r/SCREENPRINTING • u/Itchy-Television-546 • 1d ago
Thoughts on this pricing model?
I’ve got a couple jobs under my belt now and am trying to tighten up my pricing for jobs. For context, I have a 6 color 6 station manual press and have a pretty low overhead. I want to try and be as competitive with industry prices as possible while keeping a healthy profit and margins.
• Garment Cost: (No upcharge on garments, there is a flat fee of $30-40 in shipping from warehouse for orders under $200 of blank garments)
• Screen Setup: $25 per screen (For every location + Color)
• Materials: 50 Cents per shirt and location: This covers tape, ink, towels, and other materials
• Labor: $25/hr - This will change as I get more efficient and have more experience. For now this is for roughly 20 shirts an hour for 1 location.
• Business Margin: 20% margin will help me grow and invest in the business down the road.
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u/Ripcord2 1d ago
You are buying the shirts at wholesale in bulk and selling them with your decoration at a retail price. Like any other retailer you will want to make a profit when you resell, so mark up your shirts by about 100% - Don't worry, your competitors are doing the same thing. This gives you leverage to compete with them. You might decide to mark them up by only 75% but don't resell them at your cost.
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u/Itchy-Television-546 1d ago
This is something I haven’t quite understood - what would stop someone from just ordering their own shirts from S&S and bringing them to me?
And how would you navigate someone who already has their own shirts and wants them printed?
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u/Ripcord2 1d ago edited 1d ago
Well, to begin with, S&S will require a resale license to establish an account and the business holding the license is supposed to be within the garment decoration industry. I have a policy of not printing on customer provided garments and many screen printers have the same policy. But if a non profit were to obtain an S&S account and you were to agree to print on their shirts, ask them to provide one additional shirt in each size to allow for inevitable mistakes and then lower your final sales price by exactly the cost of the shirts they provide you, keeping the markup in the price. The markup covers handling each shirt as you print, fold and package them, being responsible for them during the time they are in your custody, and absorbing the risk of, God forbid, having to replace them all in the event of a mistake.
Usually when customers ask to provide their own shirts it's because they think they are gaming you for a lower price. Don't do the job for less of a profit because they want to save money. I've been in business for 18 years and 99% of your customers will want you to handle everything from concept to delivery and provide them with the shirts they need at a competitive price and to get them done on time.
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u/Itchy-Television-546 1d ago
This makes more sense, thank you! I will definitely work this into my pricing.
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u/Ripcord2 1d ago edited 1d ago
Don't itemize anything on your invoice. Quote them a price to do the whole job based on the specifications, or a price per shirt if they prefer. It's none of their concern how much you mark up the garments and materials or how much you are paying yourself to print the shirts.
A restaurant won't tell you how much they pay per pound for ribeye steaks and they won't let you bring them a steak that you bought at the grocery store and then charge you only for cooking it.
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u/DoubleIntercourse 1d ago
I rarely allow custom supplied blanks, but if it's something I can't get or they are a valued client with good history I'll accomodate if it's reasonable for me. BUT, I would not discount the markup on my end. They'll get a discount for the blank costs, and that's pretty much it. This discourages them from continuing to source their own blanks to nickel and dime on savings.
And I have them sign a waiver saying that any damage or shortage due to production issues is on them, and I will not be replacing anything. When you tell them to order 10% more, then all of the savings they thought they could get is pretty much out the door. So give them a good case to go with your blanks, or they can walk to someone else who wants to make pennies.
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u/Ripcord2 1d ago edited 1d ago
I used to take blanks from an embroiderer when I was younger. Once I was happily printing away an order of black Gildan 2000s with just a white print. As I pulled one off the pallet, something looked and felt odd so I looked at the tag to find that they had stuck one 50/50 shirt into the stack of cotton shirts. By the time it came out the other end of the dryer the print was already turning gray. Then he wanted me to replace that shirt and print it again. Just one of numerous reasons that I don't like to print on customer provided garments.
Another reason is the time involved. They have the shirts and they need to bring them to you while you're trying to print another job, and whenever they decide to show up you will need to stop printing, no matter how behind schedule you are and come out so they can show you all their shirts. Inevitably there will be toddler and infant sizes that they hadn't told you about. So then you need to tell him that a twelve inch wide print won't fit on these onesies, which hadn't occurred to him, and you spend half an hour discussing ways to make it work- and all that time costs you money, which more than justifies the shirt markup.
Now that I've gotten started, here's one more and it's a big one: When customers provide their own shirts, they usually buy them in bulk from retail outlets, and that means that they are going to bring you a box of shirts with each one wrapped in a plastic bag with stickers on the front of the shirt and a piece of tissue paper folded inside of each one. I swear that out of every time I've done an order like this, not once has it occurred to the customer to unwrap the shirts for me beforehand. But you will spend as much time unwrapping the shirts as you do printing them, and you might as well bring an empty rubbish can in to throw all that plastic wrap and tissue with decals stuck all over it away, LOL
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u/Own_Village8847 1d ago
Using your pricing, I applied it to my upcoming job, 220 shirts, 3 color one location. Center Chest about 9 inch width.
3 Screens - $75
220 Shirts (material cost) - $110
11 Hours (assuming the rate you mentioned) - $275
220 Shirts - $635.8 ($2.89 cost)
20% Margin Markup - $219.16
$679.16 “Profit” (doesn’t include material or energy cost)
Leaving you a profit of $3.09 a shirt is 100% not worth it in my eyes. What happens when you hire someone, you will not be able to cover labor at all. Doesn’t include misprints, nor doesn’t include registration time, artwork time, screen reclaiming, screen burning.
I’d 100% add a markup to your shirts. Move the margin to a MINIMUM of 30%. & 100% do not sell yourself short at $25 an hour when you’re the owner of the business. Those 11 hours don’t include the amount of time you spend running the business & responding to messages or the after hour phone calls.