# plastisol transfers not cost-effective?



## MikeKnight (Nov 24, 2007)

First I would like to thanks everyone in here for helping newbies like me progress in this business!

I'm now considering plastisol transfers as a solution to print my shirts. Everything about them seem to work for me ,but I spoke to some people who told me they might not be cost-effective. I've heard they can be expensive since I need a lot of transfers of different logos. (maximum 3 colors)

From your experience, what should approx. be the cost per transfer? (I heard they can go as much as 8$ )

I know it depends on different factors but I would like to hear from your experience.

Thx!!


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## badalou (Mar 19, 2006)

MikeKnight said:


> First I would like to thanks everyone in here for helping newbies like me progress in this business!
> 
> I'm now considering plastisol transfers as a solution to print my shirts. Everything about them seem to work for me ,but I spoke to some people who told me they might not be cost-effective. I've heard they can be expensive since I need a lot of transfers of different logos. (maximum 3 colors)
> 
> ...


I think they are very cost effective. As for cost it is based on number of colors and the quantity you buy. Things that amke the price go down is ganging multiple immages on one sheet. A $8. price point would tell me that it may have 5 or 6 colrs and you are buying a small amount.. Also take in to ac**** the labor. I keep telling this story.. but I did 700 shirts. I had 290 transfers made of 6 designes and some were ganged. They were one color. my average cost was 68 cents each per shirt plus the shirt. I did 2 shirts in 1.5 minutes average pressing time.. see video on youtube.


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## Moo Spot Prints (Jul 16, 2006)

Wanna know how much it'll cost? Go to a printer's web page and look! They'll tell you up front the prices.

If you gang up the images (assuming that the colors are the same) you can drive the price down considerably. Pay attention as some printers charge extra for ganged images.

The primary benefit to transfers is that you can buy them and then press them on different shirts (colors, styles, etc) in the quantities that you need. 

That's another way to save money. Only need 50 pcs of a design right now but know you'll be printing more in the future? Order a couple hundred and drive down the per unit cost.


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## Leatherneck (Jan 18, 2008)

Moo Spot Prints said:


> Wanna know how much it'll cost? Go to a printer's web page and look! They'll tell you up front the prices.
> 
> If you gang up the images (assuming that the colors are the same) you can drive the price down considerably. Pay attention as some printers charge extra for ganged images.
> 
> ...


*wow good advice guys, i am just now learning about plastisol transfers and was needing some information like this for reference  thank you so much*


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## MikeKnight (Nov 24, 2007)

Thanks for your answers! 

If I buy hundreds of plastisol transfers can I store them and use them only in 6 month? 1 year?? more??

Are they gonna "stick" as much to the shirts after some time in storage???


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## Moo Spot Prints (Jul 16, 2006)

MikeKnight said:


> If I buy hundreds of plastisol transfers can I store them and use them only in 6 month? 1 year?? more??
> 
> Are they gonna "stick" as much to the shirts after some time in storage???


They last for quite a while if stored properly. There have been several threads about this. I think someone pressed some transfers that were over 10 years old without trouble.


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## mrdavid (Sep 14, 2007)

yes you can I have gotten transfers that where made in the 90s and still like just as nice as if I got new


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## Buechee (Dec 22, 2005)

MikeKnight said:


> Thanks for your answers!
> 
> If I buy hundreds of plastisol transfers can I store them and use them only in 6 month? 1 year?? more??
> 
> Are they gonna "stick" as much to the shirts after some time in storage???


Yes. I've had transfers over a yr. old and they worked fine. I keep mine in the basement where my press is. That is the coolest part of our house and it does not get tooo cold in the winter.


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## rrc62 (Jun 2, 2007)

It really depends on your market. Locally, they are not cost effective for much less than 50 pieces. Local printers will print 12 pieces, two colors for as little as $4.50 to the public which includes the shirt. Some don't even charge screen fees. Transfers in small quantities can be more than that alone.


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## badalou (Mar 19, 2006)

rrc62 said:


> It really depends on your market. Locally, they are not cost effective for much less than 50 pieces. Local printers will print 12 pieces, two colors for as little as $4.50 to the public which includes the shirt. Some don't even charge screen fees. Transfers in small quantities can be more than that alone.


The problem with your answer Ross is you said local printers. There are many areas that don't have local printers and there are some places like where I live that have 2 within a close driving area and they don't make transfers. Not everyone is in a large city.


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## Leatherneck (Jan 18, 2008)

badalou said:


> The problem with your answer Ross is you said local printers. There are many areas that don't have local printers and there are some places like where I live that have 2 within a close driving area and they don't make transfers. Not everyone is in a large city.


*I have two local printers near me but neither of them make transfers. Where I live is not a city by no means we're a town of 15,000  . *


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## rrc62 (Jun 2, 2007)

Like I said, it depends on your market. If you have no competition, you're lucky. I'm not in a large city and the locals don't print transfers. They will print a white, two color shirt in small quantities to the public for as little as $4.50, so in this area, I have to have quantities of 50+ to make any money using plastisol transfers. Cost of transfer + cost of shirt can exceed $4.50 unless you're buying transfers in large quantity. Fortunately, that end of the business is not my primary focus, but ever now and then I'll get a large quantity job.


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## badalou (Mar 19, 2006)

I can do 24 single color design on a colored shirt for $3.75. (includes shirt) 2 colors same quantity $5.26. Now that price drops if I can use an image design that is ganged. If I did 2 on a sheet (Normally 11x 11) single color would be $2.85 and 2 color would be $3.65. Now you add quatity to order. Using Ross's number of 50. I can do single design $3.10 and 2 color for $4.25. Now add the ganging situation and you can see that it is very cost effective. I did 700 shirts and average cost was 68 cents per sheet. 3 designs on sheet and one color.


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## Moo Spot Prints (Jul 16, 2006)

badalou said:


> I can do 24 single color design on a colored shirt for $3.75. (includes shirt)


I hope those are just your material costs!



badalou said:


> I did 700 shirts and average cost was 68 cents per sheet. 3 designs on sheet and one color.


I can't see how pressing 700 shirts is cost effective unless you have multiple presses. I would think it would be a lot cheaper to sub it out to screen printer for large quantities, no? I mean, you're effectively doing the work twice with transfers.


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## badalou (Mar 19, 2006)

Moo Spot Prints said:


> I hope those are just your material costs!Yes they are.
> 
> 
> 
> I can't see how pressing 700 shirts is cost effective unless you have multiple presses. I would think it would be a lot cheaper to sub it out to screen printer for large quantities, no? I mean, you're effectively doing the work twice with transfers.


What do you mean twice.. I put the transfer on and pressed. 
As i work alone.. I did 700 shirts in 14 hours. I made $2100 profit.. That equals $150. per hour. Worked for me..


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## rrc62 (Jun 2, 2007)

You just need to figure out your magic number. Mine is 50. Less than that and to be price competitive, there is not enough profit to touch the job. Over 50, I can beat the competition and make money.


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## Leatherneck (Jan 18, 2008)

badalou said:


> What do you mean twice.. I put the transfer on and pressed.
> As i work alone.. I did 700 shirts in 14 hours. I made $2100 profit.. That equals $150. per hour. Worked for me..


*150.00 per hour would work for me also, definately sounds pretty cost effective.. *


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## Moo Spot Prints (Jul 16, 2006)

badalou said:


> What do you mean twice.. I put the transfer on and pressed.
> As i work alone.. I did 700 shirts in 14 hours. I made $2100 profit.. That equals $150. per hour. Worked for me..


You are doing it on the shirts and the printer is doing it on on the transfers. 2x the work. Seems to me you could avoid doing it yourself and make the same $2100 (or slightly less) by contracting it out.


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## aamon17 (Jan 30, 2007)

Moo Spot Prints said:


> You are doing it on the shirts and the printer is doing it on on the transfers. 2x the work. Seems to me you could avoid doing it yourself and make the same $2100 (or slightly less) by contracting it out.


I have to agree. There are many places that will do a 2-color design on 700 dark tees for an avg of $4.00 each (s-3x). I'm assuming Lou is selling his for about $6.75 to clear that $2100 profit after 14 hours of work. Well, you could email the screen printer the file, ask them not to include ANYTHING in their shipped shirts that identifies them as the printer, and still sell them for $6.75. You make $1,925 for the 2 minutes it took to email the file & wait for delivery!!!! 

I did the exact same thing on a order of 300 shirts. I got paid handsomely for being the middle man!


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## treadhead (Jul 26, 2006)

rrc62 said:


> It really depends on your market. Locally, they are not cost effective for much less than 50 pieces. Local printers will print 12 pieces, two colors for as little as $4.50 to the public which includes the shirt. Some don't even charge screen fees. Transfers in small quantities can be more than that alone.


Are you talking about screenprinters?? 

I've never run across anybody locally that will do 100 2 color shirts for $4.50 including the shirt..let alone 12 shirts! 

I'm sure glad I'm not in your area...


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## badalou (Mar 19, 2006)

aamon17 said:


> I have to agree. There are many places that will do a 2-color design on 700 dark tees for an avg of $4.00 each (s-3x). I'm assuming Lou is selling his for about $6.75 to clear that $2100 profit after 14 hours of work. Well, you could email the screen printer the file, ask them not to include ANYTHING in their shipped shirts that identifies them as the printer, and still sell them for $6.75. You make $1,925 for the 2 minutes it took to email the file & wait for delivery!!!!
> 
> I did the exact same thing on a order of 300 shirts. I got paid handsomely for being the middle man!


Actually my total cost was $2.75 and I charged $5.75. This was for a school. I also had a time problem. There are 2 local printers in this town and I can't use them as they are the competition. And they don't do anything under 2 weeks. The locals also charge screen charges and artwork fees.


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## Buechee (Dec 22, 2005)

badalou said:


> The locals also charge screen charges and artwork fees.


Now I've never met one that did not charge some form of set-up fee. If you factor that in, the $4 tee has just went up in price. So yes it would be cheaper to do transfers. I can save $15 dollars if I send my image as a vector. I've never used a screen printer. The ones I've talked to have always charged more than It would cost me to do myself. Add I use trans. ex and art brand and they only make transfers, so I'm not paying any set up fees. Sound pretty dam good to me.


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## aamon17 (Jan 30, 2007)

Buechee said:


> Now I've never met one that did not charge some form of set-up fee. If you factor that in, the $4 tee has just went up in price. So yes it would be cheaper to do transfers. I can save $15 dollars if I send my image as a vector. I've never used a screen printer. The ones I've talked to have always charged more than It would cost me to do myself. Add I use trans. ex and art brand and they only make transfers, so I'm not paying any set up fees. Sound pretty dam good to me.


On my 300 shirt job, a local printer waived the screen fee at my request. There are other online printers that don't even charge screen fees. Now, granted, they build the fees in elswhere. But, when you average it out, I'll take a $60 loss for 2 screens if it saves me 14 hours of work. I'm LEARNING to work smarter, not harder. And that a BIG LEARNING - with a lot more to learn! ;-)


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## aamon17 (Jan 30, 2007)

badalou said:


> Actually my total cost was $2.75 and I charged $5.75. This was for a school. I also had a time problem. There are 2 local printers in this town and I can't use them as they are the competition. And they don't do anything under 2 weeks. The locals also charge screen charges and artwork fees.


I feel you on the time thing. Because I had a month lead time, I was able to outsource. When you only have a 7-10 days to get it done, plastisol transfers is the way to go no doubt! But, I also charge a rush fee in cases like that. 

Locally (Central Illinois), there are a lot of printers with a HUGE price range between them. So, in terms of competetion, it's very weird. Unless the customer calles every printer in town to compare my quote, I'm pretty safe. Usually they've called the ones on the high end before the call me. And I'm able to undercut them and still make a real nice profit using transfers.

I guess it just varies from job to job.


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## Moo Spot Prints (Jul 16, 2006)

Why are you guys worrying so much about the screen fees? Transfer printers have setup costs too. You're paying them whether they're an added charge or not. Some companies roll them into their per print costs, other don't. 

I haven't thought too much about local economics as I live in the LA area where screen printers are numerous. However, there has to be cost effective solutions at hand, no matter where you are. I can't imagine sitting and spending 14 hours pressing shirts, no matter how much money I'd make. The engineer in me would want to invest in another press (or two) to streamline the process.


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## maddog9022 (Sep 5, 2006)

Moo Spot Prints said:


> Why are you guys worrying so much about the screen fees? Transfer printers have setup costs too. You're paying them whether they're an added charge or not. Some companies roll them into their per print costs, other don't.
> 
> I haven't thought too much about local economics as I live in the LA area where screen printers are numerous. However, there has to be cost effective solutions at hand, no matter where you are. I can't imagine sitting and spending 14 hours pressing shirts, no matter how much money I'd make. The engineer in me would want to invest in another press (or two) to streamline the process.


i dont think he did it in a single day. if you can cut that in to 2 hours a day for 7 days thats is easy to do. then you could break that into 2 one hour segments. i dont get why you guys care about what he did. i personally would have done it myself if i can make some extra money at it. every little bit of extra money helps and if he didn't have another job why not. i agree with some of you tho on if you need to to outsource it. but you still taking a cut.

if they charge him 2 bucks a shirt that is 1400 bucks he is missing out on.


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## badalou (Mar 19, 2006)

Moo Spot Prints said:


> Why are you guys worrying so much about the screen fees? Transfer printers have setup costs too. You're paying them whether they're an added charge or not. Some companies roll them into their per print costs, other don't.
> 
> I haven't thought too much about local economics as I live in the LA area where screen printers are numerous. However, there has to be cost effective solutions at hand, no matter where you are. I can't imagine sitting and spending 14 hours pressing shirts, no matter how much money I'd make. The engineer in me would want to invest in another press (or two) to streamline the process.


14 hours over 4 days...


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## mariehutch (Feb 5, 2008)

I would love it if anybody wants to send a 14 hour job my way at $2,100.00 profit! Marie


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## badalou (Mar 19, 2006)

mariehutch said:


> I would love it if anybody wants to send a 14 hour job my way at $2,100.00 profit! Marie


You need to find out when a special event is going to happen in your town. Contact groups, organizartions. Fundraisers order big orders. Walks for some groups like cancer awareness. Stuff like that. Bid on the jobs. My other product lines are doing so wand keeping me so busy I am only going to do orders that are large from now on. No more 12 piece orders.


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## brentonchad (Aug 24, 2007)

The other side of doing it yourself and outsourcing is quality. When I apply the transfers and box I know for SURE that the print is the quality that I approve of. When you outsource you lose this control and when there is competition and the only thing that really sets you apart is your service and quality. You can't control either fo those when you outsource as well as you can when you do it yourself. 

We have thought about the outsource and I just don't want to have to face customers and try to answer why it wasn't up to par.


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## diane143 (Nov 17, 2006)

I agree, the outsourcing is tempting! I had a 290 double sided shirt job recently, repeat customer. It's like pulling teeth to get all the color choices together so even though I started early this year, I didn't get the plastisol in till the week of the due date! I was so tempted to outsource as I could have had everything set up (took a week for the plastisol) but I feared the "what if".

Figure I'll save it for when I am really busy.

I did outsource stickers recently as I don't have a printer that would have done the job, and that sure was nice - package in the mail, check from customer, everyone is happy. 

Badalou, I started prepressing shirts as the press was heating up to save time. It actually worked and with no apparent ill-effect on the pressing process. It eliminated a lot of the heat loss as I was doing the job. 

Once I did that I was at about 80 shirts per hour, both sides. It much slower when the pre-press was part of the process. It's amazing how much time it takes to peel, flip and align a new transfer! I also think Ace changed some of their instructions, I have to go back and look at some jobs from last year.

Not sure I can do that in the summer but it worked last week!

Diane


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## badalou (Mar 19, 2006)

diane143 said:


> I agree, the outsourcing is tempting! I had a 290 double sided shirt job recently, repeat customer. It's like pulling teeth to get all the color choices together so even though I started early this year, I didn't get the plastisol in till the week of the due date! I was so tempted to outsource as I could have had everything set up (took a week for the plastisol) but I feared the "what if".
> 
> Figure I'll save it for when I am really busy.
> 
> ...


I was doing 2 per 1.5 minutes so we were almost right on. However I used my alignment tool as well.


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## earl (Nov 1, 2007)

badalou said:


> I was doing 2 per 1.5 minutes so we were almost right on. However I used my alignment tool as well.


hi lou, tell me, what size order do you think plastisol becomes more price advantageous?
my teesquareit is on the way, and boy do i need it. i tried one big transfer by eye and you would have thought i was drunk regards earl


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## badalou (Mar 19, 2006)

earl said:


> hi lou, tell me, what size order do you think plastisol becomes more price advantageous?
> my teesquareit is on the way, and boy do i need it. i tried one big transfer by eye and you would have thought i was drunk regards earl


Remember cost is relative to sell price. There are so many ways to answer this. Do I gang or not.. How many colors.. If I think I can sell a shirt for 24.00 then I need to think maybe the cost should be no more then maybe $8-10. total. But if I get a wholesale job at $6. each then I need to look for cost of $3.00. so my minimum may be higher.


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## earl (Nov 1, 2007)

thanks lou, as usual your answer makes sense 

can anyone tell me which plastisol suppliers have low minimums. most i see are 12 to 15 sheets.

regards earl


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## diane143 (Nov 17, 2006)

Ace and Howard will do 6 sheets. I think Silver Mountain does to.


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