# Cost of DTG



## aceacer (Jul 27, 2013)

I am trying to find costs per T-shirt of printing on DTG.

Say, I do not include the cost of the printer or the T-shirt cost and consider that I will be printing say 100 T-shirts a day using the printer, what would be the per T-shirt printing costs. I am guessing , I would need to add the following categories per T-shirt:

Ink Cost (colour)
Labour Cost
Electricity Cost
Pre-treating Cost

Can you please help me with the numbers for each of the categories above and also, please let me know if I am missing any category?

Thanks

A


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## scotney86 (Mar 15, 2011)

Are you printing on coloured t-shirts or white? There's a big difference in cost


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## miketa1 (Jul 21, 2013)

0% per 20 months ? What does it mean ?


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## allamerican-aeoon (Aug 14, 2007)

aceacer said:


> I am trying to find costs per T-shirt of printing on DTG.
> 
> Say, I do not include the cost of the printer or the T-shirt cost and consider that I will be printing say 100 T-shirts a day using the printer, what would be the per T-shirt printing costs. I am guessing , I would need to add the following categories per T-shirt:
> 
> ...


Welcome to TSF jungle 
Yes, ink cost is major factor. Biggest expense on DTG operation. Probably this is why you put this on top of your lists. Look at small Desk top printers. Epson, HP, Richo ----. They give away near free and collect $$$$$ in back end with selling ink. You will become a hostage once you bought their printers. 
In Dtg market $189-$700(?)/liter(respectable brand category, except Kornit $150?) ink price range. Annual accumulate expense can be a scary number. If you use lowest cost ink, light A4(8.5x11inches) size on light $0.30-0.40 but do not skip calculate Pretreat cost. Expensive ink? 3.7X more. It will be stiffer when it comes Dark shirts print. A4 $1.25- $1.50. Times 3.7?
Either you use Lowest ink or Highest ink consuming ink amount difference is very minimal to cover same area while lowest ink quality is often better. I hope it will help.
Cheers! Beers are on me always.


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## mumzie (May 9, 2008)

On our brother gt-541, the ink cost runs abojt 40 cents for an average design. However I've had designs cost as little as 6 cents or as much as 7 dollars. The printers using dupont ink are about 1/3 less when printing light shirts. Its impossible to supply numbers for you regarding labor, simply because none of us know your hourly labor rate or loaded costs.


Sent from my Desire HD using T-Shirt Forums


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## BQChris (Aug 16, 2012)

Ink is not your biggest expense. Yes, it is an expense to keep the machine running but, at the end of the day, it is what is making you money.

Labor: that can be negotiated.

Electricity: All dependent on your municipality. 

Pretreating: Depends on what system you use. 

Your biggest expense is going to come from your consumables. Be prepared to change the dampers often, along with the capping station every 6 months. While they are not expensive components, better to prepare for that expenditure than it be a surprise.


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## DAGuide (Oct 2, 2006)

I will also disagree that ink cost is your most expensive line item. Your labor expense is. Most shops state that they need to bill out labor at a minimum of $50.00 an hour to turn a profit. This is because you have to account for everything that goes into having an employee (i.e. taxes, any type of insurance, benefits, time to train,...). If you are a one-man shop, then you have to charge even more because you are responsible for doing all the sales, marketing, accounting and other necessary business activities.

Ink cost is important, but can be offset by the number of shirts that can be printed in an hour (i.e. labor cost) from start to finish and includes all the other things that go into the equation. I know a couple of shops that are pretty detailed and they have estimated the ink cost to be less than 20% of the variable costs. Labor cost is closer to 50%.

I do agree with Chris that there are other items that can bump up the variable costs - like pretreatment. I know some users that state they are putting down close to $0.75-$0.90 per a shirt in pretreatment using a power wagner sprayer. Money can definitely be saved using an automatic pretreater in several ways (i.e. less pretreat used, lower misprints due to improper pretreating, faster pretreating process,...). It is just an ROI analysis for each shop to determine whether an automatic pretreater is best for their business.

I tell people all the time that the most profitable dtg printing for garments has been and still is CMYK only printing for most shops.  Faster printing speed, less ink and less steps to do are the primary reasons for this.

Aceacer, good luck with your decision making process.

Mark


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## thedigiguy (May 11, 2010)

The Washington State legislature has never met a tax it didn't like. Labor, state fees, taxes, and such are by far our most expensive line items. This is true across the board. It doesn't matter if its DTG, Silkscreen, or embroidery. There are other significant cost. Cost of garments varies from week to week, ink cost varies significantly from job to job. When we are pre treating with a Wagner we find our costs are around 85 cents per side. All in all if you sell into the right market segment you can maintain a fairly high profit margin.


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## ironhog (Mar 24, 2009)

Absolutley spot on. CMYK makes money.


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## rlaubert (Aug 14, 2011)

What about the curing times and equipment? And why are you not figuring in the equipment cost? That is a big part of the process expense and you need to recover that cost as well as prepare for upgrades. In addition, there are upgrade costs, down time expenses, maintenance expenses, supplies like swabs, cleaning fluid. Time will be required for head cleaning, machine cleaning, artwork prep, artwork prep software (Adobe or Coral Draw). Then if you are looking at doing the dark shirts (which are more expensive to start with) you have the cost of treating and curing them, the pretreatment costs and the pretreatment equipment cost. Add to the pretreatment that the white ink is expensive and it doubles in most cases the print time. White ink also adds to the maintenance times of the printer and to the troubleshooting times as well. All in all, I have been doing DTG for about a year and have now found two companies that print cheaper than I can product it myself. So the printer and gear is being sold so I can put my energy elsewhere.


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## DAGuide (Oct 2, 2006)

I did not include the cost of the equipment because most of the dtg manufacturers / distributors are offering 0% financing. So you are playing with their money.

The figures I mentioned above do include the ink cost used for doing maintenance. The only true way to calculate all your costs is to do it over a period of time (i.e. 1-2 weeks). Then you can calculate the costs of all your consumables (i.e. ink, pretreatment,...) for getting the printer ready, print time and maintenance time. It is also easier to calculate your labor cost this way as well because there are things that will take your time (or employee's time) away from printing (like accepting deliveries, speaking with customers, packaging / shipping steps,...).

Mark


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## blzpowr (Apr 16, 2011)

Clearly ink cost is NOT the highest operating cost of a dtg operation. As noted by industry professionals (apparently being chastised above) in the true know, labor, whether hired or performed by the owner, is. And further, depending on the specifics of the individual business and it's overall all setup, occupancy costs of rent (mortgage), a/c, heat, taxes, insurance, maintenance,... all attributable to housing the business are often running a second place to labor provision.

The industry veterans above are clearly giving you good starter advice. If you're developing a proforma plan you owe it to yourself to do due diligence on these component costs. By asking the question, you've begun that process. Mark, Chuck & Duck Swagger, above, are giving you good honest advice. Good luck in your quest!


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## allamerican-aeoon (Aug 14, 2007)

blzpowr said:


> Clearly ink cost is NOT the highest operating cost of a dtg operation. As noted by industry professionals (apparently being chastised above) in the true know, labor, whether hired or performed by the owner, is. And further, depending on the specifics of the individual business and it's overall all setup, occupancy costs of rent (mortgage), a/c, heat, taxes, insurance, maintenance,... all attributable to housing the business are often running a second place to labor provision.
> 
> The industry veterans above are clearly giving you good starter advice. If you're developing a proforma plan you owe it to yourself to do due diligence on these component costs. By asking the question, you've begun that process. Mark, Chuck & Duck Swagger, above, are giving you good honest advice. Always be aware that there are some others who practice side show, smoke and mirrors marketing. Good luck in your quest!


Let's say ink is not the biggest expense while it is. Will you pay 2X more than necessary? Or near 4 times? I am sure you won't  because it is not the biggest expense is it OK to pay with you? 
Tell me "yes I will" in straight face  then I will consent and you made your point.
95% of DTG operates in home, Garage . No rent. Mortgage? Lol. Buy house to operate DTG?
4% add on their EMB or Screen print operation. No extra rent.
95% work him/her self, hub and wife. Part time after their full time job. Who do not afraid to work hard.
4% exist worker's extend job.
Did someone says tax? Really? Lol.
Anyone said insurance? 
Utility? $1-2/day while one shirts ink cost often more than that.
Common DTG operation is not so call big Corp on Wall Street. I am pretty sure thread starter is belong to majority.
Dtg is not complicate BIG enterprise. Do not scare to jump in because some are address endless lists. I like street talk and that's all I know.


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## treefox2118 (Sep 23, 2010)

Since it's mostly ink sellers here, I'll put in my 2 cents as a production owner:

The most expensive part of DTG is downtime -- when you have no jobs to print.

Ink needs to be used while fresh. Downtime means ink is aging itself into oblivion.
Labor needs to be active or you're paying for them to no produce.
Printheads need ink running through them to stay clean; if you aren't printing, you're shoveling ink through the printheads as a cleaning mechanism, wasting money.
Environments need to be tamed; even if we aren't printing, we keep the heater and A/Cs at 70, the humidifiers at 60%+. That's lost money.
The equipment takes up space -- we pay rent on that space. If the equipment is sitting doing nothing, it's still paying rent.

When we are productive, the breakdown for my shop's production is pretty easy to pull up since I track everything: we spend about $14 an hour in ink costs when doing CMYK, about $26 an hour when doing WUB. Our labor rate is around $20 an hour including overhead. Rent in our DTG room is about $3 per hour. Utilities is well under $0.50 per hour.

Non-productive time: ink is around $0.50 per hour, labor is still $20 an hour, rent is still $3 per hour, utilities are still under $0.50 per hour.

Store closed time: ink is $0.50 per hour (autocleans), labor is $0 an hour, rent is $3 per hour, utilities are under $0.50 per hour.

Mix them all together, and the net result is labor is the most expensive part of DTG -- productive or non-productive time.


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## 23spiderman (Jun 26, 2008)

in my shop, from my experience, the cost of the garment and the cost of ink, are the 2 highest costs. most of the time, the garment is marked up 75-100% and the ink is marked up much, much more, so in the end, both are simply "costs of doing business", and the cost of neither affects my success. i even made a profit 5 years ago when i was paying a whole lot more $$$ for ink from AnaJet. to be fair, i'm sure that if i had an employee running my DTG, the labor cost would be among the highest, but even so, i utilize part time labor, so i'm only paying labor if there is printing to do. right now, i run all the DTG prints, and my employee runs the screen printed shirts. my printer is still on all original parts (almost 2 years) except for 4 additional dampers that i use for white ink.

like Brian (Treefox) said, downtime is what will hurt you. if you don't have a business plan, or a client base, you have no reason to get into this business. build your base by outsourcing first, then when you have a steady cash flow, you will have a better idea of what you can invest into DTG, screen printing, embroidery, etc. honestly, my vinyl cutter and heat press is the biggest ROI in my shop. and i do a large amount of DTG and screened shirts.


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## charles95405 (Feb 1, 2007)

come on guys....this has gone waaaay off the OP question hasn't it? JMO


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## blzpowr (Apr 16, 2011)

23spiderman said:


> in my shop, from my experience, the cost of the garment and the cost of ink, are the 2 highest costs. most of the time, the garment is marked up 75-100% and the ink is marked up much, much more, so in the end, both are simply "costs of doing business", and the cost of neither affects my success. i even made a profit 5 years ago when i was paying a whole lot more $$$ for ink from AnaJet. to be fair, i'm sure that if i had an employee running my DTG, the labor cost would be among the highest, but even so, i utilize part time labor, so i'm only paying labor if there is printing to do. right now, i run all the DTG prints, and my employee runs the screen printed shirts. my printer is still on all original parts (almost 2 years) except for 4 additional dampers that i use for white ink.
> 
> like Brian (Treefox) said, downtime is what will hurt you. if you don't have a business plan, or a client base, you have no reason to get into this business. build your base by outsourcing first, then when you have a steady cash flow, you will have a better idea of what you can invest into DTG, screen printing, embroidery, etc. honestly, my vinyl cutter and heat press is the biggest ROI in my shop. and i do a large amount of DTG and screened shirts.


For exercise sake we can football all of the variables but they won't mean a thing to the Op unless he accurately does a proforma of his anticipated conditions once operating or inputting DTG into his existing operation.

For me to relate the ancillary costs in my operation and where ink stands in that equation would be just as misleading and self serving as Peters determined statement that ink is the most costly expense.

The OP has to look at HIS anticipated costs and plug them in to come up with an answer. I stand by my post(s). Lets deal in straight hard core facts here and not the hype, contests and off the hip discounts to a crowd of social media well wishers. This forum is an outstanding venue to communicate facts and questions regarding our great industry. Let's refrain from the smiley faces and LOL's and get down to facts. Hard cash investments by _*anyone*_ require that,.....and,....they deserve _*only*_ that.


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## Rodney (Nov 3, 2004)

Please note that some off topic posts have been moved out of this thread. I tried to leave the helpful information that was relevant to the topic while removing the back and forth personal attacks.

It's great to hear from all sides with different viewpoints. That's what forums are for  But there's no need to take pot shots at other posters to get your point across. Let's keep things professional please.​


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