option this is, and is it really time consuming to produce the products? Can you also produce hats and bibs with a heat press machine? Maybe this is the best way to go for us to start out and then outsource large wholesale orders. Does anyone have any experience with this scenario?
Thank you, thank you, thank you for any and all advice. I really, really appreciate you taking the time to help move us in the right direction.

Cheers,

Tammy, in Arizona


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## badalou (Mar 19, 2006)

I only heat press but my designs are usually pictures and designs (not words, better suited for screenpress) I can give you information about heat pressing. I like heat pressing , one of the reasons is I know how to do it. If I knew screen printing I might like that. What kind of designs do have that you can't do them? Lou


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## Solmu (Aug 15, 2005)

true genius said:


> Is it the general rule of the business to require minimum orders for production regardless of screening or heat transfer?




Some shops will have minimum order quantities regardless since they don't want to deal with small scale production, others won't.

The biggest problem is that even with heat pressed shirts you're likely to encounter the economy of sliding scale - five shirts will cost more per shirt than fifty, regardless of the printing method.

If you are going to be using heat press printing anyway, the equipment is relatively affordable if you can get the capital together.


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## MotoskinGraphix (Apr 28, 2006)

badalou said:


> I only heat press but my designs are usually pictures and designs (not words, better suited for screenpress) I can give you information about heat pressing. I like heat pressing , one of the reasons is I know how to do it. If I knew screen printing I might like that. What kind of designs do have that you can't do them? Lou


This is wrong information. Heatpress is perfect for words, fonts and phrases. Heatpress vinyl is great on black or white shirts. I am not sure what kind of art you want to produce but if you are doing multi colored artwork then you are going to do transfers. If your are doing words or line art then cad cut vinyl is the way to go.


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## badalou (Mar 19, 2006)

I was talking about hot press transfers in general not cad cut. Most of us don't have a cad cut machine and to cut around words is a lot of work. Multicolored transfer for designs is great.


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## MotoskinGraphix (Apr 28, 2006)

badalou said:


> I was talking about hot press transfers in general not cad cut. Most of us don't have a cad cut machine and to cut around words is a lot of work. Multicolored transfer for designs is great.


I agree...if you are doing words without cadcut then you are trimming all day long.


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## true genius (Jun 9, 2006)

Thanks everyone, for your replies. Our designs consist of both images and letters, some only images, but the bulk also include letters. We are doing anywhere between 50 - 80 designs. We have capital to purchase the equipment with non-industrial machines. I looked on a web site of a company that I found a lot of reference to in the posts and their smaller machines are reasonable enough - much, much more than screening equipment that I've researched. Night and day really.

Does using the plastisol transfer and vinyl transfer (I understand very close to looking like screen printing) and the cad cutting require a lot of instruction? We're willing to put the money in to get what we need with heat transfer if it doesn't take us a year to learn and an arm and a leg to do it.

Thanks!

Tammy


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## Rodney (Nov 3, 2004)

> What is your opinion on the quality of heat press produced materials vs. screened materials? Excellent, fair, etc.


I think screen printing still offers the best quality and is the standard that you'll see in most retail outlets. Heat Press has come a long way and with vinyl, plastisol transfers, quality equipment, you can almost not tell the difference sometimes.



> s it the general rule of the business to require minimum orders for production regardless of screening or heat transfer?


Screen printing usually requires a minimum order (I've seen as low as 6, but 12 and 24 pieces is more common). This is because of the setup time involved in running a job. Once the job is setup once, it's easy to run many pieces. 

Usually, the more you run, the better your pricing will be (sliding scale).

I'm not sure how it works with heat press designs, but I don't think I've heard of a minimum order. I'm guessing that the pricing would also be on a sliding scale (you might pay pretty close to retail if you are printing just ONE t-shirt rather than if you were printing 20). 



> We would really love to outsource the production of our products, but need someone to work with us to produce as orders come in until our business grows. Can anyone recommend a vendor in Arizona (preferably) or the U.S. that works with their business customers this way with heat transfer (I understand this is much more user friendly than screening)? Working with a fulfillment center like cafépress, etc. is out of the question for us


What you described is exactly what CafePress does, and does well. Actually, what you just described is what a printing and fulfillment service does.

Why are those services out of the question? Sounds like exactly what you need.

I wouldn't say heat press is more "user friendly" than screen printing. But one big advantage heat press has over screen printing is that you can print on demand (or as orders come in), rather than having to print shirts in advance and keep them in inventory.



> Can anyone recommend a great graphic artist for tee-shirt designs? Again, we would prefer someone in Arizona, but are willing to work with anyone in the U.S. that is legit and has references. We’ve interviewed lots of graphic artists when seeking a screener and we haven’t been too jazzed about any of them.


Sometimes that's a benefit to using a screen printer. The good ones have their own in house art department that can turn your sketches and idea into "reality" and they are trained to make t-shirts look good.

As you've probably found out "great graphic artist" is a very relative term. What someone else thinks is great, you may not be jazzed by at all. 

One way to get a lot of graphic artists bidding on your project (you see the graphic bids before you award the prize amount) is to work with a company like http://www.designoutpost.com. You post your project description, the amount you want to pay (they have suggested minimums) and then some of the most talented graphic artists around the world submit bids (in the form of actual design entries to your specs) for you to select from. You can even comment on the entries as they come in.



> f we are left to our own devices, is it easy to learn how to heat press, and is it cost effective? I’ve found through the postings here the best equipment to purchase should we have to go this route. I’m just wondering how viable of an option this is, and is it really time consuming to produce the products? Can you also produce hats and bibs with a heat press machine? Maybe this is the best way to go for us to start out and then outsource large wholesale orders. Does anyone have any experience with this scenario?


Many people in this forum heat press their own designs for their online retail sales. It can definitely be done.

:welcome:


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## Solmu (Aug 15, 2005)

true genius said:


> We are doing anywhere between 50 - 80 designs. We have capital to purchase the equipment with non-industrial machines.


If you mean 50-80 pieces of one design, that's good - while some screenprinting shops have a minimum of 100 or 144 pieces, some wholesalers will only want to sell cases of 72 blank t-shirts, etc. the minimums in this industry are frequently 24 pieces. With say 50 pieces it won't be hard to find someone to do business with, whatever route you decide to take.

If you mean 50-80 different looking designs, then that second sentence about having the capital is probably going to be extremely relevant - that would be no problem (well, a bit hard to organise, but no _major_ problem ) to do yourself, but it would be a problem to outsource. Although if you wanted to use a service like Cafe Press, that would also obviously be well suited - it takes a lot of the hassle out of managing such a large image bank, and they're fine with printing one-offs.

Either way, if you are looking at heat pressing the shirts regardless of whether you do them in house or outsource, and you have the money to buy the equipment... it would be well worth writing up a business plan (to make sure you're not just putting money into a black hole), and seriously considering purchasing the equipment yourself.

While you don't want to buy crappy home-made equipment, you can start at the lower end and work your way up as you make more money if that's how you want to do it.


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## true genius (Jun 9, 2006)

I don't want to use Cafepress because we are starting a whole business where we will eventually be adding other products and an entirely different clothing line. The tee-shirt side is just the beginning and will not be the whole business.

With Cafepress, we do not control the level of customer service, the packaging or messaging. I'm not willing to give that up. That's all part of branding a company.

From everything I've read and all of your very helpful, and much appreciated advice, I think we are going to invest in the equipment and do it in house via heat transfer. It seems very cost effective compared to screening and will allow us to control out inventory. We just need to learn more about the best equipment and how to cut out and use vinyl letters for a more screened look, especially on colored shirts.

Thanks again for all of your help. Any other commenst are welcome!

Cheers,

Tammy


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## Solmu (Aug 15, 2005)

true genius said:


> With Cafepress, we do not control the level of customer service, the packaging or messaging. I'm not willing to give that up. That's all part of branding a company.


Fair enough - it sounds like in general you'd be happier having a level of control that you're only going to get if you produce the actual product in house (there's nothing wrong with either approach - I am a control freak, so I like to handle everything I can myself, others will outsource because if you can let that part go it's probably going to be more practical in the long run).



true genius said:


> I think we are going to invest in the equipment and do it in house via heat transfer. It seems very cost effective compared to screening and will allow us to control out inventory.


Since you are planning on starting with "dozens of designs", then yes, this is true. A small startup probably wouldn't want to have more than a single dozen if they were going to choose screenprinting.

Screenprinting is very cost effective for medium to large print runs, but not at all cost effective for one-offs and small runs of designs. A company starting out with a lot of different designs that they wanted to keep on hand to reprint, would need a lot of money to use screenprinting as their method (say you had 20 designs, each of which was four colours - that's 80 screens you're going to have to buy (at a cost of a few thousand dollars) before you've even started printing the shirts).

Heat press on the other hand, you need a press, a printer, some paper, and some blanks. That's not going to cost you much, and you expand your materials as you need to since you don't need to print in advance. Even when adding vinyl into the equation it's still easy enough.



true genius said:


> We just need to learn more about the best equipment and how to cut out and use vinyl letters for a more screened look, especially on colored shirts.


If you browse/search the forums you should find some good advice on which specific equipment is recommended, and what products to use with it (there was a thread titled something like "Which brand of heat press to buy?" for example).


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## Solmu (Aug 15, 2005)

Thread: what press are you using and why?


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