Should I Screen Print Myself?

jlmarcus969 · January 3rd, 2017, 10:56 AM

Hi. I own an ecommerce business which sells logo'd school apparel. To date, we outsource our printing needs. To start, we outsourced all of our printing needs to local screen printers. At first we were paying $50,000 per year for our screen printing needs. However, since we have grown over the past 5 years, we are currently paying close to $300,000 a year on our screen printing needs.

The question is, at what point do I do the printing myself and set up shop. What do you think it will cost? Besides start up costs (which I have estimated at $250,000 for all equipment), what do you think it will cost to run the business myself on a yearly basis?

Prosperi-Tees · January 6th, 2017, 11:34 PM

Take a look at who you contract out to and see how many employees they have, multiply that by 30-40k per year plus building expenses, taxes, insurance and maintenance.

Merch Monster · January 7th, 2017, 11:17 AM

Two questions & 1 statement:

Do you have someone who can do the technical work? If you're planning on doing the printing yourself that's probably a bad idea. Screen printing is a lot harder than it looks. I started out doing the printing with a 25% misprint rate, hired an experienced printer and that went down to 3%.

Do you enjoy managing employees? You need at 3 people to run a shop with $300k sales revenue. Printer, reclaimer / screens, catcher / receiving.

You can setup the shop for half that maybe even less. I've seen whole shops go for $20k with an 8 head auto.

Merch Monster · January 7th, 2017, 11:18 AM

Also if you run a shop, now you have less time to focus on your core ecommerce business.