# Print on Demand Companies



## cuttingedgepromo

I am looking to outsource my printing to a Print on Demand company that doesn’t cost an arm and a leg and that also is reliable and does great work. Ideally they would let us supply them with our own inventory. I don’t understand how they can charge $15 for a $2.00 Sanmar T with DTG! Can someone help?


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## splathead

Umm, because good DTG's costs $20,000+. How would you propose they make that money back?

Look local. You won't find national POD companies who wants to handle separate inventory for every client.


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## NoXid

POD/DTG is expensive per unit, no way around it. No one is going to _want_ to deal with you providing the blanks, as it complicates how to handle misprints and is a PITA in general. If they need to make $X per unit, then they need to make $X per unit. In the end, you are really paying for the printing service, even if it is sometimes in part disguised as a markup on the blank. Many screen printers price in the same manner (though screen printing would be far cheaper per unit, if there were enough units to warrant screen printing).

All that said, splathead's suggestion to look local is a great idea. Big POD production facilities do not tend to produce consistent results, and can't be bothered to try to improve things for an individual customer. Your odds of achieving quality are better going smaller and local.


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## cuttingedgepromo

splathead said:


> Umm, because good DTG's costs $20,000+. How would you propose they make that money back?
> 
> Look local. You won't find national POD companies who wants to handle separate inventory for every client.


Thank you Joe! Much appreciated


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## cuttingedgepromo

NoXid said:


> POD/DTG is expensive per unit, no way around it. No one is going to _want_ to deal with you providing the blanks, as it complicates how to handle misprints and is a PITA in general. If they need to make $X per unit, then they need to make $X per unit. In the end, you are really paying for the printing service, even if it is sometimes in part disguised as a markup on the blank. Many screen printers price in the same manner (though screen printing would be far cheaper per unit, if there were enough units to warrant screen printing).
> 
> All that said, splathead's suggestion to look local is a great idea. Big POD production facilities do not tend to produce consistent results, and can't be bothered to try to improve things for an individual customer. Your odds of achieving quality are better going smaller and local.


Thank you so much! Very much appreciated!


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## splathead

One other point regarding local. DTG/screen printing shops are more than willing to do this. You just have to ask. They can even get your garments for you at prices probably cheaper than you are getting now, even with a wholesale account. And the bigger they are, the less likely they are to have to pay for shipping from the warehouse, even for 1 item. 

But you have to have volume. Don't expect great deals if you're shipping 10 items a month.


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## JazzBlueRT

Printify.com and Printful.com


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## cuttingedgepromo

splathead said:


> One other point regarding local. DTG/screen printing shops are more than willing to do this. You just have to ask. They can even get your garments for you at prices probably cheaper than you are getting now, even with a wholesale account. And the bigger they are, the less likely they are to have to pay for shipping from the warehouse, even for 1 item.
> 
> But you have to have volume. Don't expect great deals if you're shipping 10 items a month.


Thank you Joe. I really appreciate your input!


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## lreed

cuttingedgepromo said:


> I am looking to outsource my printing to a Print on Demand company that doesn’t cost an arm and a leg and that also is reliable and does great work. Ideally they would let us supply them with our own inventory. I don’t understand how they can charge $15 for a $2.00 Sanmar T with DTG! Can someone help?


Where are you located? We are in Dallas and may be able to help.


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## TurboThreads

cuttingedgepromo said:


> I am looking to outsource my printing to a Print on Demand company that doesn’t cost an arm and a leg and that also is reliable and does great work. Ideally they would let us supply them with our own inventory. I don’t understand how they can charge $15 for a $2.00 Sanmar T with DTG! Can someone help?


The lease cost of my DTG is about $500 a month or about $24 a day, or about $3 an hour.

A full color, full front print on a black shirt can easily cost $4 in ink.

The shirt needs to be pretreated before printing. A full pretreat is about $.50.

The labor cost per shirt varies with the print. Depending on ink coverage, a full color, full front print on black can take anywhere from 5 to 10 minutes to print. For the sake of easier calculations, let's say you can print 10 shirts an hour and your labor costs $15 an hour.

Just the print, calculating the above per shirt, comes to $6.30 per shirt. Adding the shirt at $2, that comes to $8.30 a shirt. 

$15 a shirt sounds pretty reasonable.


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## sbremner

cuttingedgepromo said:


> I am looking to outsource my printing to a Print on Demand company that doesn’t cost an arm and a leg and that also is reliable and does great work. Ideally they would let us supply them with our own inventory. I don’t understand how they can charge $15 for a $2.00 Sanmar T with DTG! Can someone help?



Well, they are doing essentially all of the work, and they have a ton of overhead, labor costs, maintenance, rent, insurances, an endless list of costs that go with manufacturing, that all have to be accounted for, meaning charged for. For folks dependent on this process, that's just the way it is, not to be mean sounding, but you probably would not want to do it without getting what you need for it. It's not just a $2.00 shirt with some ink on it...


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## Kathy2082

cuttingedgepromo said:


> I am looking to outsource my printing to a Print on Demand company that doesn’t cost an arm and a leg and that also is reliable and does great work. Ideally they would let us supply them with our own inventory. I don’t understand how they can charge $15 for a $2.00 Sanmar T with DTG! Can someone help?


We're a small business that does POD and would welcome your business and your inventory. We also do order fulfillment for an additional cost. Please call Dean at 330.351.4764 if you would like to talk about this.

Dean


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## splathead




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## glawrence

cuttingedgepromo said:


> I am looking to outsource my printing to a Print on Demand company that doesn’t cost an arm and a leg and that also is reliable and does great work. Ideally they would let us supply them with our own inventory. I don’t understand how they can charge $15 for a $2.00 Sanmar T with DTG! Can someone help?


Are you looking for print on demand on=off printing or larger quantity orders? Where are you located?


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## glawrence

glawrence said:


> Are you looking for print on demand on=off printing or larger quantity orders? Where are you located?





cuttingedgepromo said:


> I am looking to outsource my printing to a Print on Demand company that doesn’t cost an arm and a leg and that also is reliable and does great work. Ideally they would let us supply them with our own inventory. I don’t understand how they can charge $15 for a $2.00 Sanmar T with DTG! Can someone help?


I agree with the responses shown above if the DTG supplier is using a desktop DTG printer. But there are also high volume DTG machines that can print much faster, and the consumables cost is quite a bit less. You will get better pricing if you contact one of these companies. Asking them to store your blank garments can complicate things, it just depends on how many prints you are producing. Even if you want one-off print on demand garments I think the price for print only will run about $6 or $7. But it will require a reasonably high volume of work to get this pricing. Blank cost will be additional.


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