# Why Do Big Fulfillment Companies buy 100+ DTG printers?



## admedia (Mar 23, 2015)

Hey guys so I ran into this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tGVc1LF6IPc

Its sunfrog.com ceo and in the background you can see they have probably some 100 plus brother GT units... 

Can anyone explain why they would go this route and not get either kornit or aeoon? They have the money, and these machines can save a ton of space and also the biggest reason is the ink costs. Brother ink is super expensive and maintenance on all of these would be a headache.

Do they get some special pricing from brother ink that compares to the other kornit and aeoon inks? Or are they just fine with paying extra money... can anyone shed some light on this i want to make sure I'm not missing anything because I want to scale up as well but confused which way is the best.


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## NoXid (Apr 4, 2011)

My speculation, and it is PURELY that, is that it has to do with print quality.

Else it would seem that the monster-sized industrial Kornit machines would have advantages in terms of operating costs. Merch by Amazon uses Kornit (even negotiated some ownership of the company).

I know people are sometimes disappointed with the prints from the big fulfillment shops that use Kornits, and the like. Sometimes that is because the art was not prepared correctly and no testing/proofing was done, not necessarily a limitation of the equipment.

I'd be curious to hear from someone with inside info


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## splathead (Dec 4, 2005)

My speculation is space. The Brother prints a shirt at approximately the same speed as a Kornit or Aeoon (?). But is 1/3 the size. You would need to double or triple your production space to accommodate the same number of DTG's.


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## admedia (Mar 23, 2015)

splathead said:


> My speculation is space. The Brother prints a shirt at approximately the same speed as a Kornit or Aeoon (?). But is 1/3 the size. You would need to double or triple your production space to accommodate the same number of DTG's.


Well the 500k printers arent that expensive for no reason. Quality and speed is why they are so expensive. I have one of the 500k printers and I am just wondering if I should have gone with 50 of these smaller ones instead. My main concern at the time was ink cost. But the more expensive ones print a shirt in less than a minute for black and in 10 seconds or so for a white shirt. But the time isnt the biggest factor in the end its ink costs... but if they were able to get ink at huge volume discounts then I can see it making sense. Why have a 500k liability where only one person can operate it when you can teach people to operate a less expensive 20k printer.... you could print on lets say 5 at a time if they are in the same row and equal out to about the same print time as a 500k one. 

Brother ink is super expensive, thats the main issue. I heard some people getting around that and refilling the cartridges themselves which if thats true would be the best route then.


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## splathead (Dec 4, 2005)

admedia said:


> Well the 500k printers arent that expensive for no reason. Quality and speed is why they are so expensive. I have one of the 500k printers and I am just wondering if I should have gone with 50 of these smaller ones instead. My main concern at the time was ink cost. But the more expensive ones print a shirt in less than a minute for black and in 10 seconds or so for a white shirt. But the time isnt the biggest factor in the end its ink costs... but if they were able to get ink at huge volume discounts then I can see it making sense. Why have a 500k liability where only one person can operate it when you can teach people to operate a less expensive 20k printer.... you could print on lets say 5 at a time if they are in the same row and equal out to about the same print time as a 500k one.
> 
> Brother ink is super expensive, thats the main issue. I heard some people getting around that and refilling the cartridges themselves which if thats true would be the best route then.


When you were doing your Kornit vs Brother cost analysis, what kind of impact did the cost of additional space to sit the 50 DTG's and the extra 49 employees you would have to hire to run them?


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## admedia (Mar 23, 2015)

splathead said:


> When you were doing your Kornit vs Brother cost analysis, what kind of impact did the cost of additional space to sit the 50 DTG's and the extra 49 employees you would have to hire to run them?


Additional space would be around 30-50k more per year.

Employees would be maybe 10 required.. Definitely not 49. One person can easily run 5-10 brother printers at the same time. Those expenses are nothing. The big factor is ink. When you are doing volume such as 50k shirts per month, thats a lot of ink and huge factor.

Thats why I guess I'm wondering if anyone is out there who has multiple brothers if they get some sort of discount or if you figured out a way to buy cheap ink and manually syringe it in or something in their cartridges.


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## FBNick (Oct 21, 2015)

The large shops can have a single employee running a handful of machines at the same time. If one machine goes down, that employee doesn't stop working. This is actually a pretty common setup for the big factory sized shops.

The GT-381 printers in that video are fairly fast and absolute workhorses, so you don't have much downtime for machine repairs.


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## NZACO (Jan 21, 2012)

admedia said:


> Additional space would be around 30-50k more per year.
> 
> Employees would be maybe 10 required.. Definitely not 49. One person can easily run 5-10 brother printers at the same time. Those expenses are nothing. The big factor is ink. When you are doing volume such as 50k shirts per month, thats a lot of ink and huge factor.
> 
> Thats why I guess I'm wondering if anyone is out there who has multiple brothers if they get some sort of discount or if you figured out a way to buy cheap ink and manually syringe it in or something in their cartridges.


The biggest difference is the time and what is required for cleaning the printers.


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## splathead (Dec 4, 2005)

One theory on why he is using Brothers when folks here who know better don't think it's feasible is that Brother has some financial ownership in the company.


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## abmcdan (Sep 14, 2007)

I assume redundancy is a big part of it. ALL DTG printers go down at some point. It would suck to have just 1 machine. When I was doing contract printing I always had 3 machines.


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## Smckee21 (Jul 23, 2010)

I have multiple Brother Printers and 2 Kornit's. I started with the brothers and even with multiple printers I was unable to secure any better pricing on the inks. While ink costs have not gone up in 4 or 5 years, they haven't gone down either. The ink cost are so high that is why when we were expanding I went with Kornits instead, the ink is much cheaper, and the printers do the pre treating too so you don't need to o that separately and heat press, which makes the Kornits much faster. The posts above are correct too, one operator can run several machines at one time. When I viewed this original youtube video it looks like they are only running a fraction of the printers on this day...

Steve


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## AustiniteAdams (Nov 4, 2016)

They're in the same space as us with a fulfillment platform that hosts a lot of online stores. Lots of individual orders. Nice looking shop they've got.


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## goldenprints (Dec 23, 2016)

To have so many printers running at the same time, you guys must have had pretty large/ successful operations, how did you guys get so many orders and market, specifically for DTG.


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## NZACO (Jan 21, 2012)

goldenprints said:


> To have so many printers running at the same time, you guys must have had pretty large/ successful operations, how did you guys get so many orders and market, specifically for DTG.


... websites that are optimized to be seen by their target market multiple times and normally in different formats.


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## PatWibble (Mar 7, 2014)

Probably the same reasons I have several 13" Epsons making sublimation prints instead of one 44"wide format printer. Added versatility, in the same footprint for less money.
Yield is all very well, but when most orders are for one or two shirts getting a large order can put everyone to the back of the queue.


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## admedia (Mar 23, 2015)

PatWibble said:


> Probably the same reasons I have several 13" Epsons making sublimation prints instead of one 44"wide format printer. Added versatility, in the same footprint for less money.
> Yield is all very well, but when most orders are for one or two shirts getting a large order can put everyone to the back of the queue.


I'm not sure the difference of ink costs with your setup, versus a bigger printer... but I do know that the bigger DTG printers are a lot, lot cheaper for ink. Which is the #1 reason to invest in a bigger more expensive printer. If you have a bunch of little ones with 2-3 dollars per print, versus a more expensive one for .50 cents per print you will shoot yourself in the foot in 1-2 years.


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## JeridHill (Feb 8, 2006)

It's been our experience that the ink costs aren't as big a factor as some may think. If you purchased a $30,000 printer and you can fit eight of those in the same space as a single $300,000 printer, you are spending $60,000 less. Your output would be much much greater with redundancy and even at a higher ink cost it makes sense. Let's say the cost of ink saved you $0.50 per shirt on average, you would have to print 120,000 shirts to make up the difference in the original investment comparison. Then on top of that, the volume of output is so much greater. The $300,000 printer claims 100 dark garments per hour whereas a $30,000 unit could yield 40. So in the same footprint, 8 machines could do 240 per hour and you would need only 2-3 people to do it. This is why a lot of the large fulfillment shops use multiple smaller units. But I can tell you, when companies invest in that type of equipment purchasing, the companies they are buying from will reduce pricing on consumables.


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## splathead (Dec 4, 2005)

Sunfrog says they did $100,000,000 in sales last year doing fulfillment. And I'm just hearing about them.


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## djque (Feb 5, 2013)

splathead said:


> Sunfrog says they did $100,000,000 in sales last year doing fulfillment. And I'm just hearing about them.


 they probable did since everyone wants to start a t shirt business and don't want to print they own and make all the money. I know a few people that said they made $20k on these sites but only got $2k. I'm sure there leasing all those machines.I know that none of these companys ordered big orders from American Apparel.


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## Maxcat (Nov 23, 2014)

splathead said:


> Sunfrog says they did $100,000,000 in sales last year doing fulfillment. And I'm just hearing about them.


 I believe they have franchise stores too. I think I have one near me.


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## admedia (Mar 23, 2015)

JeridHill said:


> It's been our experience that the ink costs aren't as big a factor as some may think. If you purchased a $30,000 printer and you can fit eight of those in the same space as a single $300,000 printer, you are spending $60,000 less. Your output would be much much greater with redundancy and even at a higher ink cost it makes sense. Let's say the cost of ink saved you $0.50 per shirt on average, you would have to print 120,000 shirts to make up the difference in the original investment comparison. Then on top of that, the volume of output is so much greater. The $300,000 printer claims 100 dark garments per hour whereas a $30,000 unit could yield 40. So in the same footprint, 8 machines could do 240 per hour and you would need only 2-3 people to do it. This is why a lot of the large fulfillment shops use multiple smaller units. But I can tell you, when companies invest in that type of equipment purchasing, the companies they are buying from will reduce pricing on consumables.


Your math is close, but I'd have to disagree. I paid 450k for my printer. we print black shirts for about .80 cents on average to 1.00 flat. (standard 13x15 or so designs) Brother says its about 2-3 dollars for a black shirt... so lets just say that they DO give a discount and for the sake of this discussion its .50 more expensive still.

We purchased that printer because we do heavy volume, we print 1000 per day, or at least try to, and are planning on adding another shift so we are looking to print 2000 or lets say 1800 give or take per day. So it would take me only 2-3 months to start saving money versus their ink costs. (at most 6 months, still not a big deal)

Also our machine 1 person can run easily, having lets say 15 brothers is a lot of walking all day long, it would be hard to manage with just one person. Also I believe 40 black shirts per one brother is a bit much, I never printed on one but ive seen youtube videos where it takes about 2-3 minutes which would be about 20 black shirts per hour, not 40. If it truly is 40 thats not too bad then because 3 brothers would then beat one expensive one and thats easy for one person to manage.

If brother can MATCH or beat the ink costs, then I'm all ears. Uptime and redundancy is very important, dont get me wrong. But having an expert trained on maintenace on the industrial dtg is ideal, so we honestly have had no issues so far. I'm just curious after I saw that video, if its a better decision to go that route or invest in a more expensive DTG. Sunfrog for example has brothers, Amazon, Teespring and some other big companies use kornit etc. I just want some concrete answers as to which way is truly better...


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## equipmentzone (Mar 26, 2008)

More and more of the large print companies doing direct to garment printing that used to use the large $250,000 and up printers have changed over to multiple Epson F2000 printers. One of the largest now has over 200 Epson F2000 printers, two others that I'm aware of have over 100 each of the F2000's. Indicates they must have learned something from their experiences to change their production in that direction.

_


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## admedia (Mar 23, 2015)

equipmentzone said:


> More and more of the large print companies doing direct to garment printing that used to use the large $250,000 and up printers have changed over to multiple Epson F2000 printers. One of the largest now has over 200 Epson F2000 printers, two others that I'm aware of have over 100 each of the F2000's. Indicates they must have learned something from their experiences to change their production in that direction.
> 
> _


Hey you guys deal with epson in high volume right? Do you get discounts from epson as well for a bulk ink system? Does epson have a deal for bigger companies too? If not, going epson route is pretty funny. Their ink is I think the most expensive out of everyone and they require insane tube washes.


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## equipmentzone (Mar 26, 2008)

Ink cost is actually is in the middle range. The larger users of course do better. 

New tube flush procedure alternative was introduced by Epson last September and maintenance cost is now under $10 a month.

_


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## admedia (Mar 23, 2015)

equipmentzone said:


> Ink cost is actually is in the middle range. The larger users of course do better.
> 
> New tube flush procedure alternative was introduced by Epson last September and maintenance cost is now under $10 a month.
> 
> _


I do know scalable press uses epsonf2000's. Could you post here the prices epson offers for bulk ink, or please PM me the prices that heavy volume users are getting, would be much appreciated. Thanks!


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## allamerican-aeoon (Aug 14, 2007)

This trends are starting to disappear as we speak. Matter of fact I am working on couple.
They did it cuz
Pro:
1. Machine mfgs offered at very low price for printer.
2. Special price for ink.
3. Few break down still on operation.
4. mfg support team is on alert.
etc
Con.
1. Crazy Labor. Head count.Best assassin in Business killer. 
2. #1 means too many errors.
3. Industrial machine came a long way. Fast and quality out put.
4. Space
5. Consumables are at industrial price.
6. Desk Top printer's life term is very short. Replacement.
7. Mfg net cost is higher.
8. Nightmare of pretreatment process.
9. Countless heat presses.
etc
IMO
Cheers! Beers are on me always!!!


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## admedia (Mar 23, 2015)

allamerican-aeoon said:


> This trends are starting to disappear as we speak. Matter of fact I am working on couple.
> They did it cuz
> Pro:
> 1. Machine mfgs offered at very low price for printer.
> ...


Here is my response.

1. Labor is exactly same. 1 person operating industrial machine is equivalent to same person operating 5 of regular in same line. Not big difference.
2. Error is same, as its same qty of employees (although I do give slightly higher chance i guess of printing issues, however you have higher redundancy and less down time with more printers.
3. It came long way, so what? It is 500k versus 20k. If it came so far why is it not competitive pricing.
4. 5 regular machines take up about same space as 1 industrial, not big difference really...
5. Yes inks are cheaper, which is main discussion point.
6. Industrial break down too, printhead issues, nozzle clogs, both have similiar issues. Not to mention if replacement is required of printhead you are talking about 10k versus 500 dollars on regular printer. Huge liability issue.
7. Not sure what this is regarding.
8. Pretreatment is exactly same process, no difference.
9. Same amount of heat presses. Not sure why you think its more, we simply have pretreat room and then deliver shirts to printers.

So in summary, ink costs is only thing I see that is biggest factor.


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## allamerican-aeoon (Aug 14, 2007)

Respect your opinions. Book is book. Real is seeing it and touching it.
I will invite anyone who wants to see Production Floor. 
PTB aeoon Pretreat 1000-1400/hr by two person.
Real 15x19" 120/hr dark print with 2 person? how many people/machines do they need to do this?
Same size White 2 pass 5sec. High quality 3 pass 7 sec.
Both: Check YouTube.
Heat Presses? how many do they need to keep up?
Printer How many?
Pretreat machines? 
If you are interested to see REAL. Give me a call. I will bring you in where the closest to you!!!!
More Human involve more error is inevitable matter.
All Players have Auto WorkFlow software. 

Does desk top operation has this? Copy from other post.
***WorkFlow and Machine are the key component. 
#1. Fast print machine with quality.
#2. 
1st step.
Customer send design to Amazon/you. Machine computer already have Design/s. Zero time.
2nd. 
At your shop: Paper printer kick out Bar-code sticker. Bar code have all information of design, qty, size, address, customer info, $$$ all.
3rd. 
picker picks shirts and stick barcode on shirts.
4th.
on Printer. operator do not need to know anything but Push button.
put into dryer.
5th
bar code will printout shipping label. put into bag. GONE GONE

If anyone want to try this Free WorkFlow Software contact me. 
AA developed(In House) for Aeoon but I always thinking about smaller guys shoes. I have been thinking how AA could help small operations. With remembering that I was the smallest among all.
Set Up Website with Hotfodler, software.
Order Arrive(Reject poor art work). 
Bar code printout.
Scan and pust botton. No Ripping No computer open. No labor and no mistakes.
This bar code works on every machines on floor. 1-50 plus.****
Cheers! Beers are on me always.


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## allamerican-aeoon (Aug 14, 2007)

Below is real conversation I witnessed at Production floor between hundreds Desktop printer owner(D) with 9(now)-12(next month) Industrial machine owner(I).
D: What was your biggest production during holiday season?
I: 30,000/day units dark. Our job is mostly dark.
D: Thats very colose to us. How many people you had on floor?
I: 260. 130 persons per shift.
D: We had 800 plus.

Rest? Your imagination.
Cheers! Beers are on me always!!!!!


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## allamerican-aeoon (Aug 14, 2007)

BYW, Industrial ink does not require Heat Press. Tunnel Dryer only.
Pretreat also. unless shirts is low quality. need 2-3 seconds to press down fiber. This is one of the reasons why SEEING is real.
Cheers! Beers are on me Always.


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## JPCustomShirts (Aug 1, 2016)

Maxcat said:


> I believe they have franchise stores too. I think I have one near me.


I believe you are thinking of Big Frog Custom T-Shirts and More - Design Your Own T-Shirts - Personalized T-Shirts and Apparel


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## merchmonster (Apr 6, 2015)

Anyone know how shops this size, or like Zazzle manage the orders for the operator on the floor?

I understand the basic concepts:
Printer is on network
File is sent over network to printer
File / work order info displayed on TV

But I am curious if anyone can share info on the specifics of what software is used, how it works exactly, and how a medium size shop with multiple machines can implement it. 

I spoke to Epson today and they had no f**king clue. How do they expect me to want to buy 10 of these when they can't explain how I'm going to manage the 10 machines in a production environment.


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## admedia (Mar 23, 2015)

merchmonster said:


> Anyone know how shops this size, or like Zazzle manage the orders for the operator on the floor?
> 
> I understand the basic concepts:
> Printer is on network
> ...


I know how and you are not going to like the answer. You make it yourself. Hire a team of developers and come up with the flow and logic on paper, and explain it to a few developers and let them create it for you.

We have our own platform built and thats exactly what I did. No other way around it.

Having technology like this is what separates you from the rest of the pack and you won't find that to download as its all custom built.


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## merchmonster (Apr 6, 2015)

I kind of figured that it was custom development. Too niche of a market -
for now - for an out of the box software solution to exist. Guess we will struggle for a while until we get enough capital to develop a legit solution hah


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## FBNick (Oct 21, 2015)

I believe that it's a barcode system. The shirt design is assigned a code, then that's scanned into the computer hooked up to the printer.


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## allamerican-aeoon (Aug 14, 2007)

FBNick said:


> I believe that it's a barcode system. The shirt design is assigned a code, then that's scanned into the computer hooked up to the printer.


Good Point for Bar Code software. Good to see TSF members are notice how the market goes. Its been used y~~~~ears
However, Big Machines like Aeoon or Kornit owners used before small printer users started. This software can be apply to Small and big. AA has developed this software but only for NeoFlex and Aeoon.
This software does;
1. Customer Place the order on line. Include payment info.
2. Art work and customer infos are recorded by bar code. Graphic will go into Cloud or Big Hard disk with RIP processed.
3. When you scan barcode front of printer: Collect Graphic from saved Harddisk and printer will print. Operator will not know which graphic it will be. Aeoon/Kornit can see on machine's monitor but not necessary to see it. This process is instant.
4. End of dryer/Heat press: scan again then it will printout shipping info. All together 1 min process.
Any questions?
It will not make sense to spend Tons of money to develop for medium size business. Buy it is cheaper. Unless you have 100's of desktop or multiple Bigs. 
Cheers! beers are on me always.


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## merchmonster (Apr 6, 2015)

Got it, thanks for the info. Basically it's setup like 3PL facility. I have seen similar implementations for CDR/DVDR burning/fulfillment. Definitely overkill for a 2 machine operation.

Workflow I am considering:
1. Receive job in, label with job #
2. Display work queue from Printavo at DTG station on TV. Operator can also look up jobs on computer
3. RIP files using GC. Input specs into workorder for pretreat settings.
4. Place GC job files + work order in folder on Box.com file share for DTG station operator
5. DTG operator opens files on terminal + runs sample for manager approval
6. Sample approved - start production. Or tweak as needed

Notes:
Currently for DTG we only do orders over 12. No plans to get into the online fulfillment business in the next 1-2 years.


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## blobert (Jul 30, 2009)

allamerican-aeoon said:


> Below is real conversation I witnessed at Production floor between hundreds Desktop printer owner(D) with 9(now)-12(next month) Industrial machine owner(I).
> D: What was your biggest production during holiday season?
> I: 30,000/day units dark. Our job is mostly dark.
> D: Thats very colose to us. How many people you had on floor?
> ...


As someone who is interested in building a decent sized production facility and working out the best way to do it, I'm very curious with this as to what the big difference is.

Sundog say they run 5 printers per operator, for ease of comparison let's say 5 x Brother = 1 x Aeoon/Kornit in terms of output

So short of the operator needing to move a bit more I dont see any vast difference her in terms of labour, the basic principle is the same: scan barcode, put tee on platen and print, put into drying tunnel

So unless I'm missing somthing here the labour component here is very similar?

As I'd see it the main difference between Aeoon/Kornit vs multi printer setup is the ink cost. Aeoon/Kornit ink is far cheaper by default. But if (big if) you can get your Brother ink (for example, you could use the M&R offering which allows you to bulk buy ink) for the same price, I'm just not seeing where the Aeoon/Kornit has a big advantage?

In terms of capital outlay you get a lot more print capacity for your money with a multi printer setup, ie 1 x Aeoon/Kornit will be slower printing than the equivalent number of Brother's etc for the price.

I also think the multi printer has big advantages in terms of redundancy, ie if you're just running 1 x Aeoon/Kornit vs 5-10 smaller printers you have a inevitable situation with the Aeoon/Kornit where you will be at 0% printing capacity vs unlikely to drop below 80-90% for the multi printer setup. You probably need to get to 5+ x Aeoon/Kornit before the multi machine setup does not have a serious edge here.

Like I say I'm very open minded to finding the best/cheapest approach of doing this and I'm very surprised that there is no clear best option from what I can see, I suppose at the moment it's still a very niche market.

To me if seems as if you can get equal ink/pretreat costs then there are potentially more advantages to the multi printer system. I know as a salesman for Aeoon/Kornit you are going to see things differently but I'm curious as to whether you can provide concrete logic for the advantages of the Aeoon/Kornit setup?

Thanks


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## PatWibble (Mar 7, 2014)

Capital investment, finance and warranty terms will a big consideration. Big firms prefer regular costs to owning depreciating assets that become obsolete and require maintenance.

For a large operation the cost of each F2000 is not a major investment, and they become almost disposable. Use it and abuse it for 2 or 3 years on a lease deal, and as soon as the warranty is up send it back and get a new one for the same monthly price. If business is booming then get more, if things are slowing down decrease the number of machines. Always have the most up to date machine.

Production managers like the flexibility. More importantly the Accountants like the consistent monthly, tax deductible cost. What is an F2000 going to cost on leasing if you run 100 if them? Maybe 100.00 per week - .50 per shirt - before you deduct the tax. Easy to account for.


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## allamerican-aeoon (Aug 14, 2007)

Interesting conversations. I love it!!!
There are limited big major sub contractors. (95% of them are have Commercial Printers. Kornit/Aeoon)
Anyone believes that they did not own calculator? Yes they do and have many money smart people are working for them.
1 person operate 5 is myth but a nice wish. Also not a big deal.
Everything have Pros and Cons is real life.
Labor, Space, Investment, ROI*, Print Quality, Maintenance, warranty cost, consumable cost, etc.
Check YouTube videos many as you can then it will answer to you many. 700/hr print? 7shirts/min? If anyone has a doubt come to SGIA show.
Bottom line is
If you don't have capital go with smalls, if you do have capital and enough Jobs to be print go with Commercial Printer. IMO.
Future Screen Print is ScreenLess!!!
Cheers! Beers are on me always!


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## blobert (Jul 30, 2009)

allamerican-aeoon said:


> 1 person operate 5 is myth but a nice wish.


Honestly I don't see how it should be?

In our case the majority of prints we do are about 28 x 40 cm full colour on dark tees. On the brother they take pessimistically about 3.5, let's say even 4 minutes each to be printed at the quality we need so 15 on each machine per hour.

Over 5 machines that's 75 per hour. Let's say it's higher at about 100. Is it feasible for 1 person to load unload 100 tees in an hour? Certainly sounds like it should be to me, that's about a tee every 40 seconds. If the software is good and it's just one click needed that sounds feasible?

Re most companies going on the route of industrial/commercial printers as opposed to multi printer setup, I dont think that that necessarily means they are all correct, I've seen many printing companies we've worked with make very poor decisions in terms of capital investment again and again.

I think on paper the commercial machine wins in that it can print faster and the ink is cheaper. And certainly if you're printing a huge volume of shirts it would seem to make sense that you used a smaller number of bigger machines.

But as I say IF you can get ink for same price and the labour cost is similar I'm just not sure you're making a compelling argument for going the route of commercial printers vs multi smaller printer when there seem to be a lot of advantages to the multi printer setup which the commercial ones cannot match.


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## allamerican-aeoon (Aug 14, 2007)

By the way,
Happy Labor Daaaaay(long weekend) to all Forum members!
Cheers! Beers are on me always!


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## admedia (Mar 23, 2015)

allamerican-aeoon said:


> Good Point for Bar Code software. Good to see TSF members are notice how the market goes. Its been used y~~~~ears
> However, Big Machines like Aeoon or Kornit owners used before small printer users started. This software can be apply to Small and big. AA has developed this software but only for NeoFlex and Aeoon.
> This software does;
> 1. Customer Place the order on line. Include payment info.
> ...


You are only seeing half the picture. Merchmonster specifically asked how Zazzle and other big shops operate their barcode system. And yes I'm fairly certain it is custom because they do not just use the barcode for it to tell aeoon which design to pop up, this is super simple. 

Aeoon barcode system is not really anything special, all it does is types the name of the design into the aeoon without you having to type it when you scan it, so if you are a quick typer, it can almost be no time difference at all. Sure there is way to do automated ripping with Kothari, but again there is a lot more pieces to the puzzle than auto ripping.

I said custom, because the barcode should help in picking, printing, and packing. It is not enough to just use the barcode for printing as we also need to ship out the orders and track them every step in the workflow.

If you have this type of barcode system, I would love to have it as I am an Aeoon user. I have been given the aeoon hot folder script and its not very impressive and lacks almost 2/3 of the rest of the system which I have not yet been able to find and thus we are custom developing it.


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## admedia (Mar 23, 2015)

blobert said:


> Honestly I don't see how it should be?
> 
> In our case the majority of prints we do are about 28 x 40 cm full colour on dark tees. On the brother they take pessimistically about 3.5, let's say even 4 minutes each to be printed at the quality we need so 15 on each machine per hour.
> 
> ...


I agree 100 percent. The thing is the INK is not cheaper at all, its almost double or triple, so if you have the cash or even can finance it, the bigger one is the way to go because you will make your money back and continue to be making money forever. 

Its a shame that these industrial printers are so damn expensive though, definitely not justified for the equipment that is inside them, but hey thats business, you are basically paying a huge markup in order to get the ink cheaper. 

Now what I am curious though is how that deal is worked out.. do the bigger industrial size dtg companies just make 0 profit on the ink in order to sell their expensive machines? The ink is pretty much all from dupont but industrial is cheaper. Brother completely destroys you in ink pricing so its a no brainer if you have the money.

One thing people dont realize though is if you have an industrial DTG you have to be super careful on who you let operate it. One print head strike and you could be down in 100k in repair costs. You can just let anyone do it, you need them to be properly trained and on a higher wage to make them take care of the machine. But when you have cheaper 10-20k dtg machines its not too big of a deal as they have sensors and are lot more user friendly. If one breaks down, the repair costs are usually a few hundred bucks compared to 50k to 100k in the industrials. You buy an industrial DTG and you might as well marry it because you have to be there and monitor it, troubleshoot it yourself etc as no one, unless your super lucky, will know anything about it as theres limited training videos available and usually training is done only via a 1-3 techs in the entire US.


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## admedia (Mar 23, 2015)

blobert said:


> As someone who is interested in building a decent sized production facility and working out the best way to do it, I'm very curious with this as to what the big difference is.
> 
> Sundog say they run 5 printers per operator, for ease of comparison let's say 5 x Brother = 1 x Aeoon/Kornit in terms of output
> 
> ...


I'll try and answer this from my opinion. The industrials have bigger printer heads, bigger equipment inside, and just more expensive / higher performing parts. Lets say you do run the 1 industrial against 5 smaller dtgs. the smaller dtgs will guaranteed break down more and start needing replacements. New printheads, new motors, whatever else is in there as its not meant to be hammered that hard.

One industrial print head (aeoon has 12 total) is bigger than the entire cmyk plus white of a brother. Lets say you have nozzle issues, with the industrial its not too big of a deal if a few misfire, the print still looks good. With the smaller ones your entire design is scrwed and you either need to fix it right now or get the entire head replaced.

Now with that said, with brother you could have all the parts and print heads ready to be replaced asap, since they are relatively cheap to have. With industrial they are crazy expensive, like over 10k for one printhead so its really a big deal if something does break.

So if you ask me, INK is the main factor in this. However I dont see Brother or Epson EVER lowering their ink prices.... why would they? They are providing entry level dtg opportunities and rightfully deserve to make money when they sell the ink. What would be interested is if they sold you those 5 brothers for the price of 400k and matched the industrial ink pricing. That would be be something Id want to test out and then we can truly see which way is better...


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## bwmccall (Jan 19, 2011)

Cost of Capital has to be a big issue.

A large company can get a bank loan and finance a big purchase at very low cost.
A small company pays out the nose for a lease deal on the same purchase.

We pay cash for everything.


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## admedia (Mar 23, 2015)

bwmccall said:


> Cost of Capital has to be a big issue.
> 
> A large company can get a bank loan and finance a big purchase at very low cost.
> A small company pays out the nose for a lease deal on the same purchase.
> ...


Yes but thats not true in the big companies that we mentioned. Look up Sunfrog, Zazzle, Spreadshirt, Scalable press, and im sure there is plenty more. They all went with buying a ton of smaller DTG units instead of the big ones. Did they make a mistake? Thats the question I'd like to see answered. They all have plenty of capital as they make millions annually.

I also know big companies that use only industrials, there doesnt seem to be a clear cut answer. Only way to truly know is if someone actually tested both methods with their current staff and was able to determine it that way.


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## bwmccall (Jan 19, 2011)

admedia said:


> Yes but thats not true in the big companies that we mentioned. Look up Sunfrog, Zazzle, Spreadshirt, Scalable press, and im sure there is plenty more. They all went with buying a ton of smaller DTG units instead of the big ones. Did they make a mistake? Thats the question I'd like to see answered. They all have plenty of capital as they make millions annually.
> 
> I also know big companies that use only industrials, there doesnt seem to be a clear cut answer. Only way to truly know is if someone actually tested both methods with their current staff and was able to determine it that way.


Sales volume does not necessarily equate to profitability OR access to capital. There are lots of big companies out there that make no profit at all, and have all of their capital tied up in ecommerce platforms, marketing dollars and executive salaries. The guys that actually make the stuff have to get by with what they can get.

Seems like some people want an easy answer on this question, and there probably isn't one.


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## into the T (Aug 22, 2015)

i think part of it would be big picture break-downs and their effect on workflow

one large machine goes down = orders stop shipping
one small machine goes down = orders still ship

plus they probably have multiple backup machines ready to bring online,
and stock parts and repair staff to repair quickly and get back online

they all have access to whatever capital they want,
whether through investors/stock offerings/financial institutions/etc


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## admedia (Mar 23, 2015)

into the T said:


> i think part of it would be big picture break-downs and their effect on workflow
> 
> one large machine goes down = orders stop shipping
> one small machine goes down = orders still ship
> ...


Well orders still will ship regardless. Most big shops have lets say 10 industrial dtg machines versus a shop with 100 of small ones. Each of them would have a tech inhouse to deal with repairs as needed. Now part of it is how reasonable is it for a tech to try and fix 100 of them, versus 10? Next question is how easy is it to actually troubleshoot and fix issues on each machine. Just take out the part and put in the new one? Etc. Those are hard answers to really know unless you have experience repairing both machines or have techs who have worked on both and can say which one is easier and more manageable.


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## into the T (Aug 22, 2015)

here's an analogy that might help

company a has $1, they get 100 pennies
they can buy 100 gummy bears equaling 100g, if they lose one or two grams no big deal

company b has $1, they get 4 quarters
they can buy 4 gummy castles equaling 140g, if they lose one or two it is a big deal
so they have a weight advantage, but there is a greater disadvantage if they lose one

it really is that simple, risk assessment and investment aversion to each risk
it's like asking why cab companies don't have buses?


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