# How to start a screen printing shop (college kids view)



## Printavo

Bruce from Printavo here. I wanted to begin writing more blog posts on my experience of running a printing business back in college. I went to the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and had not but business on my mind. This printing business turned into a software company that helps fellow printers run and manage their shops now, called Printavo I always loved fashion, design, skateboarding and computers, which brings me to my first point.

1. Make sure you love being involved with apparel, customer relations and have a business sense. These three parts are extremely important. Don’t get in the business, or any business for that matter, just for the money. I can almost promise you that you’ll burn out and end up hating printing as a whole. When push comes to shove and you need to finish and order at 2am or redo an order because of a client request, that love for the industry will help you get through those tough times.

2. Want to know what else will get you through tough times? A dedicated team. Before you begin, look for friends you trust, family you can depend on or both to create your business squad. These will be the folks you’ll be around more than your family and other friends. If you question any of them, pass and look for someone else to partner with. I would look for someone who’s good with money and can handle the accounting, a designer who knows their way around Photoshop and Illustrator and a leader who will keep the group together and heading forward. Each person shouldn’t be afraid to get his or her hands dirty and get a job done. Going solo in this business is definitely doable but for long-term growth, support, financial assistance and more, a dependable partner(s) is crucial in my book.

3. Once you have a team ready for battle, it’s time to look into your business plan. No, this step doesn’t mean creating a 20-page detailed outline of what you’re 305 year financial projections look like, but more so where money will be coming in, marketing plan and estimated costs for the following year. Here’s my tips on this from what I learned when I was running my shop:

– Create a Google Docs (Redirecting...) Excel sheet and create a basic balance sheet. The columns should be Description, Income, Expense.
- Fill out the expenses you believe you’ll incur. This includes: A printing press, a 4×4 should do at the beginning, dryer, washing booth, pressure washer, 6+ silk screens that are 100dpi, ink (International Coatings colors: lots of White, Black, Blue, Yellow, Green, and other basic colors), squeegee’s, emulsion, emulsion-safe lights for your dark room and emulsion coater. I’m sure there’s a few things I’m missing but generally starting printing kits has all this included you’ll need. Other non-print related expenses are: 500 business cards, logo designed by a professional (99designs.com) and 500 postcards with all your information and a 10% first-time customer coupon on the front (vistaprint.com). These expenses are all called “sunk costs”.
- Once you’ve thought of everything possible that’s expense related, time to figure out income. If this business will be your full-time job, don’t forget to factor in a livable salary. Grab a Tax ID from your states website and create an account at TSCApparel or a similar wholesaler and check out the garment prices. When calculating income, don’t forget to calculate garment costs per job. I’ve attached an example pricing sheet you can use to help calculate what you should charge per job. You should now understand the target amount of income you need to survive.
- Time to check out your market. We were located at a Big 10 college town, which has 40,000+ students, and a surrounding town. Everyone loved wearing our university color, making their own shirts for clubs, Greek organization, barcrawls and more. This means plenty of business we could tackle. I would recommend looking at your town, how large it is, approximately what percentage of people wear custom shirts and how many printers are already in the area. If these factors make your business look favorable then continue.
- Start thinking about your marketing plan. How will you acquire new customers? I would start with posting those flyers you purchased from VistaPrint.com all around town in the most trafficked areas. Then gather email lists from your address book and your business partners’ to mass email. You’re going to want to include a small percentage off in the email to entice them to try out your printing services. This was key to convert potential customers into buyers. Since we were in a college town, most people check their email, making this marketing method our most efficient (along with email being a free platform).

4. Build, push, reiterate. This should be your motto. You want to get your business going fast and as low cost as possible (we ever did without a storefront and delivered all orders to their home). Find someone who’s printing in town that can show you the best methods of getting your jobs done quickly and efficiently. If this isn’t an options, watching many YouTube videos so you can understand the process. The less errors you make, the better off you’ll be. This takes time but make sure you learn from each job.

5. Customer interaction is crucial and will help create loyal customers. Give them little treats inside their shirt boxes that put a smile on their face. This could be as simple a hand-written Thank You note or a lollipop. Small details add up.

6. Focus on long-term growth, don’t skimp to save pennies and do the right thing when dealing with customers.

7. Lastly, have fun with it! Print funny shirts for your friends and enjoy what you do. There’s nothing worse than going to a job you hate everyday, life is too short.

If you have any other questions, post them in the comments! 

Have a great day,
Bruce


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## Mr.Tee

Wow, great info Bruce. I'm currently operating from home in Racine, Wi. I would live to open a shop and build a winning team, it's my 5-year goal.


FreshTeesWi.com


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## Printavo

You're welcome!


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## isded12floz

Great info but readability is atrocious. A few taps of the return/enter key here and there would be wonderful.


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## Randallbee38

Off the charts very helpful need more info from u how can I get more info from u thru here or elsewhere 

Sent from my M865 using T-Shirt Forums


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## Printavo

Shoot me an email bruce[@]printavo.com


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## Randallbee38

Ok thanks

Sent from my M865 using T-Shirt Forums


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## nickbarry

Let me start by saying Printavo is a great solution. Being web-based makes it accessible from any computer/location, and also since most job management software is PC only that leaves half of us with even less options.

That being said I am going to be a critic and go over a few issues I’d like to see implemented. As someone with basic web development knowledge and running/owning a small-medium sized shop I think I could have some valuable input. Also I am just using the 15 day trial - which I believe is full featured but I may be wrong.

-link to authorize.net transaction key ‘help? icon’ broken. Simple instructions to log into authorize.net and goto account settings to find this number would suffice, no need to link to authorize.net for this information.

-should be able to set customer as tax exempt (and file tax id#) so you don’t have to set to tax to 0% every time you make an invoice for said customer (and possibly remove “taxable” option for each line - I have never had an order that was partially tax exempt)

-include bodek and rhodes products (just a suggestion)

-broderbros is now called broder-alpha now since merger

-Should be a formula to help you figure out prices of finished garments.
i.e. - G2000 shirts (costs 1.80 blank) - then you can enter the amount of colors and print locations - so a 2 color front, 2 color back, 1 color sleeve would be entered as 2/2/1 and you would have the printer enter what they charge per additional color and location and this will automatically figure out a price for the customer which could be manually adjust (I could take of 0.25 if they are on white shirts, or add 0.15 for prints that need to be flashed) but it would give a consistent price point to start with. I think this feature would golden and really automate the time consuming quote process.

-Personal website on printavo.com/your-company should have a link to to website. Since it is optimized for SEO, backlinks always help.

-Inquiry widget/ask for a quote button is a nice touch - it would be nice to see more options because customers tend to be vague and usually don’t know all the information that is required to give an accurate quote - see: Quote - Pylon Press Screen Printing - Fort Lauderdale T Shirt Printing

-Should be able to create custom catagories instead of just “T-shirt/Setup/Embroidery/Signing”. I feel like this an options somewhere but I cannot find it anywhere.

-Option to delete Inquiries instead of just “mark as read”

-I see that I can create a new category from the drop-down menu, but how can I edit/delete categories (either the default ones or ones I created)

I have only been using the software for 24 hours and have been looking for shop management software for my shop, and Printavo is the best solution I’ve seen thus far, but theres always room for improvement if you want my $50/ month!


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## Printavo

Hey Nickbarry, thanks for the feedback. I'll shoot you an email and add a few features this weekend!


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## Printavo

Tax exempt added! Authorize.net link fixed! More to come, keep you updated.


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## Inappropriate

Hey Bruce I'm just curious if you have a pdf of the pricelist for TSCApparel? I'm in Australia and am trying to call out of business hours because it won't let me start an account online.

Thanks x


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## Squashjv

Was wondering where the link for your example pricing sheet was I didn't see it. That would be very useful for me. Thanks


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## Printavo

Hey guys, here's the pricing sheet I had attached: http://blog.printavo.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/Example-Screen-Printer-Pricing-Sheet.xlsx


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## NESBOW

thank you!


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## Iconoclasm

Thats great information.....thank you!


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