# Seeking DTG/Silkscreen dropshipping service



## PAEnterprises (Apr 6, 2011)

I am seeking a partnership relation with a DTG and Silkscreen service provider to help print and distribute unique, low quantity apparel. Initially, the number of one off garments is projected to be relatively low at approximately 10 DTG orders processed per day. Whoever I work with must have the resources and capacity to expand as the number of orders needed to be placed increase over time (100+/day)

Alongside the service of DTG printing, I will also need silkscreen printing services for larger minimum orders. 

I will be supplying my own garments that will be shipped and stored at your facility. I will not be using your inventory. 

*What I am looking for is:*

Proper management with responsible, timely and professional operations. 

Quality of product 

Cost of printing

Ability to integrate with computer systems to retrieve orders/designs

*What you would be responsible for*

Retrieving orders via computer database

Prepping and printing said order (DTG or Silkscreen)

Product packaging and shipping 

Maintaining professional quality control

Managing garment inventory


This can be a great opportunity to generate a lot of additional business for your garment printing operation. Although I anticipate to pay directly for each garment printed/shipped, I am open and willing to discuss ownership and profit sharing. 

So, please contact me if you can provide the services that I am looking for and I can contact you to discuss details/pricing. Also, please post of this thread with any questions you may have regarding my requirements.

Lastly, please don't link me a pricing list of your retail costs for printing services. 

Thank you,

Phil


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## vinyl signs (Dec 26, 2007)

So let me get this straight, you want someone that has this equipment to, accept the art work and prep it, process it and pack it for a discounted price. keep inventory of the shirts you ship and store them in our space. What are you going to be doing for your part of the money?


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## PAEnterprises (Apr 6, 2011)

What my side will be doing is supplying the work through a niche custom apparel website that has a large enough market to generate ample business for the printer.

Alongside the hundred thousands to be invested in website development, market research, garment production and management, there will a generous amount dedicated towards a marketing budget.

I don't have the resources to staff printers/shippers, lease a commercial space and purchase the equipment needed. Basically, I would, with my own resources, drive a significant amount of new business for the printer.


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## chobay (Aug 4, 2009)

I hope you realize you're not going to be saving any money by supplying your own garments. It costs $30-50 to ship a case ground. Not only that but you will have to provide extra garments to compensate for print error rate.


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## loloxa (Sep 5, 2007)

PAEnterprises said:


> I am seeking a partnership relation with a DTG and Silkscreen service provider to help print and distribute unique, low quantity apparel. Initially, the number of one off garments is projected to be relatively low at approximately 10 DTG orders processed per day. Whoever I work with must have the resources and capacity to expand as the number of orders needed to be placed increase over time (100+/day)
> 
> Alongside the service of DTG printing, I will also need silkscreen printing services for larger minimum orders.
> 
> ...


No to rain on your parade but:

Deconetwork has a developed website that takes 5% max of a sale, so If the only thing you are doing, realistically, is providing a website and sales up to 10 customers per day( did I get that right? yeah I know the whole "in the future we'll be huge" deal) you would understand that 5% off retail would be on the VERY nice side by anybodies standard. I personally would charge you for the whole logistics side of the story ( inventory, shipping , packaging and delivery time-frames that might interfere with my own orders).




PAEnterprises said:


> What my side will be doing is supplying the work through a niche custom apparel website that has a large enough market to generate ample business for the printer.
> 
> Alongside the hundred thousands to be invested in website development, market research, garment production and management, there will a generous amount dedicated towards a marketing budget.
> 
> I don't have the resources to staff printers/shippers, lease a commercial space and purchase the equipment needed. Basically, I would, with my own resources, drive a significant amount of new business for the printer.


Any Epson machine will run you less than 20K, but you claim you don't have the money for the machine or store but have hundreds of thousands for site development and marketing? I'm sure I got that wrong.

Significant new business would have to be a less broad statement, If you say " I have 1.000 monthly sales which I would direct to you for 10% off retail" some people might consider.

regards


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## PAEnterprises (Apr 6, 2011)

The amount of nay-sayers and skeptics of these past posts are nearly comical. I am aware of the competition and market that I an divulging into. Sure there are a billion mini cafepresses, zazzles, cartels, decos, ect and that is not the space I am going to try and compete with. This was simply a post to get some communication open to discuss the operation in more detail with a printer who feels that they have the infrastructure to possibly make this possible. My intentions are not to sponge off the resources a printer would provide while I make a mockery of the minimal effort that my side offers. 

I am fully aware of the "possibility of something huge" factor. Nothing is a sure thing, that is obvious. To assume that you would benefit off of something that is immediately going to make you successful beyond your wildest dreams is a case of wake up to reality. This will not be a one way street but instead a collaboration of resources and effort.

The comment of relating a 20k DTG machine with the caliber of intended operations is silly. If I wanted a basement operation, I wouldn't have bothered here. 

You do have it correct the amount of money invested into the programming infrastructure and I cannot put any more funding into going blindly into becoming a printer with a shop that has an additional several hundred thousand in machines.

I clearly didn't tap into the right group of printers with at least an open mind to discuss something rather than claim the impossibilities.


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## chobay (Aug 4, 2009)

Arrogance is making statements like "don't send me to a website for pricing, I wont bother".

Let's do a little math, since you want to supply your own garments. Let's say you max out your projected sales. That's 700 shirts, roughly 10 cases a week that you will need to ship to your printer. @ $30 a case, that's $300 a week, $1200 a month, $14400 year JUST in shipping costs that you could otherwise keep in your bank account. Not to mention the cost of shipping the garments to you in the 1st place, or picking up the garments locally. 

FYI, most printers do not upcharge for garments. We make money from providing a service; not profiting on shirts. If you don't have the time or resources to print and ship your own orders, you probably don't have the time or resources to procure your own garments. Incidentally, I buy shirts by the hundreds, sometimes thousands. I can pretty much guarantee you cannot get blanks cheaper than me..

You have to understand the skeptisicism of customers promising orders growing "tenfold". If I had a dollar for everytime I heard that..


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## loloxa (Sep 5, 2007)

PAEnterprises said:


> The arrogance and nay-sayers of these past posts are nearly comical.


You are kidding right?
Did you read your post? around your last line "Lastly, please don't link me a pricing list of your retail costs for printing services." That's COMICAL! what do you want us to do? send you my cost list so you ca tell me how much should we split?



PAEnterprises said:


> I am fully aware of the "possibility of something huge" factor. Nothing is a sure thing, that is obvious. To assume that you would benefit off of something that is immediately going to make you successful beyond your wildest dreams is a case of wake up to reality. This will not be a one way street but instead a collaboration of resources and effort.


Sure I get that, but before you go into "give me preferential treatment" you have to build that trust, so first you pay retail and after you are given favorable terms, you don't juts promise and wait, I mean We are already making a living out of this, and most of us get the weekly visit that promises huge volume after those first 2 samples, and we never hear back.



PAEnterprises said:


> The comment of relating a 20k Epson machine with the caliber of intended operations is silly. If I wanted a basement operation, I wouldn't have bothered here.


1st with that statement you won't be making many friends around here

2nd Epson machines are run by some of the big guys you are trying to emulate.

3rd How much business are you prepared to bring in RIGHT NOW as a partner? 10 T-shirts a day is way below the epsons output, so I don't see the caliber factor, surely you don't need 5 K.Avalanches for that.

I cannot help but wonder if you have any clients or you just thought "hey, I can do this"


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## PAEnterprises (Apr 6, 2011)

The reason why I did not request a retail list is because that would simply lower the denominator to whoever is the cheapest. I don't know where this got mixed up but I am not looking to undermine printers by trying to demand an absurdly low cost without having the credibility to ask for that. I do not want to know your prices but to understand what you can offer and how we can work together. That is why I didn't ask for them.

Clearly this thread has became so muddled on what I am actually after that it has become entirely irrelevant. I wanted to find a printer who feels that they could support such services, support possible expanse and then we would communicate to see what we could do together in a reasonable sense.

Who knew that a simple inquiry would result in something like this. 

@chobay - The reason I would be supplying my own garments is because of branding affiliation, not really a matter of cost.


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## chobay (Aug 4, 2009)

By 'branding', do you mean custom care labels? custom hang tags? Fulfillment centers can provide those services as well.


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## WholesalePrint (Sep 23, 2008)

He motto makes sense to me.


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## jim55912 (Jun 10, 2008)

loloxa said:


> You are kidding right?
> 
> 
> 
> ...


We honestly get one or two of these requests a week. 

We actually did fulfillment for a pretty big company for a few years. After a time I realized that my price was way too low. I see people doing it, I don't know how.


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## loloxa (Sep 5, 2007)

I know, I just have taken an order for 15 pieces.

the girl called me up like 2 months ago and verbally asked me for an estimate on printing 100 t-shirts of the same design she had printed the previous month. I pull up the arp file look at the costs ( very small print) and I gave her an estimate.

She shows up today with 15 units and tells me if I can keep the price I gave her for 100 for this 15 pieces. This is the 3rd time this week.

I'm so nice I offer group price ( bring 60 pieces up to 4 designs and I'll charge you the price per unit of 50 ), but that is as far as I'm willing to go.

The reason price per unit is high, is because you invest more than 30 minutes, between receiving the order,talking to the guy, prepping the art and printing, if I wanted to make minimum wage I would be working somewhere 9to5 and be home chilling by 6 and not having to worry about clogs, ink price, margins and equipment malfunctions, not to say some clients and their baggage. how much do you charge for 30 minutes of your life? plus the wear of the machine and material costs? I'm dirt cheap if I think about it.

Also about costs, cotton has gone up 40%, if you work costs x 2 , a hike in price like this can take you out in no time, so when I see people printing for 3/4 bucks a shirt ( garment included) I wonder if they make any money out of it. Gas has just hit 120 a barrel, I mean does anybody think realistically that costs can go down at all in the near future?

About posts in tsf:

If you play close attention to the latest posts in the dtg section, less frequently will there be any tips or info and more often a lot of arguing ( I'm the first), it is nice to kick it back and forth an my GF says that this is the Printers facebook, and that is exactly what I'm starting to see , the community has just become complacent and hardly ever ( apart from guys like german13 and the Awesome posts in the DIY section) do you see any valuable information. We repeat the same things over and over again to people who rather just ask than actually do the homework and find what they need. looking over 3 year worth of posts I have found myself repeating the same thing up to 3 times ( and taht tells me I'm growing old by the minute), that is why the big heads of the forum are quieter than ever and the quality and frequency of posts has fallen dramatically.

I for one hold back a lot more lately about a whole bunch of info because I have gotten PM's asking me almost how much money am I making. you wonder what kind of prying eyes are just gobbling on our experience, and how little some posters actually share, not just discuss.

The guy who started this post could have gotten a list of referrals from guys who do fulfillment by just searching, but instead asked the question in an open post expecting answers providing no information at all, alas , "How much will it cost me to print something, which I still don't know what it is or how many will there be". In my storefront I do not shy away of telling my clients "think it through and come back when you know what you want".


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## brice (Mar 10, 2010)

Amen. The number of people who come here for free advice to start a business because they bought some used equipment is remarkable. 

There has to be a 2 way value proposition in order for a relationship to work. This is a great place for green horns to learn, but I didn't expect to join and have you give me all of your IC (intellectual capital, expertise) so I can under bid you. I feel like I'm in the minority in that regard. I've always been amazed what some people are willing to share. And they do it our of kindness and love of the industry. They should be admired and respected, not exploited.



loloxa said:


> I know, I just have taken an order for 15 pieces.
> 
> the girl called me up like 2 months ago and verbally asked me for an estimate on printing 100 t-shirts of the same design she had printed the previous month. I pull up the arp file look at the costs ( very small print) and I gave her an estimate.
> 
> ...


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## tchandler52 (Sep 17, 2012)

I can be used for DTG DROP SHIPPING CUSTOM T SHIRTS


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