Impressions - January 2012 - (Page 66)

talking SHOP Digital Decorating How to Develop a DTG Pricing Mindset, Part 1 If you want to set proﬁtable pricing for digital direct-to-garment decorating, don’t think like a screen printer. By Greg Kitson, Contributing Writer igital direct-to-garment (DTG), or direct-to-substrate, is a relatively new and appealing printing process, with many newbie decorators — as well as veteran screen printers and embroiderers — wondering if it’s a worthwhile investment for them. For my shop, direct digital printing is a lucrative part of my business. However, it took time and testing for it to become as proﬁtable as it now is. To achieve success with it, you must purchase your digital equipment with an open mind, be prepared to understand its limitations and strengths, and also accept the responsibilities and obligations that come with running direct digital printing machines. Before I jump into how to set up a pricing structure for digital, let’s ﬁrst examine the mindset you need to adapt for it to work for you, rather than against you. For the newbies out there, let me stress the importance of ﬁrst performing time studies on your machine before determining pricing. While you may be eager to research what your closest competitors are charging and then drop your prices by a nickel to gain clients, ﬁrst consider the quality of work you want to put out, as well as how long you’d like to stay in business. I know the salesperson who sold you your digital equipment may have promised you’d put out 60 garments in an hour — and you may, with a small percentage of your orders. But those types of production numbers only match up to small, 1" x 1" prints on light shirts. Since you will be asked to print all sizes and combinations of designs, it’s crucial to time yourself when printing a variety to get accurate information. 66 Impressions >> January 2012 d One eye opener for screen printers will be the cost of digital ink. A liter of ink can range from $200 per liter up to several hundred dollars per liter. All photos courtesy of Mind’s Eye Graphics, Decatur, Ind. IT’S NOT SCREEN PRINTING Screen printers who are familiar with the importance of time studies must realize that, with digital, they’re facing a completely different set of rules. Since screen printers have preconceived notions formed from their years of running manual and/or automatic presses, they don’t often “get” digital printing initially. One element that screen printers claim is a “con” to digital printing is the price of ink. Screen printers may abandon all plans to invest in digital once they hear that a liter of ink can range from $200 per liter up to several hundred dollars per liter. However, you must look at the number of shirts you can produce with that one liter of digital ink, and then do the math. Once you evaluate the costs and proﬁts of screen printing vs. digital (with all the elements that make them up, i.e., ink, equipment, machine maintenance, etc.), you’ll likely ﬁnd that digital ink prices are not as outrageous as you may have ﬁrst thought. Another setback for screen printers concerning digital pricing structures comes back to their experience with how screen printing jobs are produced. The screen printer’s mentality is, “I have to charge this much for the ﬁrst 12, 25 or 50 pieces to recover my set-up and screen-making costs. Once I get those costs covered, the price matrix drops off rapidly. I may charge $8 a shirt for a one-color, 12-shirt run, but I can sell that same shirt for $4.75 a pop if I’m producing 250 of them and make the same amount of money for the amount of time that I have invested.” The per-garment cost drops dramatically once the set-up and screen-making costs are recovered because once running smoothly, an automatic press can crank out hundreds of shirts an hour. With digital, however, the process and price per shirt are always the same per item, no matter how many pieces are printed. It takes the same amount of time and money per shirt to digitally print one shirt or 100 shirts. It may take six minutes to print and three minutes to cure. There’s no economy of scale, as compared to one that can be applied with screen printing. Embroiderers may be the best equipped to deal with volume digital printing considerations because digital ﬁxed production time and embroidery ﬁxed production time are similar. With embroidery, once the artwork is approved and digitized, you start sewing and every impressionsmag.com http://www.impressionsmag.com

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Impressions - January 2012

Impressions - January 2012
Contents
First Impressions
From the Show Director
FYI
ISS Conferences
Product Gallery
Celebrating the Industry’s Best
How to Choose a DTG Printer, Part I
Back to Basics
Shop Spotlight
Embroidery Technique
For Screen Printers Only
Digital Decorating
Digital Decorating
Online Directory
Business to Business
Classifieds
Ad Index

Impressions - January 2012