By signcraft
Posted on Sunday, September 17th, 2023
Readers want to know: “I want to offer t-shirt printing to my sign customers and plan to outsource that. Can anyone recommend a reliable, quality online source for shirts and sportswear printing [in the US]?”
Our recent article on the benefits of outsourcing as a way to expand your business—and profits—without adding staff and equipment sparked this question from several readers. T-shirts, jackets and caps are easy to sell to many sign customers because it’s more convenient for them than going elsewhere to get them produced. Plus, customers may not have thought about getting shirts made until you offer it to them.
Find answers from readers below—and add your own if you can help.
Looking forward to hearing about other options aside from Vistaprint or those type of low-quality custom print services.
We used to work with a wholesale screen printer and found it to be too much work for too little profit. First, we would purchase the shirts from Alpha Border or Sanmar and have them delivered to the printer. That process could take serious time especially when there were shortages of items and you needed to find alternatives etc. Then of course you need to proof and approve artwork with the client and get the items from the printer to your shop to deliver to the client….. Well after all the work and a gross profit as little as $1 per shirt it seemed like it was not worth taking any job under a hundred pieces. We bill our shop time and design time at $75 or $85 per hour and you would easily spend more than an hour with the run around work, so it never really made any money.
Now, we simply recommend a local screen printer and give him the referral. Now he also looks for referrals and has sent us several clients. I think that we have done better with this model rather than taking it all on, especially since we have gained a few new customers, who have brought us many signs and fleet graphics.