Impressions - March 2021 - 45

5 MORE ADVANTAGES OF HEAT PRINTING
1. Easy to Grow: For the cost of a heat press and some supplies, you can offer a wide variety
of products to customers in an equally wide variety of niche markets.
2. Fast Return on Investment: Using custom transfers and transfer numbers to decorate a
T-shirt with a team logo and player number, the costs for creating a shirt could be about
$5 - including the cost of the basic cotton tee. Adding about $2 to cover labor gives you a
cost of $7 per shirt. Depending on what you charge, customers will determine the speed of
your return on investment.
3. Print on Anything: You can personalize tees, golf shirts and sweat shirts with a heat press.
However, with the right transfers, you also can imprint nylon jackets and bags;
performancewear, canvas bags; caps; CD cases and much more.
4. Heat Transfers for Any Look: The most commonly used heat transfers include: pre-cut
letters and numbers; embroidered letters; inkjet; screen-printed; full-color digital; sublimation; graphics created from HTV; and more.
5. Endless Profit Possibilities: With today's wide variety of heat transfers, including low-temp

says about 70% of his business consisted
of custom apparel printing. He offered
a variety of print types, including HTV,
screen printing and sublimation.
Then, COVID-19 changed the focus
of DeTorres's business to face masks. Due
to a supplier connection, he stepped up to
sell hundreds of thousands of disposable
masks with low margins when the local
medical community needed them. He also
offered the more profitable,custom-printed,
reusable polyester masks - more than
5,000 in the first few months.
DeTorres says things have since slowed,
but he still sells about 500 or more face
masks per month. He uses sublimation
transfers on white masks, and CAD-CUT
HTV for one- or two-color logos on dark
ones.

adhesives that don't scorch sensitive fabrics, you can print on anything and make a profit

Plans to Expand

on any quantity - even just one piece.

T-shirt distributors also typically ran
low on stock. While the world worked
and studied from home; ordered in; and
wore face coverings, many of those same
people decided to start printing shirts.

and basic Espon printer, " he recalls
He also quickly understood the value of
cutting his own designs with heat-transfer
vinyl (HTV). He quickly realized owning a heat press enables him to print just
about anything. Pre-pandemic, DeTorres

DeTorres says the surge in mask orders
allowed the company to invest in an embroidery machine, 55-inch cutter and cap
press. He also plans to add two laser copiers.
Notice Me Marketing is just one example
of a business that thrived and grew during
the pandemic. In addition, DeTorres says
he helped organizations with which he

Pivot to Profit
A low cost of entry and high profit margins are just two reasons people turn to
T-shirts when they want to earn extra cash.
But another characteristic of businesses
surviving in the pandemic is flexibility.
Promo companies that switched to T-shirt
and facemask printing last year still are
in desirable positions.
Take Ocala, Florida-based Notice Me
Marketing and Media. Owner Darrin
DeTorres wasn't always in the T-shirtprinting business. " Actually, I didn't get
into the custom shirt business on purpose, " he says. " I just didn't want to wait
seven weeks or more for the custom shirts
needed for the 5K runs I organize. "
A true entrepreneur at heart, DeTorres's day job was in the cell-phone repair
industry; he organized runs on the side.
" Once I realized I could make more
money off one printed shirt job than
I could in an entire month fixing cell
phones, " DeTorres says, " it was a done
deal. "
It Starts with a Heat Press
DeTorres got started decoratingT-shirts by
watching videos onYouTube; heat printing
emerged as the most logical startup choice.
" I started out small, with a cheap heat press

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Impressions - March 2021

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