Show Notes
How much does it cost to start a t-shirt printing business?
That machine is WAY too expensive.
Why would I buy that when a cricut can do the same thing?
It only cost that much to own a business? I thought it was so much more.
What is the best t-shirt printer?
These are the comments you will read on social media posts about the t-shirt business. As you can see, there are assumptions people are making or just a lack of in depth knowledge about the t-shirt printing business.
In this episode we are going to jump into .. what does t-shirt printing equipment cost?
This episode was inspired by an article, on ColDesi… which was inspired by the questions and comments from people above. (Click here to read the article)
Keep in mind all of these prices and estimated financing costs are as of when we wrote this podcast and probably will change over time. However, for the time being we can assume all of this data will still be reasonably accurate for some time.
Heat Transfer Vinyl
Brands
- Graphtec
- Roland
Cost
- Starting around $2400 or about $65 a month
Pros
- One of the easiest to learn / simplest machines
- Very versatile – lights, darks, cotton, poly, stickers, t-shirts, signs
- Little-to-no maintenance
- Nice quality finished goods
- 10x faster than a cricut / hobby cutter
Cons
- You aren’t digital printing
- Storing and investing in rolls of material
- Range of production speed varies a lot (1 color, simple design VS 4 color complex design)
Sublimation
Brand: Sawgrass
- SG1000
- SG500
Cost
- $600 – $6000 or $45 – $165 financed
Pros
- Relatively easy to learn
- Extremely versatile
- Finished print is now “a part of” the t-shirt (or mug or mousepad or totebag)
Cons
- Only meant for white / light colored items
- Polyester or sublimation coated items only
- Ink systems require some maintenance
- Ink can get expensive over time
Print & Cut
Brand: Roland
- BN-20
- BN-20A
Cost
- $6000 – $8000 or starting about $165 a month financed
Pros
- Full Digital Prints
- Very versatile – t-shirts to signs to window clings to car decals
- Can do the same as a vinyl cutter above, but can also print
- BIG prints about 20″ x HUGE
- Versatile – lights, darks, cotton, poly
Cons
- Ink and Printable vinyl has a higher supply cost than other methods
- Can be considered slow when compared
- Requires a bit more graphics knowledge to set up prints and cuts
White Toner Transfer Printers
Brand: DigitalHeat FX
- Uninet & Crio
- i560, 8432wt, i650, 9541wt
Cost
- $3700 – $15000 or about $100 – $400 a month
Pros
- Full color digital prints
- Very fast print time
- Little-to-no maintenance
- Versatile lights, darks, cotton, poly.
- Can be used on hard good with no special coatings required
Cons
- More precise learning process, requires practice
- Toner and transfer paper is not as soft as alternatives like DTG, Sublimation, DTF
- Cost per print higher than other methods like DTG or DTF
Direct to Garment Printing
Brand: DTG
Cost
- $15000 – $24000 or about $350 – $600 a month financed
Pros
- Amazing colors and full digital prints
- Washes and wears beautifully
- No transfer required, more details
- Low cost per print
Cons
- Light colors – cotton & poly – Darks – Best for cotton only
- Liquid ink systems requires maintenance
- Good knowledge of graphics really helps to get the best prints
DTF – Direct to Film
Brands: DTF / Coldesi – DigitalHeat FX
Cost
- Still a growing field of printers but right now about $25k or $690 a month financed.
Pros
- Amazing quality digital prints
- Wears, washes and looks great
- Super fast
- Very low supply cost
Cons
- Liquid and film system requires maintenance
- Initial cost to invest is one of the highest
- It’s bigger and louder than anything on the list
Hopefully this information helps you to understand what it costs to invest in a t-shirt printing system and which one is best for you. Be sure to click the link and read the article for more information: How Much Does It Cost? Comparing Pricing and Payments on Custom T-Shirt Printing Equipment – ColDesi
Transcript:
Mark Stephenson:
Hey, everyone. Welcome to part two of that last podcast we just did. My name’s still Mark Stevenson.
Mark Vila:
This is Mark Vila, and this is part two of How Much Does it Cost. We’re going to try to do it all in one episode but there’s so much important information, because the answer is not just how much it costs, but it’s the details and why you’re going to invest that much or not.
Mark Stephenson:
Yeah, we could have left it in one podcast but we decided we didn’t want you to have to quit your job to listen to it because it was pretty long. So I think there’s a lot of great information in part two and you’re going to get the same breakdown of what the printer is, the pros and the cons as you did in the first one.
Mark Vila:
Yeah. Great. Well, let’s get into it. I mean, in the life, in period, everything is an economy of trade offs.
Mark Stephenson:
Yeah.
Mark Vila:
There’s no perfect house. There’s no perfect car. There’s no perfect way to print a t-shirt. You have to find the one that’s the most perfect for you and be okay with some of the cons that aren’t quite what you want.
Mark Stephenson:
Yeah or you balance it out.
Mark Vila:
Yes.
Mark Stephenson:
You mentioned, the smallest Sawgrass is maybe six or 700 bucks. You could add that to a white toner transfer bundle.
Mark Vila:
Yeah.
Mark Stephenson:
You could do a cutter. So if somebody just wants one color, they want a big design, maybe you could use the cutter as well.
Mark Vila:
Yeah, I would. I would do that.
Mark Stephenson:
Yeah, so you’ve got a nice balance.
Mark Vila:
Yeah. I mean, this straight up advice from seeing so many businesses and having been in this industry for… I don’t even know how many years now, 15 years.
Mark Vila:
If you get a white toner printed… Get more than one thing.
Mark Stephenson:
Yeah.
Mark Vila:
Get more than one thing. Combine two things. You get both of the pros of both of them and then you can figure out which one of your customers needs what. Or combine the technologies together. If you get a white toner printer, you should get a cutter or a sublimation printer too.
Mark Stephenson:
Having said that, I mean, honestly, this bears out in the numbers for how many of these we sell, if you can only get one piece of equipment and you want to be in custom t-shirts doing full color, this is a fantastic choice.
Mark Vila:
Yeah.
Mark Stephenson:
Any one of these printers will produce great results.
Mark Vila:
Yeah, absolutely and, if you get yourself more than one technology, you’re going to be happier in the long run and eventually you will get another piece of technology because I think when we’ve surveyed our customers last, 80% have more than one piece of technology in their shop for various reason. [crosstalk 00:02:52].
Mark Stephenson:
And that’s definitely often… In the past, that’s how Calvesi has picked what technology we should carry next is because we used to sell just embroidery machines and then everyone was looking into DTG printers because they want to do full colored t-shirt prints and then we realized that people were still getting cutters and then we… So this is kind of the evolution of the company as well.
Mark Vila:
Yeah, absolutely so it’s a little bit of a marathon podcast here, but there’s a lot of information.
Mark Stephenson:
Is it? I’m not even, I’m not even paying attention.
Mark Vila:
Not even tired, but we’re… We’ve got two categories to cover and that will sum up really all this technology.
Mark Stephenson:
Let’s not skip over the last con-
Mark Vila:
Oh, please no.
Mark Stephenson:
The cost per print is higher.
Mark Vila:
Okay.
Mark Stephenson:
This is probably the… Maybe the highest cost per print out of our survey here, because you were using some pretty amazing paper to be able to, again, to apply it to anything. You’re still going to make a boatload of money per shirt, but the supply in the paper is going to be higher than the other products that we talk
Mark Vila:
Yeah and this is just part of that economy, right? When, when you can do more, it costs more to be able to do more, right? It costs more to be able to do more, but then you can do more and you have more people you can sell to and more offerings you have to your customers. So it’s just part of that economy, but that is… You’re right. That is one of the cons and it’s not an important one to skip over and then we talked about with the role in stuff, this isn’t a con I mean, I guess it is, but it’s just a fact, you need to know how to use graphics and have graphic software.
Mark Stephenson:
Yeah.
Mark Vila:
But that’s for every single printer. So I don’t even know if they’re cons, it’s just something that needs to be reminded because every once in a while we just run into folks that just… They get a bit confused about that or not quite understanding it.
Mark Stephenson:
I think… We’re… And I think we’re so jaded to this for white toner printings as we didn’t even bring it up in a pros. There’s no weeding.
Mark Vila:
Oh yeah. Okay.
Mark Stephenson:
You, you don’t have to… There’s no dental tools to weed the vinyl out. There’s no time involved. You pull it off in a quick peel, at least at this time and you get a fantastic… As complicated a design as you want.
Mark Vila:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Mark Stephenson:
And it comes right up its ground.
Mark Vila:
So with the sublimation printer and the digital heat effects printer, you print, and then you put it on the shirt and you take it off and it’s done which is very cool. With the rolling and the graph tech, you do have a cut or print and cut, and then there’s another step in between of weeding out, removing everything. You don’t want to go on the shirt and then you apply it to the shirt. So it is the ability to not to skip that step is one of more time taking, slowing down steps of this process and it eliminates that. So you don’t have to do that weeding, which can really slow you down.
Mark Stephenson:
Yeah.
Mark Vila:
So it’s a great thing for the speed. A little bit about what I mentioned earlier, too, with the predictability of how quick it’s going to take to do something. McDonald’s logo and the most complicated logo you’ve ever seen with 40 colors is the same speed to print and put on a shirt.
Mark Stephenson:
Yeah.
Mark Vila:
Which is a great pro because you know how long a job is going to take without having necessarily know all the details about the job.
Mark Stephenson:
Right. Agreed.
Mark Vila:
Okay. So next we’ve got direct to garment printing.
Mark Stephenson:
It’s a personal favorite.
Mark Vila:
Yeah. I’ve actually-
Mark Stephenson:
I have more DTG shirts. I’m wearing a DTG shirt under this.
Mark Vila:
That’s weird.
Mark Stephenson:
I have more DTG shirts than anything.
Mark Vila:
DTG, and we have the DTG brand, the DTG G4, which is a beautiful piece of equipment. That’s 15 years of evolution of digital printing technology, come to life. The cost of DTG is what we said about $15,000 to $25,000 ish.
Mark Stephenson:
Yeah. Depending on what you get with it and what you need.
Mark Vila:
And what you want and there’s heat presses and supplies and all that stuff. So $350 to $600 a month finance, just kind of a range on, and this is another talk to a pro.
Mark Stephenson:
Big range.
Mark Vila:
Yeah. It’s a talk to a pro because you need to know what you need. Some people do need the lowest price one.
Mark Stephenson:
Yes.
Mark Vila:
Some people do need more expensive, so you got to… You have to decide.
Mark Stephenson:
But in this case, I will say, it’s not a different… There’s not a variability in printers, because we’re talking about basing it on the current G4, it’s $15,000. That’s the printer we sell. It’s everything around. It can be significant if you need that.
Mark Vila:
Yeah. If you want a pretreatment machine, what type of heat press… The number of heat presses. If you want a t-shirt for holding machine to go with it.
Mark Stephenson:
Yeah. Right. That’s right. We have that now.
Mark Vila:
We have that now. So, the colors are amazing.
Mark Stephenson:
Yeah.
Mark Vila:
Can’t say it… Well, can’t even say it enough and you get full color prints. They look… Yeah, go ahead. You say.
Mark Stephenson:
It’s not just the colors, but I would say that on white polyester, we’ve got a video that shows this on. You can print on white poly and it looks just as good as sublimation.
Mark Vila:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Mark Stephenson:
You print on dark cottons and it looks just as good or better than, than if sublimation could print on dark cottons, which you can’t. So What you get is because it’s inkjet, you also get… I mean, we often call it the smoke effect. When you’re dealing with a transfer, you’re printing on one thing and then you’re heat pressing it onto a shirt and that’s for everything that we’ve talked about so far. So there’s always an end to the transfer, right? There’s always an edge to the design. With DTG, you’re jetting ink directly onto the shirt. So it’s more like you’re printing something with an inkjet printer at home and so you can make smoke or flames or you can make a design that fades away into nothing as a native part of what DTG does.
Mark Vila:
Mm-hmm (affirmative). Yeah. You could put a micro droplet of ink in one spot to put that extra little detail in your art that you just can’t do really any other way.
Mark Stephenson:
Yeah. It’ll blow you away. It really does it.
Mark Vila:
Yeah. So, if you are a digital artist or you want to be able to create digital art on t-shirts, that’s the best looking stuff you can make.
Mark Stephenson:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Mark Vila:
It’s just the best way to do it. I mean, I guess, there’s cons right? There’s cons just like anything, but it’s just beautiful.
Mark Stephenson:
Yeah.
Mark Vila:
And it’s inexpensive.
Mark Stephenson:
Using the photo example is perfect.
Mark Vila:
Yeah.
Mark Stephenson:
Take a picture of that golden retriever and it’s very likely it’s going to be a golden retriever when it gets to the shirt and it’ll still look fantastic.
Mark Vila:
Yeah and all the little thing, the hairs and everything on the edge, you can do that detail. Now you do need to know graphics and how to set it up, but you can get that and the cost per print is really low.
Mark Stephenson:
Yeah. Super low.
Mark Vila:
Yeah. Super low, especially for the quality you’re getting the cost is so inexpensive.
Mark Stephenson:
Yes. You’re going to spend, I mean, just as a… You’re going to spend probably under a dollar on ink, no matter what you print on a white t-shirt.
Mark Vila:
Okay.
Mark Stephenson:
And then black you’re going to spend, usually a couple of bucks depending on the size of the design.
Mark Vila:
Yeah. And of course, if it’s a really a little logo, it’s pennies.
Mark Stephenson:
Yeah. Pennies.
Mark Vila:
Yeah. It’s a little logo, but you could do big, full prints for a buck or two, which is beautiful. There are some cons to discuss, right? When you’re doing light colors, cotton, poly blends are great but when you get to dark’s, really you want to stick with cotton.
Mark Stephenson:
Right. You can use… We’ve done some tribe blends and we actually sell Coleman and company sells the already pretreated shirts that are a tribe blend, that are kind of a gray or a dark gray and you can make a print look great. We are just used to seeing DTG prints pop, and full color and amazing. They come off the shirt at you where… If you don’t mind a muted look or a distressed look, which is most dark t-shirts, frankly. They’re not printing bright colors or printing something a little bit more muted. You can use a tribe blend shirt to great effect.
Mark Vila:
Yeah, so that’s a bit of a con there’s a limitation you’re going to want to choose your shirt carefully to get that result that we’re talking about. That’s mind blowing, beautiful.
Mark Stephenson:
Yeah. You’ll never… Don’t print on dark poly. There are people that do it, but it’s a science experiment and don’t print on a cheap cotton shirt. It’s just going to look cheap.
Mark Vila:
Yeah. There’s a reason why you, when… In the resume days you would buy the nice resume paper because somebody gets it. The paper’s, it feels good, it looks good, it’s crisp. That is the same with t-shirts. If you get copy paper quality, t-shirts, you’re going to have a copy paper quality resume, if you get a nice quality t-shirt you’re going to have a nice quality one.
Mark Stephenson:
Should we send those two? Because I used to scent my resumes [inaudible 00:12:57], spray a little cologne.
Mark Vila:
Oh, really?
Mark Stephenson:
Make it could stand out.
Mark Vila:
You did cologne.
Mark Stephenson:
I really do that.
Mark Vila:
Interesting. Okay. I did fresh flowers and stuff, so it is a liquid ink system. So just we said before, liquid ink means that there’re maintenance involved. It’s a bigger printer too, with a specialty ink. So you’re going to care for this printer daily, with maintenance, even more than sublimation or your role in printer. Yeah. So you’re going to care for it. Not harder along, but precise and accurate type of stuff. You’re going to do certain things during certain intervals.
Mark Stephenson:
Yeah and I mean, normally it’s 10 or 15 minutes a day.
Mark Vila:
10 or 15 a day. Okay. Yeah. So it’s not hard but if you’re in a printing business and you’re doing a good amount of t-shirt printing, there’s a startup and shutdown process that you’ll spend 10, 15 minutes a day on.
Mark Stephenson:
Yeah.
Mark Vila:
Good graphics is just becomes more key, now, that you’re getting into better technology t-shirt printing, you’re going to want to know how to run graphics and graphic software. You’re going to need graphic software, Photoshop or Corel. Absolutely. You’re going to want to know how to use it because your machine is so powerful and what it can do, you’re not just going to want to print square pictures from a phone.
Mark Stephenson:
Right. Yeah. That’s not what DTG is for.
Mark Vila:
[crosstalk 00:14:23] You can do so much more.
Mark Stephenson:
You’re going to want to really dress it up.
Mark Vila:
Yeah.
Mark Stephenson:
Okay. So the moving on to direct to film, which… I was kind of surprised to say it was an afterthought because it’s a new product for us and when we kind of base this podcast on the article that we wrote for, ColDesi comparing these different technologies and talking about what the best printer is. When we looked at it, we realized we hadn’t updated it in the past six months. So we had direct to film that we’d added to the product line and so now we’re editing in, we’re going to go back and update the article. So we give it a good comparison with everything else.
Mark Vila:
Yeah. And so ColDesi, we have the DTF, the ColDesi brand of printers, which is digital heat effects system.
Mark Stephenson:
Yeah.
Mark Vila:
And this is a DTF transfer system rather than a white toner transfer system and direct to film printing is essentially you’re using liquid in like the DTG, but it prints onto a clear transfer film that has an adhesive like the digital heat effects. So it’s not a hybrid, but in logic would kind of could say it’s like that.
Mark Stephenson:
Yeah and it’s also… It’s got kind of… It’s got pieces of all of these other products.
Mark Vila:
Yeah.
Mark Stephenson:
Right? It is kind of a… It’s based on a large format, color roll printer, which is very much like the BN-20 and it’s got ink that prints instead of on a white vinyl to be cut out. It print on a transfer film or pet film and then instead of using adhesive, the marrying of a and B sheets and white toner, it runs the printed material through a powder it’s called hot melt, that sticks to the printed material and that’s the adhesive that you put it on the shirt.
Mark Stephenson:
The ColDesi brand is a high volume printer, right? So it’s a 24 inch printer with two heads in it that prints this material very fast from a large role. It takes it through the hot melt automatically and then it goes into kind of a mini belt dryer to cure it all kind of a screen printing does. So it’s a process and it’s a process worth going through because it has some super advantages.
Mark Vila:
Yeah and this is a growing line of printers. So as of today, we’ve got one printer, the one DTF printer that’s about $25,000 or about $700 a month and that may change soon since it’s a newer technology and it’s newer to ColDesi but right now at the time of this research about $25,000, so it’s a larger investment, but closer to the DTG style of investment a bit more.
Mark Stephenson:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Mark Vila:
But the pros are just really fantastic.
Mark Stephenson:
It’s the best transfer.
Mark Vila:
It’s the best transfer.
Mark Stephenson:
It’s best fabric transfer. If you’re going to produce a transfer or sell transfers, or use them on a t-shirt, these are objectively the best ones.
Mark Vila:
Yeah. So the quality that… Well, there’s two things, the quality of the end result, what it looks and feels in washes, the ability to print digitally, which means you can print as many colors as you want in one shot. So it’s the same speed to do one color as it is to do a hundred and the cost per print and the speed at which you can print and then the least amount of manual work from your hands. That’s how we say that this is the best because it is.
Mark Stephenson:
Yeah.
Mark Vila:
It leads the pack in all of those. So it’s relatively faster than everything. The final finished good is of a great quality. The way it looks is a great quality. It’s very fast and it’s low cost as well.
Mark Stephenson:
Right and when you’re finished, when you have a completed transfer, it takes about 15 seconds to apply it to a garment.
Mark Vila:
Yes.
Mark Stephenson:
Frankly, we did our first hats a couple of weeks ago. It is the best way to decorate hats.
Mark Vila:
It’s the best way to decorate a hat, now.
Mark Stephenson:
I mean, you could put it on the bill, very easily. It won’t crack, if you run it over a seam. It’s a pretty impressive product.
Mark Vila:
Yeah. It’s beautiful and now there’s still embroidery out there, which is to be discussed in regards to why that has pros and cons verses DTS.
Mark Stephenson:
That’s going to be another podcast.
Mark Vila:
That’s a podcast.
Mark Stephenson:
It’s going to be another… I got a feeling there might be some bloodshed to figure out what the best is.
Mark Vila:
Yeah. So there’s… But if we’re referring to everything we’re talking about on this podcast-
Mark Stephenson:
Yes.
Mark Vila:
Yes.
Mark Stephenson:
Easy facts.
Mark Vila:
Yeah. So just overall, everything that we named there, all the reasons why this is all the pros, it’s just a fantastic system.
Mark Stephenson:
And if you’re a big shop, if you’re doing screen printing, this is a fantastic addition for you. If you’re at the level where you need to do high volume, then this is definitely the product to you, but there are also some significant downsides.
Mark Vila:
Yeah.
Mark Stephenson:
Or there’s some significant cons.
Mark Vila:
Yeah and so we’re just going to… Just because we have to… We’re for… It’s a liquid system and there’s the powder and there’s a role. So there’s a complexity to the system and as a system becomes more complex, there is proper ways to maintain that system, so it’s running well. So it’s more [crosstalk 00:20:49] [inaudible 00:20:49].
Mark Stephenson:
Yeah. It’s not insignificant. It’s more… I’d say it’s more than… It’s keeping up one of the old style, direct to garment printers, the DTG G4 is engineered for low maintenance.
Mark Vila:
Okay.
Mark Stephenson:
It’s got a cartridge system, it’s got the vacuum platinum. There’s a lot of things that are reducing the normal maintenance on the G4. So you could even not maintain it for a few days or a week and it’ll be fine. That is not the case with direct to film. You need to take care of it. It’s a liquid print commercial printer and needs your attention every day.
Mark Vila:
Yeah. So this is this isn’t for… If you’re going to buy… If you’re looking for a t-shirt system to print on the weekends.
Mark Stephenson:
Yeah.
Mark Vila:
That’s probably not what you’re looking for.
Mark Stephenson:
It’s not a side hustle kind of a printer.
Mark Vila:
Yeah. If you’re looking to print a thousand transfers a day, a printer that is good for the weekends, isn’t good for that. You want on something like this.
Mark Stephenson:
Right.
Mark Vila:
Right? But if we’re talking about cons, I think really… I think the biggest con, which isn’t necessarily a con it’s a reality is it’s the most expensive.
Mark Stephenson:
Yeah. It’s incredible that the most expensive now is $25,000 max.
Mark Vila:
Yeah.
Mark Stephenson:
It really is, I mean, people, five years ago… You have to spend a quarter million dollars on a Kornit DTG printer or an Aeoon to get the kind of volume production you can get printing with the digital heat FX ColDesi DTF printer.
Mark Vila:
Yeah. The volume is incredible. The financial investment from a leasing standpoint is very reasonable because you can… With the volume you can produce. I mean, we’ve had a conversation with someone in the company recently, and one of the early customers that they had, they could kind of just interviewed and he said, he is, “Oh, I paid for this printer first month.”
Mark Stephenson:
Yeah.
Mark Vila:
Because the volume you can produce as long as you can… As long as you’re selling transfers and t-shirts, it can produce a ton. So it’s super fast, but that is a bit of a con, because somebody might say, “I would love to print the best transfers I possibly can.” And then you’d say, “That’s great.” It’s about a $25,000 investment and they’re saying, “Oh, I was hoping to spend $5,000.”
Mark Stephenson:
Right?
Mark Vila:
Yeah. So I mean, it’s a true con.
Mark Stephenson:
It’s also… It’s a side hustle and I only want to print 50 a week.
Mark Vila:
Yeah.
Mark Stephenson:
Where this just wouldn’t be appropriate. The digital heat effects is perfect for that.
Mark Vila:
Yes. The amount of maintenance you would have to do would be pro probably more time than you would be printing shirts.
Mark Stephenson:
Yeah and I would say the DTF printer, if you’re just starting out is a fantastic printer to get and I would definitely pair it with one of the others on the podcast, because you’re going to get somebody that only wants one of something and while you can do definitely just one of something, because it’s a digital printer, you’ll do it as a run with the hundred other designs. You won’t do it, you’re not just going to fire everything up, print one and then shut everything down.
Mark Vila:
Yeah. A digital heat effects or the Sawgrass, if you just want to print one shirt, it’s just super easy, I mean, five minutes.
Mark Stephenson:
Or DTG or the [inaudible 00:24:10].
Mark Vila:
Yeah. DTG. Yeah. Everything else for that. Everything else is five minutes or less. You can print a t-shirt with just about everything else and this is just not that system. It’s also big.
Mark Stephenson:
It’s huge.
Mark Vila:
It’s big, you want this to be… This isn’t going to be on a tabletop in the corner where your digital heat effects or your cutter, or your Sawgrass are all… They can just sit in a corner table. You can buy the smallest little table that you can get from Walmart or something, it probably will fit on that. They’re very compact.
Mark Stephenson:
A 10 by 10 bedroom is fine for all that other equipment. You could really fit your whole operation for anything that came before this in a small room in your house. Right?
Mark Vila:
Yeah.
Mark Stephenson:
Is that accurate?
Mark Vila:
Yeah. I would say so. I mean, I’m in a standard size room right now and I’d be okay with operating everything, but the DTF and I mean, the DTG could, but if you have a pretreat and all that stuff, it’s a bit of space, but definitely the digital heat effects or a Sawgrass printer, or a cutter is super easy. I’ve had all those in this room.
Mark Stephenson:
Right.
Mark Vila:
Yeah. I’ve had all those in here.
Mark Stephenson:
It is funny. I think if you’re a screen printer, if you’re in the screen printing business, you’re probably laughing at all of our cons.
Mark Vila:
Yeah.
Mark Stephenson:
Right? Because the DTF does take up a lot of space. It has a belt dryer attached. It is a 24 inch printer. You do have to have room for a roll. Everything’s got to be in series. So it’s not you can put the dryer in one place and the printer in the other. It’s all got to be lined up. That’s nothing compared to an eight color, six color, or even a four color screen printing setup, where you’ve got to have all the individual pieces and a wash out spot and it’s just, there’s a lot. For me, one of the biggest downsides of the DTF printer compared to the others is it’s loud.
Mark Vila:
Okay.
Mark Stephenson:
It makes a lot of noise that may not be the case for future printers and it isn’t… Or smaller ones, but this one, it makes a lot of noise, just the shaking of the hot melt onto the film, it’s loud. It’s also hot.
Mark Vila:
Okay.
Mark Stephenson:
Because, you’re running a pizza oven.
Mark Vila:
Okay.
Mark Stephenson:
Whenever you’re running a belt dryer to… Even if it’s screen printing or you’re running a high volume DTG printer, you’re running a belt dryer, the thing gives off a lot of heat. That’s got to be vented or you’ve got to be in a big space and in spite of all that, you can’t put this thing in your garage. Right? It’s still liquid inks. So everything has to be temperature controlled. If it freezes it freezes.
Mark Vila:
Okay.
Mark Stephenson:
If it gets too hot, it gets too hot.
Mark Vila:
Okay.
Mark Stephenson:
It’s got to be… There’s a definitive temperature range. That’s reasonable but you’re not using it in the middle of a field.
Mark Vila:
Yeah. This I feel that when you’re… As we move kind of down this list, I think the order wasn’t necessarily in price, but the order was a bit in how commercial you’re getting.
Mark Stephenson:
Okay. I like that.
Mark Vila:
Because a graph tech in the beginning is you can just step up from your cricket. You could have skipped the cricket and just got the cutter.
Mark Stephenson:
Yes.
Mark Vila:
Right?
Mark Stephenson:
Most people do.
Mark Vila:
And a lot of folks never even got into a hobby cutter. They just went that but it’s a very… It’s just a lightweight on the commercial side because maintenance is low, space is low. Cost is low, operation of the equipment is not too hard. As we move down, there’s we get into complexity and when we’re to the DTF side, you’re truly in a commercial piece of equipment that produces something amazing but the cost economy of that, we have the economy we talked about before, because the output is so great. You’re paying for that in size and maintenance and noise and things that are not a big deal to somebody who runs a commercial operation. Especially if you are in screen printing or something, you might be used to… With just annoying things you wouldn’t want in your house, chemicals or noises or whatever it might be. So you’re kind of in this commercial range, but you are outputting almost not debatably the best transfers you can get in the world.
Mark Stephenson:
So, just as an example, we’ve had… So far, our customers have been some of the biggest wholesale custom t-shirt printers, that print shirts for brands that you’ve heard of, or order from online, just to do tags.
Mark Vila:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Mark Stephenson:
Just to do ultra placements of putting on a sleeve and they run, millions of dollars worth of direct to garment printers. The rest of the time. We’ve had people make a decision to get rid of their screen printing operations.
Mark Vila:
Yeah.
Mark Stephenson:
In favor of this, because they could move into a smaller space and have fewer people run and we’ve had people that are just getting started that want to start bigger and they understand the commercial nature of these direct to film printers and they’ve jumped in with both feet and done well. And that’s in a very short period of time that we’ve been selling them.
Mark Vila:
Yeah. And I just can’t really say enough about how good the output is.
Mark Stephenson:
Okay.
Mark Vila:
I was-
Mark Stephenson:
It’s not just me.
Mark Vila:
Yeah, even after all the… Even with some of the cons and the issues with it that aren’t cons, they’re just realities really. When you have a DTF print, it’s so nice and it’s really good and it makes everything else feel not just… It’s the little stuff. All the little stuff is wonderful on it but saying that I have shirts from every technology we’ve mentioned of here.
Mark Stephenson:
Yes.
Mark Vila:
They’re all great and a lot of them are honestly, a hundred percent… A lot of them are better than stuff that I’ve bought from the store.
Mark Stephenson:
Oh yeah. Absolutely.
Mark Vila:
All of them are. I’ll tell you, I have… I got… This is not a shirt it’s related to a lot of things on here. So here’s a… This is a digital heat effects, printed mug for those watching video. I think you have-
Mark Stephenson:
Beautiful.
Mark Vila:
You don’t have one right now.
Mark Stephenson:
I do have one.
Mark Vila:
This has gone through the dishwasher a month. This is from a 2019 or 2020, and it’s still perfect. I would say, it’s perfect. I got The Office themed mug for Christmas.
Mark Stephenson:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Mark Vila:
And I pulled it out of the dishwasher this weekend and the logo was melted on the portion of it, ruined. I mean, I said it was ruined because I’m in this. I’m around the house, they were, “No, it’s still good. You can still read it.” But I was, “This is a shame.” This was probably a $20 mug, that couldn’t be run through the dishwasher.
Mark Stephenson:
Right.
Mark Vila:
And everything we have here is going to produce a beautiful quality product. So, I think that… It’s just a thought that came into my head. If you’re investing in any of this stuff, I mean, you’re investing in stuff that is better quality than the folks that approve The Office merchandise, you purchase better than that.
Mark Stephenson:
And I say almost with the exception of the DTF, but not really. I mean, even if you go to a high end brand, Nike or somebody, and you buy a t-shirt with a design on it, it’ll probably last forever because it’s a one color screen printed design. They had a hundred thousand of them printed. You’re not going to get a one off shirt that has better quality than what the items, the devices that we’ve talked about on this podcast today.
Mark Vila:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Mark Stephenson:
You’re not going to get a short run. I think that getting a cutter and using Triton HTV vinyl to be specific and putting it on a shirt, you get a fantastic quality.
Mark Vila:
Yeah.
Mark Stephenson:
And a long lasting print that I’d be proud of. If you did sublimation, if you give me a white poly shirt with sublimation on it or a mug that’s been done with sublimation or something, it’ll last forever, if you did it right. And it’ll look terrific.
Mark Stephenson:
The print and cut the Rolland, if you want to do window clings or bottle labels, if you want to do banners, if you want to do left chest logos, it’s a great product and I would recommend that people start businesses based on it.
Mark Vila:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Mark Stephenson:
White toner printing is by far the most versatile product I’ve ever seen and it does more. It is more of that multi tool than anything else that we’ve got. It definitely, it does it beautiful job. They’re people that have base their whole businesses on it. DTG feels great. Looks fantastic. There’s nothing better in the way it looks. DTF is an amazing. This high volume printer that we’ve got, it’s amazing and if I was going to buy a transfer and I had my choice of anything, this is probably what I would pick. If I was going to sell transfers and I could afford it and it fit with my own business. This is what I would get as long as I was prepared to invest in the real estate to do that.
Mark Stephenson:
So any two of these, any two is going to be better than any one by itself.
Mark Vila:
Yeah.
Mark Stephenson:
You could pick any combination and you’ll end up better and it’s all remarkably inexpensive. Everything is just much cheaper than when I started in the business, that’s for sure.
Mark Vila:
Yeah. I think I… Everything you said is pretty much spot on. I love all this technology, hopefully at the end of this podcast, that you’ve helped to understand which one of these technologies is probably best for you and how much it’s going to about what it’s going to cost you.
Mark Stephenson:
Yeah.
Mark Vila:
And also you’re going to see the relative prices compared to other technology out there to help you realize that everything costs, what it costs for a reason and everything is worth what it is for the reason.
Mark Vila:
We have tons of customers with all this equipment that love it and as I mentioned before, we have a lot of people who have multiple pieces of equipment, most people do if you’re in this business. So it’s great to start with one, if you need to, right? And get your feet wet and get going but your business is going to expand and you’re going to want to expand your offerings and you probably want more equipment and all these are great options and all of it’s reasonably affordable and can pay for itself in weeks time.
Mark Stephenson:
Yeah. Agree.
Mark Vila:
If you’re selling the shirts.
Mark Stephenson:
And this podcast has been worth it. The whole series of podcasts, the 160 whatever hours of content that we produce is worth it, if you’ve listened to this one and you never ask how much is the printer again.
Mark Vila:
Yeah.
Mark Stephenson:
Stop everyone from asking that question.
Mark Vila:
Yeah.
Mark Stephenson:
All right. I think that’s it. Do you have anything else, mark?
Mark Vila:
No, that’s great. We’ll finish it up by saying that we have an article that discusses this and it’ll be in the… So go to customapparelstartups.com and go to the episode. How much does it cost? And you can click on the article and it’s some other links that we’ll have around there and this is the first step for you getting educated.
Mark Vila:
If you’re just getting started or you’re looking to expand your business and maybe invest in one or more of these technologies, the best thing you can do is talk to one of the experts at ColDesi.
Mark Stephenson:
Yeah.
Mark Vila:
Because they are going to point you in the direction, let you know what’s right. Help ask you questions to get you thinking and make the right decision, because you can do a bunch of research on your own but when you finally talk to the folks at ColDesi, they’ll really point you in what you want and what you should get based on your needs and then you can make an educated choice.
Mark Stephenson:
I love that. This has been Mark Stevenson from Coldesi.
Mark Vila:
And this is Mark Vila from ColDesi.
Mark Stephenson:
Okay. You guys have a great business.