Challenge: What's one thing you can fix in your pricing or workflow this week?

The post Episode 203 – How to Compete in a Crowded DTF Market appeared first on Custom Apparel Startups.

In this episode we’re diving deep into one of the most important decisions in DTF printing: choosing the right DTF printer. Whether you’re just starting out or scaling up a serious production setup, the gear you choose can make or break your workflow, quality, and profits. We’ll break down the different printer types and talk about the real-world usage of each.

We’re also sharing insider tips on what to avoid, and what else you’ll need beyond just the printer to actually succeed with DTF.

At the end of the episode we have specific advice tailored for beginners looking to start smart, and pros aiming to optimize or expand.

Verdict: Not recommended for production-focused businesses.

Verdict: Roll-to-roll is generally the winner at this tier.

Verdict: Bigger and faster is almost always better for serious DTF operations.

Choosing the right DTF printer setup comes down to understanding your production goals, budget, and willingness to maintain the equipment properly. Whether you’re starting with an entry-level setup to learn the process or investing in a full pro-grade system to drive your business forward, focus on reliability, vendor support, and scalability. The right choice will save you time, reduce frustration, and allow you to confidently produce high-quality transfers for your customers. Be sure to check out ColDesi.com and learn more about how Direct to Film printing can help your business thrive.

The post Choosing the Right DTF Printer: A Guide for Professionals (and Beginners) appeared first on Custom Apparel Startups.

In this episode of the Custom Apparel Startups Podcast, host Marc Vila is joined by Michael Palme and Austin Gordon from Taylor to discuss how direct mail can be a game-changer for custom apparel, sign, and promotional product businesses. While digital marketing gets a lot of attention, direct mail remains a powerful and underutilized tool for targeting new customers, retaining existing clients, and cutting through the clutter of online ads.

Michael and Austin break down how direct mail works, how to effectively use data to reach the right audience, and how you can integrate it with digital advertising for even greater results. Whether you’re a startup looking to establish your brand or an established business aiming for the next level, this episode will give you practical strategies to expand your reach and increase sales.

Topics Covered in This Episode:

✅ Why direct mail still works in a digital world

Listen now and learn how to use direct mail to take your business to the next level!

✉ Have questions or want to connect? email us at [email protected].

Marc Vila:

Just as we’re starting off 2025 and this is our first podcast of the year, so we’re trying to adjust the format a little bit and really get to a higher level of business. So previously we were the Custom Apparel Startups Podcast, CAS, and I’ve been saying CAS a little bit more because we’re trying to move not just for the startups, but actually moving and growing into folks who are really trying to grow their business and potentially have an established business, too, that are really trying to take it to the next level.

So with that in mind, if you are a startup or you’ve been in business for 10 years, this episode is going to be amazing for you because we’re going to have some great education from two fantastic gentlemen from Taylor. So today, we’re going to be talking about growing your business with direct mail, and we’ve got Michael Palme and Austin Gordon from Taylor. So why don’t you guys say hello and tell us a little bit about Taylor.

Michael Palme:

Marc Vila:

Austin Gordon:

Marc Vila:

So I run marketing here at ColDesi. What’s the hot topics and the fancy and shiny thing nowadays is should I do influencer marketing? Should I be advertising on Instagram? Is TikTok a good place? What about LinkedIn? All these digital online places and even Google Ads, this is the hot stuff that’s talked about over and over again. And it is a great way to reach audiences and it is an important way to do advertising, but we forget that there are tried and true methods that are still great and one of them potentially could be direct mail. And we wanted to talk about how to get started with that if you’re currently not, what potential impacts that could have on your business, and how it could be a different way to reach out to your customers, especially if you have a large existing customer database that you want to get repeat business from, or you’re trying to reach a new niche group of people that you can get your branding and your image and your message in front of their face in a different way, especially with the digital space being incredibly crowded.

So what I’ll do is I have a series of questions that I put together. So we’ll do a little Q&A style. And I think a good format would be I’ll just back and forth or if I feel one of you can answer it better, I’ll start with one of you and then if the second person has somebody to add, this way we’re not talking over each other. So I’ll do like Michael and then Austin and Michael and Austin. And then once you’re done with what you have to say, finish and I’ll give a brief moment for the other one to jump in if they want to add something. And then if I have any comments, I’ll add it at the end. So that’ll be the format today, and let’s just get right into business.

The first thing that I wanted to talk about, and Michael, we’ll start with you as I mentioned, why would direct mail work for a sign or a t-shirt shop?

Michael Palme:

Austin Gordon:

Secondly, what I think it does well for a sign shop or a t-shirt shop is it does really good at local targeting. In my eyes, I see sign shops and t-shirt shops probably operating in a specific area, and direct mail allows for precise geographical targeting.

Marc Vila:

So when we survey out our customers and we do interviews on folks that are in this t-shirt space or sign space and other promotional goods, as you said, most of them are working within a targeted area. So within a city or within a state are going to be the two most popular, or they may specifically be working with schools, so therefore they’re working within a certain school board or whatever it might be. Government, they may be working with local government agencies. And the way to expand that is typically just to either spread out that map or get deeper into that map that you work in. And the first one is within the area that I work with, are there more customers? And you can really target well as you mentioned in a less crowded space.

And we get… Everyone will joke how much junk mail you get or don’t get, right? But when you talk about your mobile device or YouTube, we’re almost more trained to skip those ads because what are you doing? You’re flipping through Instagram. You’re there to have fun. And then the fifth thing you get is somebody telling you to do your taxes and just get out of here. And direct mail though is mail is business. That’s how I think about it. Mail is business. It’s not fun. So when you open your mail, you’re saying, “What’s a bill? What’s an important letter? What’s an invitation to do something? Is there something of value in here for me?” So there’s actually you’re actually searching for value where on social media or YouTube, you may be searching for value. You may just be literally rotting your brain in the bathroom. And there’s a reality.

So it’s something that I think is very cool about doing direct mail that if you operate in Orlando, Florida and you work with a particular niche business, you can identify all of those businesses through a company like Taylor. You’ll identify all those potential businesses and you can send them something physical, which is, Michael, you had said that’s great. That actually is designs with your physical product. If you’re selling promotional goods or t-shirts or signs, you’re handing them a physical good. It’s not a piece of software. It’s not a digital download. So you have the opportunity to show, like you said, show past work, show something that’s vibrant and eye-catching. And if you’re trying to sell signs or t-shirts that are vibrant and eye-catching to businesses, what better way to do it than to impress them immediately with something vibrant and eye-catching in their hands. So there’s a bit of subconscious, I think, to it as well.

Austin Gordon:

Michael Palme:

Marc Vila:

Austin Gordon:

So for the sake of can you operate in a local area, the answer to that is yes. And for how big or small it can be is we can do a mailing as small as 500 people if that’s what your budget calls and that’s what your data is telling you. But we can also do as large as a million, just throwing out numbers there just to give background for how big or small we can do.

Michael Palme:

I’m just making that up. But I do think that the data portion of that, especially in a local area, is so critical to having success with direct mail.

Marc Vila:

If you’re able to get that data for your local area, which potentially you could, now you potentially have a mailing list of a certain size. Well, at this point in time, the size, it might be huge. You’re like, “Oh my gosh, I don’t think I want to send to that many people.” So now you want to tighten it down. “Well, I just want to do certain zip codes. I really just want to focus on these three high schools.” And there’s something about doing print advertising that can be brought directly to the high school, but there’s also something about potentially getting a database of people that would be of a certain age, more than likely to have children that are in within these certain zip codes, which are within those high schools. And you could direct mail out to those. And these campaigns can really be done beautifully if you have the right data. And like you said, the data has to be of a certain size. It has to be of certain accuracy.

And then the last little bit of it is on the commercial side of direct mail, you mentioned 500, a thousand or a million. Well, you may find that you want to do something with local dentist offices. Maybe that’s a niche thing you want to jump into, but there’s only 40 in your area. Well, this is not as big for Taylor, but it’s a toe dip into it. If you have printing equipment because a lot of folks here do, and you want to print 40 things, you can print 40 signs and just mail them directly to those 40 dentists. So direct mail can start on your own, especially being in our industry. You can start by printing 40 t-shirts and mailing them to 40 dentists.

But this is a way to really expand and grow the business, and that’s what the conversation is about today. So how do you grow from that small niche of 40? What is a larger niche that you can get into where previously you had one salesperson that would take 40 t-shirts or 40 signs and they would drive around town and drop them off and hand off a business card. And that’s great as you get started, but if you’re trying to scale and you’re trying to move up to another level, well, now I’m not interested in advertising to 40 people. I’m interested in advertising to 4,000 people, like potential parents of graduates. And that’s what we’re talking about is scaling the business. So data is a really great way to do it. And if you talk to folks like the people at Taylor, they can really dive into that data with you.

So another thing I wanted to cover is just cost. Everyone wants to know how much everything costs. We sell printers. Everyone wants to know what does it cost to print, how fast can it print and all that. So what does it cost to mail something? I know, Austin, you had mentioned that you had done a little bit of math on that, so could you just give us some bookend numbers? Let’s say that you wanted to mail a thousand postcards in Orlando. What’s something like that going to cost about?

Austin Gordon:

Marc Vila:

Austin Gordon:

Marc Vila:

Austin Gordon:

Marc Vila:

Michael Palme:

Marc Vila:

Michael Palme:

Marc Vila:

Michael Palme:

Marc Vila:

And I’ll give… I had an extreme example come to my head, but if you want to operate in the state of Florida and the niche you have is you do Latino style, anime manga style art that’s in Spanish, you could go through and you could potentially buy an audience of people who are Spanish speaking, interested in anime, manga and other types of animation like that. And you could potentially buy that target audience, people who are 25 to 45 years old, males, Spanish-speaking, that’s an audience you could potentially purchase. Then you could put together a digital and a direct mail piece selling the t-shirts that you sell that are very specific to that audience. Who else is advertising that product? Minimal.

So the gold is really in do you have a niche that you work in? Do you have something that you’re passionate about? The audience is obtainable. And then once you have that audience, how do you get to them? And getting a physical piece in their hand is one of the closest ways you can get outside of literally shaking their hand or having a phone call. It’s the next level down on physical touch to be able to actually capture that audience.

Michael Palme:

Marc Vila:

Michael Palme:

Marc Vila:

Michael Palme:

Marc Vila:

Michael Palme:

Marc Vila:

Michael Palme:

Marc Vila:

Michael Palme:

Marc Vila:

And the reason why I bring this up is all the time I have folks come up to me and say, “Hey, I’m thinking about advertising on Facebook. I had a few hundred bucks. I was just going to drop it in on an ad.” And I would just say, “Just spend the few hundred dollars on something else. Print samples and just mail them to people or just print samples and drive in your car around town and drop them off, because a few hundred dollars is not necessarily going to be that impactful on something like Instagram or Facebook.” And I’d find direct mail is probably the same thing. Just dropping one 4 x 6 postcard in your area is not necessarily going to make you a million dollars. So what do you think is a starting budget for a six or 12-month period that you should have in your mind before you want to go down this journey?

Michael Palme:

And one of the things also that I would highlight just as it relates to direct mail, it’s typically, it can be a long game in that depending on what your call to action is and the piece and ultimately who you’re targeting, what your product or service is. It could take a while. So if you’re able to pair that direct mail with an omnichannel type approach, including direct mail marketing ads and email, all of that going to that one person, we typically see the fastest conversion rates with those. So again, yeah, it’s got to be more than a couple grand a month to make it effective.

Austin Gordon:

I think, Marc, we were talking earlier, when you’re targeting people on Instagram or Facebook, it’s not you’re sending ads to 500 people and one of them’s going to buy. It’s you sending 500 ads to 500 people or an ad to 500 people five times hoping that one of them is going to buy from that multiple touch points. So yeah, like Michael said, I think it’s a long game with direct mail and you want to have multiple touch points with the customer to see the ROI in the end.

Marc Vila:

That’s a long tail one for you. You have to continuously show them value that you provide this and then just wait for the right opportunity. Maybe you have a specific holiday offer that they’re interested in. Maybe you have a new idea they haven’t done before. Their previous provider dropped the ball too many times and now they decided, “You know what? It’s time to change.” And you’re the one that they recognize next. All right, so that’s a long tail.

Now, that’s going to be expensive to get that client. It may take eight months worth of direct mail and digital advertising and such to get that client. However, now you’ve got five stores doing seasonal advertising changing in their signage every 30, 60 days or less. It’s a serious big money account for you. So it could have cost you $2,000 in regards to how much it costs to actually get that client to place their first order, but they’d maybe worth a hundred thousand dollars a year. And that’s a great long tail game where you’re saying, “I’m going to invest in direct mail to this specific niche, these retail stores in my area because that’s what I want to go after.” The chances of one of those retail stores just coincidentally at the day they got the mail is when their current vendor just failed and they’re just like, “I’m…” And they just hate call you. They’re so mad at their other vendor, they just call you. That happens, and that type of luck happens in direct mail or email advertising, but most of the time it’s a long tail.

Now, there is a short tail side of this too. If you wanted to try to experiment with something a little shorter, like a 90-day plan where you can look for some activity. That needs to be a tight offer that’s an easy decision to make immediately. So you have one product potentially you’re trying to sell. If we just go down the sign route, maybe you have a particular style of sign you’re going to sell. It’s a particular idea. You’re going to have a very low price for it. Where a business owner may get that thing and say, “You know what? I’m going to order one of these and try it out.” Or if it’s a t-shirt offer, it’s got to be maybe a very aggressive deal to get that first conversion, potentially not a moneymaker if you want to try to convert fast.

So convert fast is going to be, “You can get 20 shirts at this price, get 10 hats for free.” And then someone’s like, “Oh my gosh, that’s freaking… I’m going to lose the money on that.” Well, but you’re trying to get a quick conversion. You’re trying to immediately get into those shops in a short period of time. You’ve got to have something aggressive to go after.

So there’s some short and long-term. The short one also might be the example of the graduation science, the Coroplast signs that people put in their yard. That’s going to be something that somebody is going to make a decision to buy that probably within the month that they’re graduating. So if you’re hitting them with direct mail pieces in April, May, June, or whatever those three-month period is, that’s when you’re going to make those sales. And then that campaign’s over because chances are somebody is not going to hold on to that flyer, that brochure, or that email until two years from now when their other kid graduates. They’re going to already have forgotten who you are. So those are short-term things where you’re trying to sell a product now at a very particular opportunity, and you look for results then too.

Michael Palme:

Marc Vila:

The additional piece that everyone listening needs to get is that you also have to deal with the post office. So you have to deal with the government to get them to help you finish this last leg of it. So it’s important that if you’re thinking about doing advertising for the holiday season, if you’re thinking about doing Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas, Hanukkah, that type of stuff, I would start having those conversations now. At least open the book now and have the conversation now because you’re going to want to have all the pieces in your timing just right, because if you start to have the conversation in October about sending something out for Christmas or New Year’s, we’re not saying that can’t happen but you’ve got a tough road of everything’s got to line up. So it’s just important. Planning is really important for this more than anything else.

And if you’re used to doing digital advertising or cold calling or selling, which are all things I’m used to doing, we can execute that stuff immediately. So my team and how we handle any type of print type of stuff. We recently put together a magazine as you can see right there if you’re looking on camera, and that took months of building out the content, getting it approved, printing it. All that took months to do and that’s not something we normally were doing. So for us, it was a learning experience. And I think as we go into more print type of things, like additional copies of that Customize Now magazine, we’re still learning lessons. So no matter how dedicated our team is and experienced our team is, when you move into a new media, it’s going to take you some time to learn. And we’re still learning doing print. Just a small pitch on that.

If you are in the direct-to-film business or screen printing business, if you’re thinking about direct-to-film printing and you’re still in that decision-making phase, be sure to go to coldesi.com and you could just live chat or fill out a form and let them know that you’d like us to mail you a copy of that Customize Now DTF edition, and we’ve got a bunch of articles and a bunch of great information that’s in there. It’s completely free. So just a little pitch for that.

Okay, there’s one other thing I’d like to ask and then we can wrap it up today. So maybe Austin, if you would kick this one off, what are the steps to getting started? So let’s just use somebody wants to start sending direct mail out for the summer, something going on the summer camp type of stuff, and how do they get started today? What are just some of the steps to they’re going to be able to get their first piece in somebody’s hands?

Austin Gordon:

Secondly, after you know who that audience is, let’s work to collect the data to see how many people are out there. Once we figure that out, we’ll determine, all right, now what’s the budget that we can work with to how many pieces we can mail out and target to that specific audience.

After that, it’s designing the mail piece and coming up with a call to action. We work hard to deliver to the right people at the right time using the data, but it’s almost most important to have the right message, that call to action that’s going to say, “I actually should do this.” Marc, you touched on it earlier, is that call to action, if you want those instant results or those quick wins, it’s probably the most important piece.

And then after you have your audience and your design and your call to action figured out, then it’s as simple as getting an artwork to a printer, getting the mailing list to a printer. If you weren’t working with them before that for the designing piece and the data, getting that to a printer and getting it to a press. It’s a lot simpler than you think once you get the planning done on who’s going to be receiving the piece.

Marc Vila:

Now, you could say, “Well, I got busy,” and that is one indicator, but also were you doing anything else that could have gotten you busy? Were you making cold calls and knocking on doors and going to… you join the local chamber of commerce or something like that? So how do you directly do that? And one of the things you could do is you can… Just a couple little tips and tricks. Whoever does your phone service, you could probably get a secondary phone number. And everything’s digital now, so you could put a different phone number on that postcard. And then when somebody dials that phone number, they’re dialing the specific phone number, which just goes to you anyway.

Your business size, it may even still ring cell phones of a couple of people if you’re doing forwarding like that, but you could probably get a report from that phone company on how many times that phone number rang. So you put that phone number on mailers. You put that on for a year, then at the end of the year, you could physically say how many times did people call the phone number on that mail? And that gives you a nice piece of data.

You can also do it with a specific website. You can literally just, you can… And this is if you don’t know how to do this, whoever handles your website can do this. You have a different web address. It’s a name of your business, may be shorter or slightly different. And then whoever handles your web property can set up that URL. And then every time somebody typed that in somewhere, that you can get a report on how many people typed that in.

Also, very specific offers are important too, a very specific coupon, a very specific deal that people will mention. And I recommend doing two or three or four of these very specific things because you want to add them all up together because not everybody’s going to call. Not everybody’s going to use the coupon. It’s a surprising piece of data on how many coupons go out that people end up doing business with the company and do not use the coupon that they got. It’s less than 50% of people. So if you send out a coupon and you got five people who used it, chances are you had 10 people who actually bought from you because of that piece of advertising, but only half of them use the coupon.

So it’s important to stack these things together, a specific website, a specific QR code, a specific video you tell them to watch, a specific phone number or a specific action. So being very specific, so it’s trackable is really important. So that’s an important part of that center sliver there, Gordon, on where you mentioned. Like when you’re picking your plan and your message, make sure you stick in their ways to be able to track that.

And then just going back a bit to what Michael talked about earlier with data, you are more likely to get business if you say, “Okay, I want to expand to my area.” So I’m actually going to break it down into medical field, restaurants, finance, mortgage, investment type of firms. Maybe you break it down into five categories. And when you buy the data or you rent the data, you’re going to say, “All right, I want all these five different types of businesses in these five different areas. Okay, it’s a thousand a piece.” Now, I want to do the mailing for the signs for dental or medical. It’s going to be all medical themed. You’re going to have doctors stethoscope, the sign is going to say, “Free vaccines here,” stuff like that.

And then the thing for the finance people, you’re going to show people in suits, shaking hands, computers with charts with arrows going up, whatever. So when that person gets that message, it directly relates to them versus the doctor getting a message of a chart with an arrow going up. That doesn’t mean anything to them. But to the finance person, they really see that as impactful. So naturally that’s all possible, right, if somebody wanted to do that?

Austin Gordon:

One example I want to give, Marc, when you were talking about tracking and how different ways that people that we’ve worked with have tracked is I was walking around one of our facility floors with a general manager of one of our facilities, and there was this cool piece of direct mail and he’s like, “Hey.” But nobody can take their phones out and take a picture of that because they have these QR codes that are specific to the person that receives it. So when someone takes out their phone and scans the mail piece that they get, the company that was doing this campaign would get notified saying, “Hey, Marc scanned the QR code on this mail piece. They’re interested in XYZ. You should email them. You should hit them with a digital ad.” It’s really cool what customization and personalization can do in the direct mail space that can really give you a lot of answers and really track how well campaign is performing and how are people interacting with the piece.

Marc Vila:

And honestly, if you talk to a company like Taylor, they may even just say, “You should probably just do that on your own.” It’s not worth it for all the trouble. But if you’re going to go into, “I want to try out a 90-day campaign or I want an annual budget. I really want to dive into this,” then you want to work with people who will help to guide you in the right direction, give you some good advice, have a little bit of strategy phone call, and ultimately send out a piece that you’re going to be proud to have sent out that hopefully works. That’s the ultimate goal, is that it works.

Well, we covered a good amount of stuff today. I think it’s probably time to wrap up this episode. But do either of you have anything else you wanted to add or anything that we missed in regards to direct mail and growing your business?

Michael Palme:

Marc Vila:

But it’s been around so long that it’s a challenge for somebody to come and feed you a bunch of lies that you can’t verify like it is with brand new stuff like influencer marketing. You could be fed a bunch of information with nothing to back it up or a bunch of information that’s not tried and true. But when it comes to pieces like print and direct mail, this is stuff that the data has been there for decades. Not only has direct mail been happening for hundreds of years or however long, but good data has been around for, I don’t know, 50 years probably of when people really started marketing and collecting data. So there’s really good data on this, meaning what works, what doesn’t work, how to do it, bringing the cost down. There’s a lot of great, solid good information that you can get. So it’s a good tried and true piece of marketing that can help grow your business.

So if it sounds right for you, of course you can feel free to reach out to the folks over at Taylor. Gracious that they came on here. So if you wanted to chat with any of them, we’ll make sure that you’re able to reach them in the podcast notes. So if you go to customapparelstartups.com or just ColDesi and just reach out to anybody on the team, you can also send an email to marketing at coldesi.com. That’s going to go to our marketing team. And people do this all the time, but literally just write an email and say, “Hey, Marc, I listened to the episode about direct mail. Can you help get me an introduction?” And I’ll just pass it along. It’s really no big deal at all. The fact that we got some of this education to help you guys out is really important to me, and I know it is to the folks over at Taylor. So thanks for joining us, and thanks everybody listening, and have a good business.

Austin Gordon:

Marc Vila:

Michael Palme:

The post Episode 201 – Grow Your Business with Direct Mail – Featuring Taylor appeared first on Custom Apparel Startups.

In this episode, we dive into the exciting world of entrepreneurial spirit with a focus on launching a custom t-shirt business. We’ll explore a practical, step-by-step guide designed for beginners eager to make a mark in the t-shirt industry, even with little to no prior experience. Whether you’ve dabbled in t-shirt sales or are just curious about this creative venture, this episode is your gateway to starting a successful side hustle immediately.

We’ll dissect a downloadable document that outlines six actionable strategies that have proven successful for startups across the country. From leveraging your personal network to making smart use of social media and local community engagement, we cover all the bases to ensure you’re well-equipped to start generating business right away.

Join us as we reveal the secrets to turning referrals into sales, using everyday interactions as promotional opportunities, and why something as simple as a well-timed text message or a social media post can be incredibly effective. If you’re ready to start making money by selling custom t-shirts, this episode will provide you with the knowledge and inspiration to hit the ground running. Tune in to transform these insights into action and start achieving your dreams today!

Marc Vila:

Hello and welcome to another episode of the CAS podcast. For those of you who have listened before, this is the Custom Apparel Startups podcast. And a little inside information, a little behind the scenes, I’m thinking about adjusting the name to CAS Customize Adapt and Scale podcast because the roots of the podcast was starting up custom apparel businesses, and that’s what a lot of the topics have been. But we’ve also been evolving the content to include other types of customization businesses, and also not just startups, but taking your existing business and growing it. So behind the scenes, we may never talk about that again, or it might become the new name. I guess we’ll see, but you could feel free to add any input if you’d like. You can email [email protected] and tell us what you think about that name or any other names.

But anyway, since we’re talking about changing the podcast or changing the name of it, we’re actually going to do an episode today. I’m going to do an episode on the roots of the podcast, and the roots of the podcast is starting a custom apparel business, and that’s what this episode is about. It’s the secret to selling T-shirts right away. And this is a topic that’s been really important because we’ve been speaking to a lot of folks who are getting into the transfer business or just getting into the T-shirt business, and they get so wrapped up in so many little things that they miss the picture of just the point is to make some money right away, get successful, make the payment on something you may have financed or start putting some money on that business bank account so you can actually grow the business. Maybe you don’t have a piece of equipment yet and you’re hoping to buy a machine. Maybe you just bought something small and you’re hoping one day to grow to something larger. Whatever it is, this episode is for you.

And there is an accompanying document that you can download and we’ll connect it to the podcast episode on customapparelstartups.com. You can download this so you can keep this yourself, print it out, share it with somebody. We’ll first go ahead and say who this episode specifically is for. Then I’ll put an asterisk at the end of that. If you’ve got little no experience selling shirts, definitely for you if you’ve sold some other products, but maybe you haven’t sold custom T-shirts yet, this is definitely for you as well. Or if you’ve dabbled in the T-shirt business, but you haven’t gotten far, maybe you just have a hobby type of a machine, like a cricut, or maybe you’ve sold some transfers here and there to random customers, but you’ve never tried to really sell or market the business. So those are really the top three that I wrote all this for.

But the asterisks that I’m going to put at the end is anybody who’s selling any product, most of what I’m going to say today is very, very useful to you. Also, if you’ve been in business for a long time, these are the little things that you forget about. You get so caught in the weeds of all of these complicated ways to generate business. Maybe you’ve got ads running in a website, an SEO and a sales team and all these things, you forget about the simplest way to make money right away.

So here we go. Let’s dive into the secret to selling T-shirts right away. And we’re going to go one, two, three. And I’m going to start off by saying some of this stuff is so simple that you’re going to say, “Oh, come on. I was hoping to get a real secret.” This actually is the secret, and let me tell you why it’s the secret. It’s a secret because when we’ve talked to business after business after business, startup after startup, and we ask them, “How did you get your first customers? How did you get enough money to make your payment? How’d you get yourself to the point where you bought a second machine?” these are the things that everyone says over and over again. These are almost always the success stories. No matter how big a business gets, these methods are a part of their success story, almost 100% of the time in the customization industry.

Now, further from that, there are so many people who start selling T-shirts, they start a business, they actually don’t do any of these things and they fail. And so these are the simple things that you do. And we’ll compare it to some other things in life real quick. I love to talk, that’s why I have a podcast, but let me explain why I really want to hammer this point in.

How do you lose some weight? If you go to the doctor, the doctor says, “Gosh, you need to lose 20 pounds. It’s going to be better for your heart.” So I got to lose 20 pounds. How are you going to do it? Right? You can jump on, you can jump on the internet, and you can buy a pill and you can buy some juice to do a cleanse, and you can start the paleo diet or you can start the Atkins diet. There’s 40 different ways to do it. You can buy injections. All of these ways will probably get you to lose that 20 pounds in one way or another. However, the simplest way, generally speaking, when you talk to fitness experts is you eat less, exercise more, right? You burn more calories than you put in. And everyone says, “Oh, yeah, yeah, I get that. That’s so simple,” but that really is when you talk to a lot of experts, they say, “Well, that’s the first place. All these other tools are things you could do to break through further, but the easiest thing to do is you just eat less calories and work out.”

And I think that’s what this comes down to. How do you do that for your selling T-shirt business? So let’s dive into the three. The first three to start, and the first one is I say take out your phone, right? That’s what I call this one. You take out your phone, you go to your contacts, and you have a text message that you’ve written ahead of time, that you can copy and paste or you can rewrite it each time and you do say something like this, and it’s in the document that I have available for download. “Hi,” name. “I’ve started a custom T-shirt business. If you know anyone who needs custom T-shirts, please send them my way. It’d be a huge help to kick things off. Of course, if you need anything yourself, just let me know,” and that’s it.

And you send that to everybody who you think is reasonable in your contacts to send that to. So generally speaking, that’s going to be all your family members, parents, siblings, cousins, anybody like that. They should know this. These are going to be… Generally speaking, your family is your biggest advocates in your life. Next is going to be your best friends. So all your close friends, make sure that they know. And just part of the formula of this is, let them know that you’re reaching out to them. Let them know what it’s about. Let them know that you want a referral. Let them know it would be a big help to you.

That’s the formula in that. So you can rewrite this how you want, but it needs to include those things, what you’re doing, why you’re doing it. Ask for the help. Let them know that the help will help you a lot because it will. It’s 100% honest. It’s the most honest message you can send. Please help me get business because it’ll be a huge help to me. And these people who are your advocates, your best friends, your family, previous business associates, these are all people that are going to say, wow, that’s awesome.

And I will say, if you do this, if you wake up at nine a.m and you do this throughout the day and you send it to 20, 30, 40 people, whatever the number is, just a text message, you’re probably going to get a referral that day. Somebody is going to say, “Oh yeah, my cousin so-and-so. Oh yeah, so-and-so just started a business. I was getting ready to order some new shirts. The person who makes my shirts right now actually does a bad job. Maybe you can do them.” So there you go, just take out your phone, send a text message, write a template, make sure it goes well.

If you want to get fancy, write two templates and split them. So if you’re going to send it to 20 people or 40 people, send 10 or 20 half of them, 10 or 20, the other half, and you’ve just created a little A, B test and see which one of those responses gets more. So that’s just a little sidebar thing you can do to help test your messages.

Again, this is so simple, it’s almost ridiculous, but it’s just a fact. This works. Go to social media. Now, I mean your personal one, right? This is your Facebook, your Instagram, your TikTok, X, whatever you use a lot. Hopefully you have friends and family and folks that follow you, that you interact with. If you have a bunch of generic strangers following an account, this is not probably going to work as well. Also, if you just started a business account that five people are following, this isn’t going to work as well too. This is the place where your grandma’s at or your cousin or your best friend or your grandkid, wherever they are. The people who are going to advocate for you, they need to be here.

Here’s what you say, “Hey, everybody just launched a custom T-shirt business. I’m super excited. If you or anyone needs a professional or a personalized tee, I had love to help you create something unique, please consider supporting me. Please pass my name on to others. Thanks a ton. You all are going to help me succeed.” Same formula as before. This is what I’m doing. This is what I’m asking you to do for me. I want you to do it because you’re my friend, family, etc. It’s going to be a huge help. Thank you. Simple formula. Let them know what you want, what to do, and then let them know why they should do it, and it’s because they’re going to help you. They’re advocates. Again, this is another one. If you post this on Facebook and you have a decent amount of friends and family on there that you’ve gathered over the years or Instagram, whatever, you will get a message or a response on that within moments, more than likely, “Oh yeah, I know somebody. I’m going to message you right now,” right? So this works.

The next one’s a little bit different. Again, simple and these work. So the next one, I called it cards and wear your product. So if you’ve printed some business cards, great. If not, that’s fine. You can make a flyer if you wanted to, but keep it simple, right? You have a business card, you have some information with your name and contact on it and what you do.

And then wear your product. So by wearing your product, which I just realized through this video, I’m not wearing my product. I brought a ColDesi shirt. I did not wear it today, so don’t follow my lead apparently. But anyway, wear your product. So what do I mean by that is make a polo shirt, make a T-shirt, make a hat that says your business name. Maybe it says what you do. So-and-so’s business custom T-shirts, whatever it might be. Wear that, wear that thing around for one. If you go out to breakfast, if you go to a bagel shop, if you go to local coffee shops, local diners, local little league games, anything you do where you’re going, places where you’re going to know and potentially interact with people, whether it’s managers of businesses, workers and businesses, parents, teachers, students, etc. You should wear what you have. You should also have some business cards with you. They’re super cheap to get nowadays and keep your business card simple at first. What you do, email, phone number, name, simple. And you just go around and you just tell people what you do.

One of the recommendations for this specifically, if you want to get some business to business type of stuff, go to the places where you normally patron. So if there’s a breakfast place, a coffee shop, a bagel shop, anywhere where you normally go, hardware store where you know people that work there, try to talk to the manager. I’m going to recommend you do this probably mid-afternoon. That’s usually a good time to solicit these types of folks. I say solicit, but you’re going to interrupt their day and ask them for business in one way or another. So you’re kind of doing that. And you say something like this, “Hey, manager, I’ve been coming here a lot. I’ve been inspired on how well this business does or how well you run your business.” I would recommend complimenting them. “I’ve been inspired by how well your business does. This led me to create my own business more. I make custom T-shirts, hats, and more. If you happen to have a need or know anyone who does, please let me know. Here’s my card. I make stuff like this,” and you’re wearing a shirt, whether it’s a polo, a hat, a T-shirt, or more than one of them.

So I recommend talking to the people that work at these places, business owners, just, again, you’re not saying, can I make you shirts now? Or you don’t have to be a hardcore salesperson to do this. All you have to do is just let them know.

Similarly, with the cards and wear your product, which I didn’t write in this example in the document we have available, but it’s very similar. If you go to little league or your kids play soccer or your friend’s kids are in cheerleading, whatever it might be. If you’re attending events like this and you’re sitting next to parents and small talk comes up, if you’re wearing your apparel, you’re going to have people just say it to you. You’re going to forget you have your shirt on and someone’s going to say, “Wait, you do custom T-shirts.” So that’s a cool part about that. Second is you’re just going to have small talk with somebody, “Oh, yeah. Oh wow, your kid. That’s your kid. Oh, wow, look at that. Great hit. Oh, fast runner,” whatever they’re going to say. You’re making small talk.

And then just sometimes during that small talk, it doesn’t have to be a long conversation, you just say, “Oh, what do you do? What do you do for a living?” “Oh, I’m a plumber,” whatever it is. “Oh, okay, cool. Actually, as you can see, probably from my T-shirt, I do custom T-shirts.” “Okay, cool.” And you can leave it like that for a bit when you go to say goodbye, or maybe just right then and there, whenever it works, hand them a card and say, “Hey, great to meet you. By the way, if you ever need any shirts or anybody, thank you.” And also I would say, “I’m trying to grow this business, by the way. It’d be a huge help.” Everyone’s going to love the honesty on that.

These three things right here are going to make you money on T-shirts immediately. And I know that they seem so simple and they seem so obvious. But I will say in my experience and experience of plenty of the folks that work here, folks who try to skip this stuff and get really, really fancy in the beginning, they get down these frustrated rabbit holes when there is somebody literally a text message away who needs a dozen T-shirts made next week.

So we’ve gone through the first three, and then we’ll move on to just the note about this, because all of these do have something in common. They mention referrals. If you need some or you know anybody, right? You happen to know anyone else, let me know. Pass my name on please. So referrals are huge. All of these are potentially the person you’re messaging will need something, but also they’re about the referral. The referral is huge.

When we survey customers, I’ve been surveying custom apparel businesses and customization businesses for over a decade now, and almost every time I do small group surveys or individual conversations, I say, “How do you get your business?” 70, 80, 100% sometimes of these folks businesses, they say referrals. And I was like, “Well, what do you mean by that?” “I just tell people what I do. They send me business. I do a good job for somebody. Next thing you know, a friend or a colleague of theirs called me up and said, ‘Hey, you did a great job for so-and-so would you do the same type of deal for me?” So if you’re selling within your local community, which by the way is a great way to kickstart. Somebody who’s listening to me right now is thinking to themself, “Yeah, but I’m trying to start an apparel brand,” or, “I’m trying to start a funny T-shirt business online,” or, “I want to sell rock band shirts to concerts.” All that’s awesome. I love every single one of those businesses. They are great ways to make money. They’re great ways to make a lot of money. The challenge is getting started in that stuff is a bit harder.

So what’s the story that is typical when you watch a movie and there is a starting actor or actress in Hollywood? The story is they’re always like a bartender or a server. That’s just always what they are in a movie, and in real life, that’s common too. And the reason is they actually have to make money while they’re trying to get big. These little gigs that they get here and there and while they’re kicking off are not going to pay the bills. And that’s how it is. If you have a really grand or awesome idea about selling funny T-shirts online, it may be a challenge to kick that off.

So while you’re doing that, you can make custom stuff for friends, family, associates, local businesses. That might not be the dream. It’s not the dream for the actor to be tending bar. That’s not their dream, but that’s part of getting to it. So part of getting to it, if you have an awesome idea for a website or whatever it is, the way you can actually do it is put some money in your pocket to help fund that dream through referrals and through asking for the business.

So great. We’ve gotten the first three out. These are what you do. All right, next… I’ve got Windows notifications popping up if you’re hearing noises, apparently. So there you go. Real life, right? This is real life, just a podcast. So next we’re going to talk about maximizing referrals. And this is some of my favorite stuff to do. It’s the next three, it’s four, five, and six on this list, and I can’t express how easy this is and how much of this actually works too, and another thing that a lot of folks will skip over, not think about it or just assume referrals come. And they do, but here’s a few ways to get the most out of them.

And I would like to start by saying you’ve got a customer. So you’ve had one customer, you’ve done a good job. That’s where I think we are at this point in time. This is what you’re going to do once you’ve done something well for somebody and they’ve given you money, you’ve exchanged some shirts for some money. One is just ask them for referrals, just like you did up before in the previous things I mentioned, just, “Hey, if you know anybody who can use my services, send them my way. Hey, I am glad that you really like the shirts that I made. Please let other people know that I do this. I did a great job for you. I appreciate it. That’s so awesome. Thanks for leaving me a review on Google,” anything like that, but be sure to ask them to refer you to folks. It’s so easy and it works. So many people are just going to do it just because you simply asked.

The next is what I call promises, and this is a little bit of a level up on the ask, okay? So what you’re going to say to this person is, “I’m glad you like the shirts. Hey, the biggest way you can thank me would be to refer me to others. Would you be willing to share my name with a couple of your associates, a couple of your coworkers, friends, colleagues?” And at this point in time, you’ve got somebody who’s going to say, “Yeah, I will be glad to do that.” They’ve made you a promise essentially at this point in time. It’s not just you saying, if you know anybody, please tell them. It’s saying, will you do this for me? This is a level up from that because we’re taking it from a declarative statement of just saying, “Hey, if you don’t mind, do this for me too.” I’m asking you to do this, will you? The person is saying yes, right? So if somebody enjoys keeping their word, which almost everybody does, then they’re going to want to do this for you.

And a little pro-tip on this, when they agree, reach out your hand and shake on it at that moment. So, “Hey, I’m glad you liked the shirts. The biggest way to thank me is to refer me to others. I’m trying to grow my business. Would you be willing to share my name with a couple other folks that that might need this” “Yeah, of course, I’d be happy to let other folks that I know let you know.” “Great, thank you,” put your hand out, shake on it. At this point in time, it’s almost like they’ve made a next level up agreement with you because they said they would refer and then they shook on that, right? I know it’s a simple little psychological thing, but it’s true. You are trying to grow that business. You did work hard to get them a good product. They were happy with that product, and all you’re asking for is if they run into a situation where they can recommend you, you’d like for them to do that, and that’s a great way to further thank you for the good job you did from them. I love that one.

And the last one is a little more complicated, but it’s very effective and easy. It’s called give and get. It’s another way to encourage referrals and it’s going to… Well, I’ll just say an example. “Hey, if you refer somebody to me, I’ll give them 10% off their order, plus I’ll give you 10% off the next order you make, or, “I’ll give you a free hat,” or whatever the exchange might be. It doesn’t matter, but I like the give and the get. For one, people really like to be able to say, “Oh, you need custom. I know somebody, here you go. Here’s their information. Mention my name. They’re going to give you 20 bucks off their order. Mention my name. They’ll take 10% off the retail price.” People will love the opportunity to be able to help save their friend’s money, and it’s legit. It should be a legitimate savings from the retail price you would’ve charged.

And then, as a thank you, give them something back. So if they are going to frequently order and they spend a hundred dollars every time, well, they’ve referred somebody, maybe that next order you take 20 bucks off or you take 10% off. You’re going to have to play around with some of those. It really depends on what you sell, what your average order value is. It needs to be reasonably exciting. So if you sell $20 T-shirts as an example, and you say, “Hey, I’ll give you 10% off if you refer somebody. Two bucks? Who cares about that, right? Nobody’s going to care about saving two bucks. It’s not going to be exciting enough for them to want to make the effort to tell anybody. They may do it for the previous two reasons, just because you asked or because they said they would, but that two bucks is not going to be exciting. So you need to make it reasonably exciting.

You also need to consider that maybe that order, that one referral order might not be hugely profitable, but the goal is is now you have another customer who’s going to refer you other people and another one, and it spreads. It’s like roots in the ground. One turns to two, turns to four, four turns to eight, and then that’s how you grow the business. So if you’re doing reasonable size orders, like you get a restaurant and it turns out to be a $350 order, 10% off might be cool with that, 30 something bucks. That’s a reasonable savings. If you’re doing single order, you could potentially just maybe just offer at half price. Now, you don’t really make any money, maybe at that half price, but you’ve expanded the business. It’s about experimenting and seeing what that’s like. If all your referrals, you’re not making any money on, then that’s too aggressive. You got to be a little less aggressive, but you’ll figure out the formula for that. But give and get. It’s a great little way to give a thanks to the people who have referred you business and give them another reason to do it.

The next thing we’re going to talk about are traps, right? So you’ve got some great ideas and you’re about to implement them, and then you get caught in one of these three traps. The reason I know that folks get caught in these traps is because I see it almost 100% of the time, the folks who do the above six things I mentioned or have told me they did the above six things, they all fell into one or all three of these traps, and they could’ve done better faster, but instead they got trapped here. So we want to avoid these traps when we’re getting started.

For one, counterintuitive, and I may have disagreed with my previous self in saying this, but this is a reasonable statement, don’t waste your time and money on a website. Okay? So what do I mean by that? What’s going to happen is this is the story, and this is why I’m going to say don’t do this, and I’ll add yet at the end, yet. Start a website later.

But this is what’s going to happen is you’re going to start T-shirt business. You’re going to get things going. You’re going to start asking for referrals. And then while this is happening, you’re going to say, “I’m going to start a Wix website. I heard I could do it for free or cheap,” and you go down that path. So now you’re one, two hours into figuring out how it works, right? Then you’re one to two hours with messing and looking at templates and plugging in things and realizing what you don’t or like then you’re in one or two hours and looking at stock photos and picking ones. That one doesn’t work. That doesn’t fit. I don’t like that person. And now you’re one to two hours and taking photos yourselves. Now you’re writing content. It doesn’t look right. So now you spend an hour or two on Reddit or Googling how to do things right, or tech support. Next thing you know, you’ve literally have 10, 20 hours in this website that doesn’t really look good and not a single person is going to.

So I think I need to say that again in a different way. You’ve never built a website before. The chances of it looking amazing within 10 hours of work are not high, right? People who make websites for a living struggle with making websites look great, okay? So that’s one thing.

And then two is, how is anybody going there? If you are not spending any money driving any traffic, your website’s brand new, it’s not going to get a bunch of SEO right away. You’re not going to all of a sudden just get hundreds of views as soon as you click live. It’s not like it’s just going to be ding, ding, ding, ding, people visiting. That’s not going to happen, right? It’s going to be dead. If you’re looking at analytics, you’re going to have one viewer who was on there for eight seconds because they accidentally got there the wrong way. They made a typo.

I would just say that that doesn’t need to be how you start. Alternatively, you can Google search, Google My Business. You can make a Google page that can have a ton of information, relatively easy and free, significantly simple. You don’t have to put in a credit card. You can also just make a Facebook page. You can just do an Instagram page. These are all things you can do in the beginning that are perfectly fine for getting business from folks in the beginning, especially if you explain your startup, “Hey, I’m a startup. I’m still working on my website, but I have an Instagram account with a ton of work that I’ve done before,” or, “I’ve got a Facebook page I’ve been working on. You can see reviews that some of my customers have left on there,” or, “Just want my website?” you just send them to the Google page. And some of the Google things almost look like websites themselves. They kind of are.

So that is just a super simple way to do it. It’s free. I’m telling you, if you go to Go Daddy or Wicks, you are going to spend 10, 20, 30 hours being lost in there. Every second of the way, they’re going to nickel and dime you for another five bucks a month, another three bucks a month. Oh, you want to do that? Another $8 a month. Next thing you know, you’ve spent like $400 and nobody’s going to it. It doesn’t look that great and it’s not making you any money. Do you think that the folks at Wix and GoDaddy aren’t experts at getting people to come there and spend money on websites? That’s what they’re experts in. They’re experts in people wanting to start a website, spending some money, and they know a bunch of them are going to disappear. That’s not their goal. Their goal is not to make you money. The goal of this podcast is to help make you money. And I’m telling you that you could just skip that for now. Once you’ve got some money rolling in and you’ve got some steady income coming, hopefully you can afford to pay somebody to help you along with building a website, then I would start one. Okay?

The next one is, don’t spend money on advertising. Again, Google, Microsoft, Facebook, Instagram, all of these places are going to give you an opportunity. Just click this one button and you can start advertising. And it’s so easy to do, and it will probably not make you any money. And why? It’s because you’re a brand new business. You’re not established, and you are putting money into a marketplace that folks like myself and a ton of my associates and people in the marketing world are experts in.

So you have folks who all day every day advertise on Facebook and Google and Microsoft, and there’s all of these steps to get people to buy, right? And you’ve clicked on plenty of ads yourself. So there’s all these steps. You’re going to throw $150 into that space with people who do this for a living all over it, people who work for Amazon, people who work for Best Buy, all these huge organizations, and you’re going to throw 150 bucks in there and expect it to turn into gold. It’s just probably not going to happen.

And again, another rabbit hole, you’re going to spend an hour trying to set it up, an hour trying to get ideas and two hours trying to figure out why this one thing doesn’t work. Then you’re going to realize, oh, if I’m going to run ads, I need to have a website. Now you’re back to the other one. So you’re going to spend 10 hours messing with that and then 10 hours and making a website. You’re going to put 250 bucks in there and you’re not going to make any money. So avoid that trap. Do ads later. Make some money, have some money to spend, potentially have somebody you can hire or just take this time to learn the ads. So while spend those hours watching videos to understand how ads work, so you can make yourself an expert if you choose not to hire somebody, but in the beginning, really, I would recommend avoiding that. It’s a dangerous game to go in. Unless you plan on spending thousands and thousands of dollars in ads, you probably are not going to be successful in the beginning making money.

And then the third one is don’t try to be a social influencer. Now, if you already have an audience of folks and you are listening to this now trying to make money, great, that’s awesome. If you’ve got an account where you make funny videos and you’ve got 10,000 followers, and some of these rules are going to work for you immediately because you’re going to go to those followers and you’re going to say, “Hey, sell T-shirts, here they are,” and people are going to buy them, cool. But if you’re starting with zero followers and you’re going to make a new account and you’re going to try to make your brand or your image famous, the chances are it’s going to slow roll out for you. And this doesn’t mean that it doesn’t work for everybody. It does work for people. It absolutely works for people. Just like how you are scrolling through Instagram or TikTok today, and you’re going to see folks making money on Instagram today. They sell spices, they sell makeup, they sell T-shirts. You’re going to see all these folks. All of these folks have spent hundreds, if not thousands of hours to get to that point.

So if you want to get there and you want to put that time in, do it. But if we’re talking about, let’s go back to the title real quick, the secret to selling T-shirts right away. The secret to selling T-shirts right away is to not try to get yourself to go viral and be an influencer. That’s a great long-term dream, if that is your dream. Otherwise, all those hours you’re going to spend building yourself to be an influencer, for one, can go nowhere. I know folks who are in tons of different businesses from dietitians, personal trainers, T-shirt businesses, consultants for different types of industries, attorneys who have spent hours and hours. I mean, I’m talking hundreds, if not thousands of hours, making videos, posting videos, answering questions that still don’t have more than a few thousand followers.

So it’s like being a musician or an actor or even a great chef. The best guitar player in the world, we probably have not heard of. The best singer in the world, we probably haven’t heard of because there’s so many people at such a crowded space, and it’s more than just the talent.

Mike Angel who works here, he is been on a podcast before his son plays hockey, and he would like to be professional one day, I gather. He’s been doing it for many, many years. But something that Mike said that rung true to me that links right to this podcast is he said, “When the kids get that good, it’s more than just the raw talent,” and that’s what I mean about being a social influencer. You may be really funny or insightful or interesting or have a great brand. All of those may be perfect, but there’s also a little bit of luck and a little bit of who you know and a little bit of the right time, right place, and a little bit of you happen to post at the perfect time and day with the perfect time and idea that boom, all of a sudden you’ve gained a ton of followers and you’re famous.

But the funniest people out there and the funniest and most interesting memes out there, some of them just get lost in the ether. There’s a million things going on. So I would just say, I would encourage you to not try to do that if you’re trying to make money right away. If you’re not necessarily trying to make money right away, go for it.

So in short on these, yes, I think a website is a great idea, later if you’re trying to make money right away. Yes, advertising is an awesome idea and a great way to grow your business when you’re reasonably established and you’ve got some money to invest. And trying to be a social influencer or have a really great social account, if that’s for you, it’s a great idea, but understand that more than likely you are not going to post something great on the internet and make money. That’s probably not going to happen on day one or day 100. It’s going to take time to build up.

So those are three traps that are simple to avoid. If you’re going to spend time doing any of those things, instead, make sure, I hope you’ve gone through all your contacts first. I’ve hope you posted to Facebook a few times, Instagram, wherever you are, and I’ve hope you’ve gone around and spoke to local businesses.

So the last bit is just creating your success. That’s how I finished it. The above formula is just simple. And the reason why it’s so simple and it works is because, I wrote these examples down, but if you go to somebody’s house and they give you a cupcake, “Hey, here’s some cupcakes I made,” and you bite into it, and it’s amazing, “Wow, how do you make these so good?” Chances are they’ve made a thousand cupcakes before that one. You’re eating the 1,000th cupcake. You’re not eating the first one that they ever made more than likely. And I bet a bunch of those batches were flat, tasteless, dry, sticky. The icing looked terrible. It took a long time, and they got there.

If you ask somebody, “Oh, how do I get a date? I’m single. I’m trying to meet people. What do I do?” a lot of the times people will say, “You just go up to say hi to somebody.” You say hello. You go up and walk to somebody and say, hi. You don’t need any pickup line. You don’t necessarily need services. You don’t have to pay anybody. You just go up and say hi to people. And when you’re curious about how somebody is fit, as I mentioned an example before, chances are they eat super healthy and they go to the gym all the time. That’s how they’re super fit. That’s how they have big muscles and a six-pack or whatever it is. It’s because they work really hard at it.

And that’s what’s so simple about this stuff. If you want to get great at making cupcakes, practice a ton. If you want to go out and get a date or meet people, you go up and you say hi to people. That’s it. If you want to be really, really fit, you go to the gym every day and you watch what you eat really, really closely. And that’s how the experts do all these.

So if you want to make money right away, the formula is easy. You ask people for referrals, you ask your biggest advocates. You wear the T-shirt that you have. You go into local businesses and you say, “Hey, here’s my name. Here’s what I do. If you know anybody, let me know.” And you don’t trap yourselves in these things. And just like we talked about dieting or anything like that, you don’t want to trap yourselves in fad diets because they may or may not work for you. You don’t want to trap yourselves in these. What you want to do is you want to put yourself in a place that will succeed. And when we’ve talked about tons of people, these are the things they’ve done.

So that about wraps everything up. What’s the next steps for you? If you have not started your business yet, and this is brand new to you, then I’m going to recommend you go to coldesi.com, and you can live chat with one of our team. Just ask them questions if you’re trying to make next steps or figure out what you want to do. You can email us here at [email protected] and ask us questions about this episode. Or if you’ve tried some of this stuff and it hasn’t worked, message and say why because chances are there’s maybe a little piece of the formula that’s missing and we can help out. But give us a call, take a look into things.

And that’s about it. It’s really simple, and I love this answer because oftentimes the secret to all the success is just doing the right things in a simple way. And this will work. And if you have any struggles, email us or live chat with us. Let us know how we can help you out. And visit coldesi.com to take a look at all the customization type of stuff that we have. We’ve got tons of different equipment. We have new equipment and technologies being released all the time that it might be something you’re looking to get started right away with or something you’re looking to grow with in the future, but education is the key. And thank you for listening to another episode of the CAS Podcast. My name is Marc Villa, and have a good business.

The post Episode 200 – The Secret to Selling T-Shirts Right Away appeared first on Custom Apparel Startups.

In this insightful episode, we sit down with Trevor and Trent Walden, the pioneering duo behind the Walden Bros., an Alaskan t-shirt shop specializing in Direct to Film (DTF) printing and embroidery. As they navigate the intricacies of the customization industry, the Walden brothers share their journey of transforming an idea to a successful family business.

This episode not only provides a behind-the-scenes look at running a successful customization business but also serves as a guide for entrepreneurs eager to carve out their own niche in the competitive industry of bespoke products. Join us as Trevor and Trent Walden lay down the blueprint for aspiring customizers looking to expand their horizons.

Marc Vila:
Hello, everybody, and welcome to another episode of the CAS Podcast, and we have got a great episode today. Today, we’re going to be talking about steps towards growing a customization business, and we’re going to kind of follow through the path of some very special guests that we have on today, the Walden brothers from Walden Bros Custom Apparel.

And if you’re listening to this podcast, I would say a few folks should be listening to this. One is the very beginning. You haven’t started your business yet, or maybe you’re just crafting and you’re thinking about starting some sort of customization business, whether it’s T-shirts or whatever it might be. And more commonly, you are already in business, and you’re trying to figure out what your next steps are.

So that’s why we brought on the Walden brothers to kind of have that conversation a little bit, to talk about the steps that they’ve taken, and maybe the steps they plan on taking together in the future. So I’d like to pass the mic over to the two of you for a minute. Would you mind just introducing yourselves and tell us a little bit about what you do?

Trent Walden:
I’m Trent.

Trevor Walden:
I’m Trevor, and we own Walden Bros Customized Apparel. We make T-shirts, hoodies, anything clothing-oriented. We probably can customize it via DTF printing or embroidery. But yeah, we own Walden Bros Customized Apparel.

Marc Vila:
All right. Awesome. And where are you guys located?

Trevor Walden:
We’re located in a little town in Alaska called Soldotna. It’s about 180 miles south of Anchorage, if anybody knows where that is.

Marc Vila:
Okay. Well, I’m sure everyone’s heard of Anchorage. How many folks live in that town? Do you know?

Trevor Walden:
I don’t know.

Trent Walden:
I want to say, for the peninsula, it’s like 50,000 people. Soldotna is like 5,000 people.

Marc Vila:
Okay. Okay. And the reason why I ask that is because you’ve started and run a successful business, and folks all over the place are trying to figure out what to do, where to go, and they often think about serving everybody in America, which would be great. If you want to have a big, giant business, you serve everybody in America.

But most of the folks in our industry are semi-localized, and you don’t have to be in New York or Miami or Chicago or some big, giant, giant place to be able to run a business, sustain a family lifestyle, grow it, all that stuff. So that’s one thing that’s particularly inspiring, is that you live in a town just like tons of other people listening to this podcast, and that’s awesome.

Trevor Walden:
Absolutely.

Marc Vila:
So starting from the beginning, you’ve been in the business now about four years. You started in 2020, and why don’t you tell me a little bit about how you got started and what you started with? What was the first things you started to sell? How’d you make them? Et cetera.

Trevor Walden:
So in 2020, Trent came to me and was like, “Hey, we need to start selling T-shirts.” And so, I thought that he meant selling T-shirts in person to people. So we bought a printer, a DTG printer, and we didn’t really know how to use it that well, and didn’t have the environment set up properly. And we ended up wasting $20,000 on DTG printers, and then we found ColDesi and got a white toner printer, and it just kind of started to steamroll from there.

But when we started, we just sold masks. We made $10,000 on masks locally. Our mom was using a sewing machine and sewed fabric together, and then we put hair ties on for the ears. It all just kind of snowballed into what it is now.

Trent Walden:
And I was in high school still when we started this. So it was just kind of lucky that the school asked for 200 masks, one for each graduating kid in my class. And so then, we got to do that, which is pretty cool.

Marc Vila:
Really?

Trevor Walden:
But like you’re saying, just local, local stuff.

Marc Vila:
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And I think that that’s one thing that’s… A couple cool things about that, for one, is when you see an opportunity, you jump on it if you can, which you did. You had an opportunity to make masks for folks, and the school wanted them, and you were able to do it, and you used the resources of your family to kind of pull together and turn it into a little business, which is super cool. And then the side on that is that you take advantage of luck and hard work, because I’m sure making those masks, I mean, how many times were you up super late nights, or whatever, taking care of those?

Trevor Walden:
Every single night. It was every night.

Marc Vila:
Okay. Every night.

Trevor Walden:
But the big part that you said that I want to highlight is the family part of it. We have so much help from our family, and that has been an integral part into us being successful, is how willing… Our grandma comes down from Anchorage. She’ll drive three hours one way to help us fix something that we didn’t know how to fix. We don’t know how to use a sewing machine. She comes down and brings her sewing machine. And, I mean, that’s the type of stuff that our family does. So it’s huge having family helping us.

Marc Vila:
Yeah. Excellent. And when we talk to folks in this industry, and I think this is something that’s all too often inspirational and not considered, is how much… I would debatably say 100% of everyone I’ve talked to and being in this business for 15 years, almost 100% of them said it’s either friends or family that all help them gather around in one way or another, whether it’s helping them get sales, helping them work on machines, somebody doing art, just being an inspiration, lending them money.

I mean, there’s a million different ways. And almost always, it involves friends and family. So just hearing that again, every time I hear that and folks get kind of trapped in, “What am I going to do? How am I going to grow? How am I going to start?” It’s like, the people around you are the ones rooting for you.

Trevor Walden:
Yeah.

Marc Vila:
Use them.

Trevor Walden:
Yup.

Marc Vila:
Well, awesome. Now, when you start first started selling with the white toner printer and doing T-shirts and stuff, how were you typically getting business at that point in time?

Trevor Walden:
So early on, whenever we got our own little… I mean, it wasn’t even a storefront. It was like a little office room. When we got the little office room and got set up in there, it was like, “Okay. Well, we need to market.” So here, being a small town, radio ads, and maybe in a bigger city, it seems crazy. But here, radio ads were a big part of marketing for us, because old people listen to the radio here, and the old people are the ones that have the money or the businesses or dah, dah, dah, dah, and then they hear that, call us, come in. And so, marketing on the radio was really our big push, I would say.

Trent Walden:
And another one at that current point in time was, we did a lot of printing on demand, and we didn’t charge anything for us to come show up. So we would just show up with no money beforehand and sit there and possibly make nothing all day, or we’d make like 500 bucks or so. But we did that for that entire first year, was a lot of printing on demand with nothing in return right away. It was just kind of sit there and hope.

Trevor Walden:
Hockey tournaments, wrestling tournaments, which made it to where people would see our face, and then they would talk to us about our business. I mean, you just had to get there. It was kind of… for us.

Marc Vila:
So that’s too funny, because… So most of the podcast episodes lately are just with myself, Marc Vila, but Mark Stephenson was the other host for probably the first 150 episodes with me of this podcast. And we would consistently have these running jokes where I would say, we would talk about advertising and marketing, and I would tell him advertise on the place mat in the diner or take out a radio ad or a park bunch, and he would just bust me all the time. He’s like, “What are you, in the 1980s?” And I said, “Yeah.”

But in America, when we’re talking about smaller towns, even medium-sized towns, the audiences for this type of stuff are actually reasonably small, and it’s not that expensive to do it. So if you’re in Tampa, where I am, and you want to advertise on the radio, that’s going out to tens of millions of people, and that’s incredibly expensive, and expecting much of a return on that.

But when you’re in a small, medium-sized town and you advertise on a radio or park bench or a sign-up at the school, or, I mean, a joke about like the diner menus, but the folks that see that will see your name and just be like, “Isn’t that so-and-so’s nephew?” Like, “Wait. That was my student in sixth grade.” Right? I’m sure that happened, right?

Trevor Walden:
Oh, yeah. We were out to dinner last night, and we saw one of our teachers that we had in middle school. And Trent brought it up, because it must be such a weird dynamic for him to be a teacher and know who we were as a kid and watch us grow, and then now he sees us out at dinner and is almost formal to us. It’s kind of weird in a way, because it’s like, “Okay. I know that you know who we are as people, but you look at us as businesspeople now,” which is, it’s cool, but it’s also a weird feeling at the same time.

Marc Vila:
Yeah. Yeah, for sure. It absolutely is. But there’s power behind that too, because if folks know who you are and they see your little ad or they run into in a restaurant, again, they’re going to root for you.

Trevor Walden:
Yeah.

Marc Vila:
And I think that’s like a real magic behind our industry and what we do, because it’s a product that essentially everybody needs. Unless you live in a nudist area, everybody needs shirts.

Trevor Walden:
Yeah.

Marc Vila:
So everybody needs shirts. And if you’re in a reasonable-sized community, you can actually break into this market, especially if you’re offering unique things. Like, in the beginning, you offered masks and you did the on-site events. And commenting from the on-site events, how often would you go to an event… Or let me ask it different. Would it be often that you would make more money after the event from people you met versus the amount of money you made at the event? Am I asking that in a good way?

Trevor Walden:
Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. I think I get what you’re saying. We would make a good chunk at the events, but after the fact, we would get more customers, for sure, because people, they’d see us and they know who we are. And then once they realize, “Oh, you do this type of work,” then they talk to somebody that we actually have done work for, and then they start dah, dah, dah, dah, dah, and it just culminates.

Trent Walden:
To build off of that, the type of event, too, played a very big role, because hockey tournaments for us here locally, hockey tournaments, kids love buying hoodies, whereas if you’re at a wrestling tournament, and those kids don’t really care about a hoodie or a T-shirt very much. They’re focused 100% on wrestling, whereas hockey kids, as soon as they walk in, it’s like a competition between who can get the hoodie first.

Trevor Walden:
Yeah.

Marc Vila:
Okay. Okay. Right.

Trevor Walden:
It’s like this ocean.

Marc Vila:
Right. So knowing the right events. I’m sure that was a little bit scary at first doing those first events. So maybe tell me a story about one of the first events or the first one you went to, how it went. I don’t know. Anything interesting about it is fine.

Trevor Walden:
Yeah. How about the hood one?

Trent Walden:
I remember that. Oh. Oh, no. I’ll tell mine.

Trevor Walden:
Okay.

Trent Walden:
I’ll go ahead and tell mine.

Marc Vila:
All right, go ahead.

Trent Walden:
There was a wrestling tournament. One of our local wrestling organizations asked us if we would come print on demand, because one of their coaches had cancer, I think. And so, we donated all of our profits from that event to the coach that had cancer. But it was very scary. You have to walk in and carry in your big tables for your toner printer, and then you-

Trevor Walden:
The heat presses.

Trent Walden:
… had to bring in your heat presses as everybody is staring at you. And then at that point in time, because we got smarter as we went on and just kept inventory at our business, but carrying in big blue tubs filled with T-shirts and hoodies, and trying to keep it all organized.

Trevor Walden:
Ice packs. Ice packs. We had to bring those in too, because we had the white toner printer, but it was a cold peel, and we’re trying to do it fast. So you go there. You’ve got all these ice packs lined up on one table. You’re setting your shirts out, and then the ice packs are sitting on the shirts, cooling them.

Trent Walden:
Yeah.

Trevor Walden:
I had never experienced anxiety, ever. I was always just like, “Whatever.”

Trent Walden:
“Whatever.”

Marc Vila:
Yeah.

Trevor Walden:
But those tournaments definitely made me feel like, “Oh.” You feel like all of your energy is just sitting right under your chin.

Marc Vila:
Mm-hmm. Yup. I know exactly what you mean. So maybe it was 2018. I had the opportunity to volunteer at a children’s home here, people with displaced parents and stuff like that. So these kids are like eight to 16. And so, myself and another woman that worked here at ColDesi were like, “Let’s bring a bunch of transfers and a heat press, and we’ll just make shirts for these kids.” And it was all for free, of course.

And we get there, and the guy who’s running it is just like, “These kids don’t like anything. They are not from good places. So just do your best to have a good time with them.” And he’s like, “And just, every day is a work in progress with them.” Right? So we look at each other, and we’re like, “Oh, what is this going to be like?”

And immediately, we start feeling a little bit of anxiety, like, “Oh, gosh. I hope we represent them well.” So a couple little kids come up, and we make a shirt, and that was cool, and it was fun, and they were super happy, and they put the shirts on right away. Well, next thing you know, maybe 12 minutes tops, and the line was to the back.

Trevor Walden:
Yup.

Marc Vila:
So there’s a pizza station, and there was like a… I forget if it was ICEEs or ice cream or ice bar or something like that, and us. We all just sat around, and we were front to back lined. And there’s the pizza guy standing there, like, “What?”

Everyone chases me down. And here, these kids are lined up for the shirts, and they were super excited about it, and things were going fast. Yeah. I mean, we’re trying to cool them down, and the heat press is getting hot, because you’re working under it. I’m sweating. I wrap a T-shirt around my neck to catch the sweat.

Trevor Walden:
You look into the back of the line, like, “Where does it end?”

Marc Vila:
Yeah. Where does it end? And I gather you had line situations like that at the tournament.

Trevor Walden:
Yeah. I’m going to throw one little quick tidbit in here that could help somebody, because it’s helped us-

Marc Vila:
Good. This is amazing. Yes.

Trevor Walden:
So when we started, we used the toner printer, and we’d bring it there and print it out and do the marrying process and do all that good jazz while we’re standing there trying to gab with the customer or the parent to try and make them like, “Okay. This isn’t going to take as long as it’s really going to take,” type thing.

And so, now, what we’ve done, because that moment, whenever you’re just sitting there feeling that anxiety, it sucked. So our shop is like, I don’t know, three miles away from our local hockey arena. And so, what we have done now, because we have the DTF printer, and it’s so quick to be able to get fulfillment done, is we’ll have ordering windows. So let’s say the tournament starts at 8:00 AM and it ends at 6:00. We’ll do our first ordering window from 8:00 to 10:30. And then if you order between 8:00 and 10:30, then you can pick up at 12:30 in the afternoon.

So then we get their number, text them whenever it’s ready to go. And then, usually, the parents, between hockey games, they’re either going to a different arena to play a different game, or they’re going to go to lunch and they don’t want to stand there and wait the entire time for the thing to get done. So what we did is, we made it easier on ourselves so that we didn’t have to sit there and be stressed out whenever they’re standing there, but also made it easy on them to be like, “Wait. I can just come pick it up in a bit?” And you’re like, “Yeah. I’ll shoot you a text message as soon as it’s ready.”

And then that for them is like, “Oh, okay. Yeah. Sold. Got it. Awesome. We’re going to go eat lunch. We’ll come back and pick it up later.” So it’s been extremely helpful for us. And we have three ordering windows, but then no one gets stressed out. They feel great about it, because they get to go and have lunch or go to their next game, and we make sales.

Marc Vila:
Yeah.

Trevor Walden:
So that’s a tidbit that we learned along the way.

Marc Vila:
Yeah. That’s awesome. I know that the first time I did something in person, I did everything all together. And then the second time, I just pre-made what we were going to do, and I add to do a little bit of predicting and surveying to help. So reached out to people and asked them to vote on what design they would like best, what type of apparel they would like best, and that gave me a little bit of data, because I didn’t have previous data.

If it’s your 10th tournament, you probably know what’s popular by then. But in the first one, I didn’t know. So I just kind of surveyed out to try to get an idea, “Okay. This was a really popular design, so I printed twice as many of those.” And then when things ran out, I kept a sample behind, and I let people order where it could be delivered later on to them. But no, the window thing is really interesting, because you’re like… So essentially, you did a bunch of orders, fulfilled those. Now you’re taking a bunch of orders, fulfill those, and people are picking up while the second orders are being taken. Yeah.

Trevor Walden:
Yup. Yup. So from 8:00 to 10:30, and then 10:31 to 1:30 or whatever time it would be, if you’re in that window, then you pick up at 3:30 now. And so, we’re taking orders all day, but Trent clicks Print on the printer at 10:30. There’s no more. And at that point, we’re done. If you missed it, I’m sorry. I mean, I’m sure that we could figure out a way to sneak you in there. But for the most part, it’s just, hey, it makes it way easy on him and on the customer.

Marc Vila:
So, Trent, you were just queuing them up in the RIP software?

Trent Walden:
Yeah. So what will happen is, Trevor will be at the tournament, because I don’t like talking very much, as most people probably see from this podcast. So what happens is, I’ll stay at our office. Trevor is at the tournament, and we have an order for him where he’ll get the player’s name and number, because that’s another thing that we offer at these hockey tournaments that nobody else does.

And so, parents, it’s almost like, it just sells them before we even have to try and sell them anything, is you get the front, and then also, your kid’s name and number come on the back, and that’s included in the price of the hoodie, whereas whenever you go elsewhere for a tournament hoodie, it’s, you get the front, and then the name on the back is an additional $5. And if you want something on the sleeve, it’s an additional $5.

And so, Trevor will get their name and number put down in an order form, name and number, and he’ll already have a font and all that stuff designed for it. So it’s just easy for me to type in the name, type in the number, download. But then after that, it’s player name and number, size and color, and then time of order so that we make sure that we’re getting the ones that are in that order window done and ready.

And then as soon as 10:30 hits, I text him, say, “Hey, all orders done.” And he goes, “Yes.” And then the last one is uploaded. I’ll get that information put in. And as soon as that printer has loaded in the queue and ready to go, Print button is hit, and we’re starting to roll. So hopefully, we can get through that period with no errors.

Trevor Walden:
Yeah.

Marc Vila:
Yeah. That’s awesome, actually. And when you do speak, you say good things, so keep that going.

Trevor Walden:
Hey, Marc, you have to know, this is very evolved Trent. Trent would’ve sat in the back room and said that he was on the podcast before. So he’s made progress.

Marc Vila:
No. No. I’m glad that you’re here, because your input’s fantastic. How long would it take to go through one of those print runs, like for one of the orders? In the printer itself till they were ready to be put on shirts.

Trent Walden:
Okay. So whenever we’re getting the orders from Trevor, it usually takes, I would say… Or I’m trying to load them simultaneously. So the order window starts at 8:00. Trevor will have an order by 8:10, and what I’ll do is I’ll print out. He sends me a picture of all the order forms. So I print the order form out at the office, then get the designs loaded, and upload it as quick as I can, or if it’s like, sometimes he’ll have… 8:00, it opens, and by 8:10, he has five orders.

And so, I’ll print out all five orders, load all five orders. And then once those are loaded, I go back and check my phone again. And if there’s new orders, I will now repeat the process of print them out, load them in. And so, that usually is like 30 to 40 minutes, I would say, getting everything loaded in, bags, getting the bags loaded with the actual correct garments as well.

And then after that’s done, that 30 to 45 minutes, click Print, and that’s also about another 30 or 40 minutes. But what we do for our tournaments is, we have our employee. We have them work on that weekend. So as the prints are rolling out of the oven, they can be trimmed, and then we can take the bag with the prepped garment, and we’ll get the name and the number, take it over the heat press, and start fulfilling as they’re rolling out of the printer so that we can make our sale.

Trevor Walden:
Yeah, and start staging the bags.

Marc Vila:
Yeah. That’s awesome. And a simple lesson to learn for that is, just develop your own system that works for you. For one, there’s tons of great, sophisticated systems out there for when you get big. Right? So if you’re going to an order and you’re taking 1,000 orders, that system probably doesn’t work for that, but you can pay for software that will help you do that.

But in the beginning, as you’re getting going, just figure out what works for you. And I’ve heard customers do everything. They email things in. They have a shared Google Doc with Excel, that they’re inputting the information into a shared Google Doc, so they’re both in it live, texting each other, literally just being on the phone, just calling each other on the phone.

Trevor Walden:
Yeah.

Marc Vila:
So whatever works, do that and learn a lesson. Oh, here you go.

Trevor Walden:
So this is just our basic order form. If anybody comes in, in general, then I got to get all that information. And then on the back, if you ever need to use extra room on the back, like let’s say they have six different styles that they’re going to have in their order, then we can just slash in between, so like sizes, smalls. I can write smalls here, and then slash mediums, and then the quantities and everything just lines up with itself. But if you ever need extra room, you always have the back, too.

Marc Vila:
Yeah.

Trevor Walden:
Yeah.

Marc Vila:
So for those watching the video, you saw the order form. If you haven’t seen it, what you did was great, is it was big. You had plenty of room to write everything in, and you kind of boxed it out, like, “This is the area for information here. This is the area for notes. This is the customer’s information.” So make things big, easy to read. Give yourself plenty of space.

And like you said, you made room on the back too, so you can add more notes. Too often, I will see folks at live events where they’ve printed out an Excel sheet single line, or they have a notepad, that single line. By the end of it, that thing is a mess, and you’re going to make mistakes. So good call on having a nice, big order.

Trent Walden:
And you were talking about systems, but one of the reasons we’re coming up with even that order form was me and Trevor were talking, and the only way to get things through fastly is having the organized communication.

Trevor Walden:
Yeah.

Trent Walden:
And so, when we’re building it, it is like, what information do you need to get a sale, but what information that you need to get a sale actually needs to be passed back to the person doing the fulfillment? And that’s where whenever it was like, “Okay. Well, size, the color, garment styles, their quantities.” And then the customer name is all key information that we need to pass along. So as long as we hit all of these boxes on this order form-

Trevor Walden:
We should be good.

Trent Walden:
… we should be able to communicate in an organized fashion all the information that needs to pass through to everybody in the process.

Marc Vila:
Right. Right. That’s excellent. No, that’s really, really good. So moving on a little bit from… Those live event information is great. I’m sure some folks are going to take away some good stuff there. I wanted to talk about… You mentioned you do embroidery, too. So how did you make the leap from where you started to deciding to get into embroidery? How’d that go?

Trent Walden:
Do you want this one?

Trevor Walden:
You go for it.

Trent Walden:
Okay. On this one-

Trevor Walden:
I love hearing him talk.

Trent Walden:
Yeah, he does.

Marc Vila:
Excellent.

Trevor Walden:
I’ll drink my coffee.

Trent Walden:
On this one, it really was, at that point in time, we were printing T-shirts, and printing and all came around T-shirts, and it was like, “Well, why not do embroidery so we can have another thing to offer?”

Trevor Walden:
Because people would ask. They would ask for embroidery, but we were so small and starting out. It was like, embroidery machines cost X amount of dollars. We don’t even pay ourselves. We need to be able to have the funds to actually buy an embroidery machine.

Trent Walden:
Yeah. I mean, that’s really how it started. It was just like, we kind of want to expand our offerings. And so, we just decided to buy an embroidery machine. And then after that, we had a very large learning curve, because we had never used an embroidery machine in our lives.

Marc Vila:
Right.

Trevor Walden:
My gosh.

Marc Vila:
Right.

Trent Walden:
The embroidery really, I would say, last year and a half is when embroideries really started to kick in for us.

Trevor Walden:
Yeah.

Marc Vila:
Yeah. Good. Good.

And so, I’m glad that you said that, because all of the stuff in our industry has a learning curve to it, even the simple stuff. There’s little things that are hard to explain. And I’m the director of marketing here at ColDesi. So we make videos and content, and I have to explain sometimes to folks that every video can’t be 90 minutes long, where I tell you every single inch of every single step. Sometimes it’s just, folks want to see just how it’s done and the basics of things.

But, of course, I took into consideration how much negative space I put into the art or what colors I was printing with, because this printer does great with these colors or this does not, or in embroidery, I might sew it out on one hat and just be like, “It looks ugly on this hat,” whether it’s just the shape of the hat or the color of the hat. So then I go back and I get another hat, and I sew it again.

So there’s a lot of little work to this stuff, but once you get used to it… Folks will say to me all the time, sometimes in positive reviews, sometimes in negative reviews, “You make it look so easy.” And I’m like, “But it is easy for me.” Just like I’m sure running a printer now, or whatever, is relatively easy for you. You could do it half-awake, halfway through a cup of coffee, and you’re just not talking to anybody, clicking the buttons, printing it, getting things going, and it’s not hard, but there is a learning curve. You got to practice. Right?

Trevor Walden:
Yup. Absolutely.

Trent Walden:
Especially with the embroidery.

Trevor Walden:
Yeah.

Marc Vila:
I’ll show you some stuff that I made. This is all work-in-progress stuff, and this is about learning curve stuff too. Right? So this is one hat that I’m working on now. Hopefully, we can see it pretty well in the video. So it says, “Mannamong.” And our art director, her and her son have this comic that they write called Mannamong. And this is puff embroidery, sometimes hard to see on camera, but this is puff embroidery. And this is a work in progress, because the problem I’m running into now is the hat is puckering, which you might not see. Right? And I’m sure you’ve dealt with that before.

Well, this is a $2 cheap hat. Right? And I know that’s part of my problem for this design, because there’s a ton of stitches in here. We got puff. It’s three layers deep. A cheap hat is not going to handle this, and this is stuff that I try to explain to folks, is like, “Sometimes you just need a better hat.” Now, this is another one that I’ve been working on, too. This is a roofing company hat. And again, this is puff embroidery, but this one came out crisp and nice.

Trevor Walden:
Yeah. I want to have one of that.

Marc Vila:
Right? Richardson hat. It’s on a Richardson 112. This is not a $2 hat.

Trevor Walden:
No.

Marc Vila:
But it’s super smooth. And I thought I had them, but I have two other versions. I was trying to get it done on a cheap hat. But again, there’s so many stitches in this design. It doesn’t work. So those are just little things you learn, and quality in, quality out, practice, learning curves. I mean, it’s all part of it.

But when I sent a picture to the gentleman who owns this company, I said, “Hey, can I use your logo for work?” And he’s like, “Yeah, sure. What are you doing?” And I said, “Well, I saw your hat. I can make it better.” And he was like, “Yes. Okay. Sure, sure.” So I made it better. I sent him pictures, and he’s like, “Oh, can you send me a bunch of them?” And I said, “Well, I’ll send you the design and your embroiderer can make a bunch of them for you, but I’ll make you a couple.”

Trevor Walden:
And those look good. It looks really good.

Marc Vila:
Yeah. It looks good. I have another one that I don’t have around here that I like even better, but we’re working on a bunch of little projects. All right. Back to the embroidery question then. By the way, anyone who’s listening to this, I’m sorry, that was very visual part of it, but you can go back and check 40-something minutes into it on YouTube or on our customapparelstartups.com website. But now you have multiple embroidery machines. How many machines did you start with? Did you just start with one?

Trent Walden:
Yeah. We just started with one.

Marc Vila:
Okay. How quick did you get multiple, and what was that journey like?

Trent Walden:
So we bought our first one, I want to say, in May of 2021. And we only had that one until May of 2023.

Trevor Walden:
Yeah.

Trent Walden:
I think May of 2023, we had enough cash just sitting in our business bank account to pay off that Avancé that we currently had. And then after we paid that one off, we got another Avancé. And we ended up actually receiving it, I think, in June of 2023.

Marc Vila:
Okay. Okay.

Trent Walden:
And then two months later, our embroidery was really starting to ramp up. And so, August, we bought another Avancé one. We just bought that one so we didn’t have to get into a loan. And so, at that point in time, by August of 2023… Well, I mean, if you went April, we had one, and then by August, we had three Avancés total.

Trevor Walden:
Summer really hit us hard. Summer was like, there was people coming in left and right asking for embroidery, and we were like, “Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.” And then it was just like, embroidery is time. You can’t make the machine move any faster than the way that it moves.

Marc Vila:
Right. Right.

Trevor Walden:
So we quickly realized, we were like, “We need more heads,” whatever.

Trent Walden:
So we actually need-

Marc Vila:
Yeah. And how many total heads do you have now?

Trevor Walden:
Five?

Trent Walden:
We have, yeah, five heads.

Trevor Walden:
Yeah.

Marc Vila:
Five heads. So that’s one of the things I really like about embroidery. So one of the things I don’t like about embroidery is, embroidery is just time. Right? It’s slow. It’s not fast.

Trevor Walden:
You can’t outwork. You can’t outwork.

Marc Vila:
Right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. And depending what you’re putting on, I mean, it can be done pretty quick. If you’re just doing initials or something on the sleeve of a shirt, I mean, you’re going to hit Start and walk away, and before you fill up your coffee, it’s done. But if you’re doing a logo like this, the Mannamong one that I’m showing here, this logo is 13 inches wide, and I want to say it’s like 30,000 stitches or something. This takes 40 minutes to sew out on the hat.

And so, depending what you’re doing, but the cool thing is, is I just do my job while that stuff’s sewing out. So I hit Start. I listen for the hum. If it stops humming, I think maybe I’m out of bobbin or my threads, they’re broke, and I wait for a pause point and I get up. But the cool thing about embroidery is, it’s doing the work for you, which is different than when you’re running a heat press, because everything you’re heat-pressing is on there for 10 seconds, 30 seconds, 60 seconds. There’s no time to do anything else.

So an embroidery machine is an awesome add-on, because depending on your design and what you’re sewing it out, you just hit Go. And it’s like having a baby. You got to go and change it. You got to feed it. You got to burp it every once in a while. But otherwise, it’s just chilling there on its own, depending what you’re… And once you really dial in your hooping and your digitizing and all that stuff, then it’s easy.

Trevor Walden:
Yeah.

Trent Walden:
Yeah. For us, whenever we were starting, I mean, it was amazing and awful at the same time, because it was amazing that we got to add the embroidery, but the learning, the tensioning, and trial and error of making sure tensions are correct and not was such a pain for me. Finally, I now know how to do it, but learning how to tension all those things correctly makes a massive difference.

Trevor Walden:
I think Avancé is responsible for a few gray hairs on Trent.

Marc Vila:
Oh. Yeah. All the things do. I think that patience is part of the key to success. A common denominator, which is terribly interesting, is when I talk to a lot of folks who are doing well in their business, and they talk about growing it and getting customers. All of them have a degree of patience in their personality, where when we talk to folks who get frustrated really easily or leave bad reviews, or get really upset at our technicians, typically, they don’t have the patience to get over the hump to learn something that’s a little challenging.

So I would just encourage anybody, if you are the type of person who punches a wall or yells at things when they get… all that stuff, we’re all different personalities. Fine. But if you are, do your best to exercise patience and learning, because once you break that line of like, “Wow, I got it,” then… I don’t want to say it’s easy riding from there, because you still own a business. Owning a business is always a little bit of a challenge.

But for me, it’s no longer an issue whenever I’m going to make a video digitized or get something digitized, sew it out, make a T-shirt. That part of it is the easy part for me. Coming up with the idea, all the other things is the hard part.

Trevor Walden:
Yeah. Yeah. No. We’ve had our arguments and battles, because I don’t understand embroidery the way that Trent understands embroidery. So there’s times where we butt heads on like, “Why is this not possible? Explain to me why this isn’t possible,” or “What are you unaware of that is making it impossible for you right now based on the knowledge you have?”

And so, Trent will inform me, and I’m like, “Okay, but I’ve seen this somewhere. I know somebody has done this. So why can’t we do it?” And then that’s where… But like you said, patience. I have to be open enough to understanding that I don’t know everything about embroidery. And so, I need to be able to learn and understand from Trent, who knows way more, and he’s way more educated on… He could tell you stuff about embroidery that I don’t even… He’ll speak a different language to me.

Marc Vila:
Yeah. I’m sure even me too. You’ll probably outspeak me out, because I don’t do production all day. I mean, I talk about it a lot. I make machines. I mean, I talk about machines a lot. I talk about digitizing. I definitely do it a lot, but I’m not doing production, which is, it’s another skill set.

Trevor Walden:
Yeah. It really is.

Marc Vila:
Yeah. So congratulations to you for learning that and getting through that. And then you see, I mean, it’s like, when those machines are humming, I mean, it’s a joke we’d say, but it’s like the sound of money.

Trevor Walden:
It is. It’s euphoric almost. It’s so great when that, what we call… So when the DTF printer is printing, and we know that we have the perfect feed coming through, and the time on the roller is going perfect, it almost sounds like horses galloping whenever the kicker is on and it’s hitting the excess powder off. So it sounds like that, and I’m like, “You know what that sound is, Trent, right?” And he goes, “Well, like the sound of money,” because it’s basically printing money. It is.

Marc Vila:
Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. That’s the coolest thing about everything that we do, and embroidery machines, too. Also, you mentioned sound, which is another kind of funny thing to talk about. I’ll be in the showroom and we’ll be sewing out a design, and I’m on the computer in the RIP software messing with something that I’m going to print, and the embroidery machine’s in the background, and I’ll say, “It’s about to thread-break.” And they’re like, “What are you talking about?” And they’re like, “How do you know?” And it’s just like, when you sit in that room, you know what the galloping horse should sound like, and you can hear when that horse is about to trip.

Trevor Walden:
Yup.

Trent Walden:
Yup. I can hear it. With the Avancés, you can tell whenever there’s a thread break that happened, because you hear that… If that noise happens, it’s like, “Yup, there’s something that’s about to have a red light on it.”

Trevor Walden:
Yup. Pause. Pause.

Marc Vila:
Yeah. Yup. Yup. Well, that’s awesome, and that’s so true. So maybe we could probably do a few more minutes, if that’s fine by you all. I wanted to talk about growing and keeping and getting customers, because that’s one last thing to discuss when it talks… If we talk about the topic towards growing a customization business, getting customers is one thing, and then keeping customers is another thing.

So how do you deal with… I have a few questions on this, but for one to start with is customer service issues, when you have unhappy customers or somebody didn’t like what you did, or you made a mistake. How do you handle those problems typically? I know they’re all individual cases, but maybe you could talk to that a bit.

Trevor Walden:
So I’m sure that there’s a bunch of people out there that had their parent… Their mom growing up was the mom that when you go through the McDonald’s drive-through and you say ketchup only on there, and then they put pickles, onions, and mustard on there, your mom goes in and reads them the riot act. That was my mom.

Marc Vila:
Okay.

Trevor Walden:
Okay. So we had that fear every time. It’s like, I’ll just eat the pickles. I don’t even want to say anything. So for me, I’m the sales guy that talks to the customer, and I always think in my head, “What would my mom want? What would be the expectation from my mom?” And so, for us, it’s always, one, if the customer is flat-out wrong and they just didn’t do their due diligence, as a customer, you have a responsibility to do the customer things that are asked of you from us. But at the same time, if we mess up, and it’s going to cost us money, it’s business. It’s the way that it is. So you got to handle that.

Trent Walden:
We prefer to have the good name or good reputation over the $130 that it could be saved by just saying, “No, that was your error. We’re not going to fix it.”

Trevor Walden:
And in a small town, if we mess up Sally’s shirt, and Sally’s shirt was extremely important to her and her event, then Sally is going to tell all 100 people that come to her event about, “Well, the shirts are messed up because dah, dah, dah, dah, dah, dah, dah, dah, dah, dah, dah, dah.” Was that bad word of mouth worth the $400 on shirts, or was it just, “You know what? Our name is more valuable than the $400 that we lost. Let’s just get it right”?

Trent Walden:
I will play devil’s advocate in that he is more often on that side, and I am more often on the side of, “We have things in place that say once you approve this part of your order, you are taking responsibility that everything is correct. And so, if we were beyond this order that you approved, I’m sorry, but it’s not my fault, and I don’t need to replace it for you.”

Trevor Walden:
Well, like you said, everything is variable. So there’s situations that are like, “Okay. Trevor’s point of view definitely is the way that we should go on this one,” or there’s situations where it’s like, “This customer really just didn’t pay attention to what their order was.”

Marc Vila:
Yup. We have to be flexible.

Trevor Walden:
And it helps then remedy… Yeah.

Marc Vila:
Yeah. You have to be flexible.

Trevor Walden:
So I would say, as far as getting customers, it sounds weird, but we have an extremely chilled-out vibe to our business. You come in, you’re like talking to a cousin. That’s how I always try and think of it, like, “Hey, how you doing? How can we help you?” When you come in, I’m never disgruntled. Even if I’m disgruntled with Trent and I’m irritated beyond belief, when you walk through the door, you’re my customer now, and I have to be exactly what we want the Walden Bros experience to be like, because when you come in the door, we want you to have a good time, and we want to be able to help you.

Trent Walden:
And an additional thing for the getting customers is, whenever we first started advertising, and we’ve sort of just kept with it, because it’s worked for us, was, whenever we started advertising, I don’t remember what book we were reading exactly, but it had the effect of, “Whenever you hear potato chips, what do you think of?” And for us, it was like, “Well, there’s Lay’s.” And so, our way to go at marketing was, whenever people hear custom T-shirts or custom hoodies or custom prints or anything, we just want it to immediately correlate back to Walden Bros.

Trevor Walden:
Yeah.

Trent Walden:
And so, for all of our advertisements, it was, in the beginning, we kind of did more annoying things. We had a radio ad that’s 30 seconds.

Trevor Walden:
Obnoxious. Obnoxious. Don’t say annoying. Obnoxious.

Trent Walden:
It could be both.

Trevor Walden:
Yeah.

Trent Walden:
30-second radio ad where we said “bro” 45 times in 30 seconds, and it was just to get people to realize that bros and T-shirts. So then anytime we got in public, “Bro, I need a T-shirt. Bro, I need a T-shirt.”

Trevor Walden:
We’ll have these random 55-year-old women that’ll be like, “Bro,” in our face, and we’re like, “Hey, how you doing?” But that’s what they see us as, is they see that.

Marc Vila:
Yeah.

Trent Walden:
And I guess just not being selly.

Trevor Walden:
Keeping them, keeping them. Yeah, not being selly, but keeping the customer happy, too. So if somebody comes in and they place their initial order and we make it, like, “It’s so easy. They did a great job. We love the product, dah, dah, dah,” you have to keep track of everything that you did for them during that order. So we have a software that we use that keeps their order, but also the print dimensions that we used on that order. If they just want to duplicate that order, how do we do that? Well, we need to know the print dimensions that we had or the embroidered area, or whatever, in their customer folder. So we keep Google Drive folders for all of our customers, and it has artwork, print dimensions, et cetera, in there.

Trent Walden:
Embroidery.

Trevor Walden:
Yeah. Embroidery, files. Everything is in their customer folder, so that even if I’ve talked to 1,000 people between the last time I’d seen them, when they come in, I can pull up their customer folder and go, “Okay. I totally remember exactly what we were talking about a long time ago, and here’s all of your artwork files. So which one was it that you were talking about?” or I can go and look back at your old order and know exactly what you were having before.

So that is a big part for us, because initially, we didn’t have customer folders. It was like, “We made money. That’s awesome. We sold you something.” And then they’d come back, and they’d be like, “I want to do exactly what I did before.” And you’re like, “Okay.”

Marc Vila:
Yeah. “Do you happen to have one of those shirts you could bring me?”

Trevor Walden:
Exactly. “Can you send me a picture of the ones that we did?”

Marc Vila:
Yeah.

Trevor Walden:
Those were the ones that we got.

Marc Vila:
No, that’s great. You’ve said so many awesome things in there. So I’m going to try to work backwards a little bit in some comments. So one is, keeping folders and information on everything you do is a key to this. Most of the software that’s available that comes with printers or embroidery machines has some ability to do that. You can also use CRMs. You can use Google Drive.

One tip that I’ll add on to that is, whatever you’re using, have a backup. Right? So have backups that you do every so often, whether it’s once a week, once a month, every so often, but make sure you’re downloading that stuff, backing it up, putting it somewhere else, just so it’s always in two places, because that information is so key to growing and keeping your business going, that it’s a part of the money, too. So keep it safe.

Trevor Walden:
Yup.

Marc Vila:
And it does make it really easy. You mentioned your mom and McDonald’s, right? Part of the reason why she would drive through to McDonald’s is because, “I’m going to go there. I know what both of them want. We’re going to get out of there, and we’re going to go to the next thing we were going to do. I don’t have to think about it,” where maybe there’s a new taco place that opened up. “I have no clue what they’re going to like. We’re going to have to figure out through the menu. Are they both going to hate it? Now they’re going to be hungry while we’re on an hour drive to so-and-so. They’re both going to be complaining. I’m just going to do McDonald’s.” Right?

So part of what you said is, somebody can call up and just say, “Hey, can you do the exact same thing again? Do the exact same thing, but do it on a white shirt instead of a black shirt.” Then, they can just call you, and you could say, “Sure. Hang up. The money is done.” They don’t have to worry about it, where if they were to maybe say, “Oh, let me try this online store,” they got to start all the way over again. They don’t know what it’s going to be like. So having that recipe is going to make folks want to come back just because it’s easy and stress-free, especially if you make it, like you said, a chill environment.

Trevor Walden:
Yeah. 100%.

Marc Vila:
Yup. And then in regards to getting business and advertising, I think it’s great that you thought of… Being obnoxious can be… Do stuff that fits the personality. So the two of you, you’re younger. You’ve got a chill vibe to you. So make that about your business. I just think make your business who you are. So if somebody is a very business professional, they only wear shirts with ties, they speak very formally, match that to everything.

If you’re chill, wear T-shirts and hats to your business. If you are super bubbly, make all your stuff bubbly and pink and glittery. Do stuff to match what you like for your business or whatever you want your brand to be, because, for one, it’s natural. So now, when you’re trying to think of an advertisement or an ad or whatever it is, our brand is us and our style, so we just make it that way, versus some folks will try to come up with a brand or a style that is too professional or too chill, or they try to be funny when they’re not.

And then not funny is the cringiest thing. When you try to be funny and it’s not funny, that’s super cringe. So don’t try to be funny if you’re not a funny person. And all that’s really interesting, but it’s a great way of doing it. Well, we’ve been on about an hour, so it’s probably time to wrap up. But is there any final thoughts you want to leave before we head out?

Trevor Walden:
One thing I was just thinking whenever you were saying… You just said something and I lost it, but there was… Gosh dang, I lost it. I wish I was sort of-

Marc Vila:
Okay. So I have a final thought, and then maybe it’ll come back to you while I’m talking for a minute here. So we titled this podcast Step Towards Growing a Customization Business. And I think one of the things that’s a takeaway here, there are some concrete things and there are some fluid things, but for one was, you worked hard in the beginning when you had to work hard. So like you said, you were up late doing the mask stuff. You went to an event not knowing if you were going to make money, and that’s obviously scary.

So all of that is part of the journey. Right? You got to endure a little bit of pain. I think it’s just like working out or just like dieting. If you want to have big muscles, you have to go to the gym, and you’re going to be sore for many days. If you’re trying to reduce weight, you’re going to have to feel hungry throughout the day, or eat things you don’t like to eat because you’re changing your formula in your diet.

And the same thing goes with business. You got to get through that. And then there’s a perseverance side of things. When you’re really frustrated with a printer or with an embroidery machine, or anything like that, you’ve got to get past that stuff, which you did time and time again, clearly, which is why you’re able to be successful.

And then the third piece is, this is one of the ones that some people just won’t get it, but I hope everybody listening does. You got to be customer service-friendly. You said, “If I’m in a bad mood, my customers, they don’t have to know that. I want to give everybody the experience of buying shirts with us.” And that is huge.

I was calling some folks the other day trying to buy a service, trying to hire somebody to take some pictures. And this one guy answered. He’s just like, “Hello?” And I’m like, “Did I call a business?” I said, “Oh, is this so-and-so?” “How can I help you?”

Trevor Walden:
Yup.

Marc Vila:
Well, “Is this so-and-so?”

Trevor Walden:
Yeah. Exactly.

Marc Vila:
And he’s like, “Yeah. How can I help you?” And I was like, “Well, I was calling about getting some pictures done.” “Oh, okay. When do you need them?” Wait a minute. We’re not even there yet.

Trevor Walden:
We just bypassed so much dialogue.

Marc Vila:
Yeah. Yeah. We went through so much, and I’m like, “Wait a minute. You haven’t even said hello to me. You haven’t even wished me a nice day.” I don’t need you to worship me, but I mean, gosh, just be nice.

Trevor Walden:
There’s a customer portal. We call it the pipeline. You have to work them through the pipeline. And Trent always says, he’s like, “You’re so good at working them through the pipeline.” It’s just, once you get reps at doing it, you talk to them. You know what your intros are. Basically, most of the time, they’re just going to respond with one of four ways, and then you need to know how to route from those four ways.

Marc Vila:
Yup.

Trevor Walden:
Just get them down the pipeline.

Marc Vila:
Yup. And those were all little keys to success. And then the last thing that you had mentioned is just kind of knowing when it’s time to take some of that money that you put in the bank and reinvest it in the business. That’s a really scary part, is because all of a sudden, you see your bank account’s got some digits in it, and you’re like, “Wow, this is actually like a business.” And then you’re like, “Wait a minute. We’re going to take all of that money and buy something? I hope it’s going to make us money.”

But that’s kind of part of the risk and reward that you take. So we’ve told folks in the podcast before, you need to have a place where you’re putting profits and you’re putting that money, and then this way, you actually have something to pull from. You need to decide when it’s a good time to finance versus maybe just pay cash or pay something off.

And then everyone’s got a different formula for that. You’ve done both. So you’ve kind of seen what works for you. So I encourage everybody out there to figure out that for you. And the biggest thing that I’ve realized in this conversation is, I didn’t get any rules that were hard and fast for you all.

Trevor Walden:
Yeah.

Marc Vila:
You financed some. You paid cash for some. You have rules for customer service. Sometimes you have to break them. You tried one thing on live events, and then you changed it the next time. That adaptability is a key to success. So hopefully, folks out there listening have kind of learned some steps to growing the business. I think what I just outlined there are some of them. But I want to wrap up the podcast with a little bit of a commercial type of a thing, because I know something about both of us. Both of us, or all three of us are fans of the ColDesi Graphics service.

Trevor Walden:
Yeah. Yup.

Marc Vila:
So I’ve seen you guys place a lot of orders. And all the stuff that I showed here, I mean, I digitized through there. And it’s funny because folks ask me, like, “Oh, well, it looks so good because you have an insight into it, or it’s because it’s you guys.” And I’m like, “I order it like you.” I literally go on the internet, and I order it through the portal. The only difference is, is I create the coupon codes, and it’s ColDesi doing it. So I don’t pay for it.

But I order it online. I make a coupon code real quick. I drop it, and it goes through the system. For one, I want the true experience every time to make sure if things are not going right, I can message a manager and say, “Hey, by the way, did you know this happens?” But two, it also works. And every once in a while, there’s a mistake. I respond back. So what’s your experience been like using the ColDesi Graphics?

Trevor Walden:
Awesome. Awesome. We actually have our own artwork creation prices set up, where we make money off of the ColDesi Graphics, using that service, and it completely eliminates the stress of us having to digitize. I mean, we do artwork, but… Yeah.

Trent Walden:
For him in the sales process, it makes it much easier, because it immediately eliminates one of those questions, where whenever the customer comes in, the way we have it set up, and then he talks to them as, “If you just have nothing, well then, you-“

Trevor Walden:
Oh, yeah. Let me do this. Let me do this. I like this part.

Marc Vila:
Okay. All right.

Trevor Walden:
This is one of my favorite things. I have a click funnel in my head on this.

Marc Vila:
All right.

Trent Walden:
Well, and it’s ColDesi Graphics.

Trevor Walden:
Yeah, based on what ColDesi has. So there’s three types of people that come in for artwork. The first person has their artwork all ready, but it’s in a crappy, low-quality format. So we need to upgrade that in order to make it a printable file, so it doesn’t look bad. Yeah. So the second person that comes in is the person that has a chicken scratch. They have an idea of what they want. They have a screenshot of some style that they like, but they want it to be theirs. So that’s the second phase.

And then the third one is the person… This is my favorite person, Marc, is when they come in, they’re like, “Hey, I’m so-and-so with X sports team, and I’m the parent of John, and I have no idea how to do any artwork or anything. We just want something cool.” And I’m like, “I love you.”

Marc Vila:
Yeah. Yeah.

Trevor Walden:
So all three of those people have… Their problem is solved if you use the ColDesi Graphics service.

Marc Vila:
Yeah. Yeah. No, because that’s how we kind of tiered it. So I’ve used graphic services for so many years working in marketing, then we started using a service ourselves outside, and I was like, “Gosh, I hate ordering this.” And I would hate ordering graphics, and to the point where I start… Then I trained somebody else on our marketing team how to order graphics, because I was the boss, so I could pass it down, and then they were like, “I hate doing this.”

And then I was like, “We need to do it better, and maybe that’ll help people.” Right? So from the ground up, we started it up, and we were thinking from the decorator’s perspective of, “All right. We know that we have folks who have no clue what they want. We have folks who just want to mess with stuff, and we have folks who just want to clean up an old logo or something, that they lost the art, but they just have an old JPEG or something that they saved from somewhere.”

And we tried to put it there, and then also price it in a way where it’s like it can be marked up to a retail. And then for the people that it works for, it’s gold, especially if you’re not a super awesome… If you’re a super awesome graphic artist and digitizer, part of the desire is doing the art. They may actually hate the production side of it, but they love the art.

But depending where you are, I love the service. It’s great, and I really appreciate that you all do, too. And then for embroidery, I just like it, because when you order an embroidery file, you get a picture of what it’s going to look like. So I know right out of the gate if there’s a problem sometimes, like, “Oh, I didn’t explain this right to them, or they read this wrong,” or whatever it is, and I can hit a reply and say, “Hey, this is actually supposed to be this, not that,” whatever.

And then when I sew it out, I pretty much know that an expert digitizer has done this, where when I would digitize stuff myself, I would digitize it and then I have to fix it, digitize it and I have to fix it. Now, I get it digitized, do it. If there’s a problem, I just basically send an email, go in there and hit an alert, and send a message, and then I’d just go and do my job again, and come back in a little later and it’s fixed, which I think is huge, because my strength is, I’m not an artist. I do all these other things, so I’m going to do the things I’m better at.

Trevor Walden:
Yup. The time value that you gain back simply by just passing it off to ColDesi is… Yeah. It’s one less thing that I have to think about. Look at my list today. I’m sure you have a list similar to mine, but I don’t want to try and deal with graphics for every single one of those people on the list today.

Marc Vila:
Yeah. It’s a lot of work.

Trevor Walden:
I know that ColDesi has got that. Yeah. And then I’ll just get an email when it’s ready to go.

Marc Vila:
Yeah. Awesome. Well, thank you so much for jumping on the podcast. We had a little bit of a long episode today, but I think it was an entertaining episode. There was a lot of great information. Hopefully, we look forward to having you both on here again. So yeah, for those folks listening out there, if you go on to the various socials, you can search for the Walden Bros if you guys want to see more about their story and check them out, or if you need to send them some business or something.

And so, you can follow them. Definitely go to coldesi.com. If this is the first time you’ve kind of heard from us, go to coldesi.com. You can live chat with any of our folks there and learn about that, and you can see links to the graphic services, if that’s something that you’re interested. But we appreciate having you on there. And everyone out there who’s been listening, I’m sure you appreciate the Walden brothers just as much as I do, and have a good business.

The post Episode 199 – Growing A Customization Business appeared first on Custom Apparel Startups.

In this episode, we delve into the exciting world of Direct to Film (DTF) printing and how you can transition your screen-printing shop to embrace this innovative technology. We’ll start by explaining what DTF printing is and why it’s gaining popularity. Next, we’ll break down the investment costs involved, giving you a clear picture of what to expect financially.

We’ll explore the wide variety of materials you can print on with DTF and detail the essential equipment you’ll need to get started.

Wondering if you should keep your screen-printing machines?

We’ll weigh the pros and cons to help you make an informed decision.

Additionally, we’ll discuss other important factors to consider during the transition, provide insights into the current DTF market, and guide you on how to obtain a sample DTF print to see the quality for yourself.

Whether you’re a seasoned screen-printer or new to the industry, this episode is packed with valuable information to help you navigate the switch to DTF printing. Tune in and learn how to expand your printing capabilities and stay ahead in the competitive market.

Marc Vila:

If you do own a screen print shop, if you have some manual presses or automated presses, maybe you have decided to not bring in direct to film yet, and you’re a little bit cautious about it, maybe you’re trying to figure out, “Can you replace some of your equipment with direct to film printing?,” and potentially you’ve brought in something like a really compact sheet-fed machine that just hasn’t really integrated into actual production and you’re trying to figure out how to make that the best it possibly can be, and that’s who this episode is really for, is about converting a shop or integrating a shop from screen-printing to DTF, and if you’re doing any other type of transfers or anything like that, or you’re brand new, then yeah, we’ll do our best to cover everything here. And I am going through a slideshow, so there’s a video component to this. You do not have to watch it if you’re listening to this. That’s just fine. I’ll do my best to describe everything in words, but if you go to YouTube or customapparelstartups.com, you can find this episode and you can go through the slideshow with me on video.

So without further ado, let’s go ahead and dive into the slideshow and talk about how to convert a screen-printing shop to DTF. So first, I’m just going to talk about … I’m going to just get the commercial out of the way, right? My name is Marc Vila. I’m with ColDesi. I’m the director of marketing here.

If you’ve listened to the podcast before, we’ve got tons of episodes. You’ve heard me, and I usually don’t super-commercial this, but since we’re going to be talking about a lot of our equipment and how it’s different for some other things out there, it’s important that I just say a bit of who we are. So at the time of recording this, we’ve sold over 1,400 direct to film printers across the U.S.. These are not compact, little sheet-fed machines. These are commercial roll-to-roll style, direct to film printers, designed for production shops.

We’ve got training and support right here in the U.S.A. A lot of folks are concerned about how they’re going to get up and running, and ColDesi has made sure that we’ve got folks to help you do that, with a focus on uptime and quality. We recognized right from the start that if screen print shops want to bring this in, that they’re going to need to make sure that they’re running, that they’re producing shirts, and that the shirts that output essentially at the end are great quality because their customers are used to that. I’m going to talk a tad about what direct to film printing is. Just to make sure we’re all on the same page, just about everybody listening is going to know what this is, so I’ll be pretty brief, but we’ve got plenty more information on ColDesi.com if you’re not familiar with the process.

But direct to film is the first true digital solution for screen-printing shops. You can actually integrate this in and do production, and here are some of the reasons why. It’s a full-color digital print, as I mentioned, so same amount of work from one to 100 colors, and it’s only ink and adhesive. And what that really means is you’re going to get a high-quality output, a great stretch, a great wash, vibrant colors. There’s no vinyls or any other materials that are going to be on your shirt.

It’s a high-speed process. It’s designed to do everything all in one in the equipment. This means that because it’s all-in-one and it’s fully digital, you could do short and long runs, so you could do 10 shirts or you could do 500 shirts, all with the same design or different designs. You can actually do variable data too. So when you’re creating your artwork, you could say have a different name on, or a different number or something like that on every single transfer, and once you run your job, each transfer can be very, very specific to the customer at the very end.

Next, I’ve actually created a bit of a Venn diagram, the two overlapping circles for those of you not actually watching. And on the left-hand side, I’ve put what’s just screen-printing, so we’ll talk about that. On the right, we’ve talked about what’s just direct to film, and in the middle, what they have in common, which is really why screen-printing and direct to film are so close together and why it’s really being adopted really well by screen print shops. So to be brief on this, what’s just screen printing, right? Very large production of single logos. If you’ve got a one or a two-color logo, and you need 5,000 of them, screen-printing still is going to beat that out in speed, cost, everything.

So just low color, big numbers, great for screen-printing. It’s also got a really low cost per print, especially when you’re at those big numbers. You don’t have other costs that are in there. Once you’ve kind of set up your screen and you get going, you can do it tons and tons and tons of time again, which really brings that cost way down when you’re doing big numbers. And screen-printing also does specialty applications.

So you could do a puff, and glitter and all these very, very interesting things that you don’t necessarily get and transfer production. Now, what’s just DTF, right? DTF is full color digital, as we mentioned before. You could do short runs. It’s clean.

You don’t really have a lot of messes that you have to clean up at all. Everything is self-contained in a system, so it’s a very clean workspace. It’s also easy to learn. You can train somebody how to press the transfers in literally minutes, and you can train somebody how to operate the equipment in essentially one week worth of training, a day worth of training, but you can get somebody to learn how to use this equipment really quick. Compared to screen-printing, all of the steps are very specific.

Some of them need to be very, very accurate and very precise, and done a very certain way. So proper screen print training is weeks, months, I mean, years, really, to master the craft, and you can master running a direct to film printer very short period of time. Variable data is also what we mentioned. You’re not really going to get variable data in screen-printing. And then, the last one to be added here is it’s a low-water consumption, which actually has been a hot point lately.

A lot of people have brought this up, because in certain areas or in certain places, either water is limited or expensive, or they just don’t want to blast through with a pressure washer, making a mess and spraying water all over the place. It’s just not really fun and friendly to work with water on the job like that, so you’re not really doing that in direct to film. So now, what are they both, right? The middle of our Venn diagram here. They both can do high production, they will both create a high-quality output that your customers are going to love, they both wash great, they both have a good stretch and return, vibrant colors, and they’re both designed to print friendly, meaning that what you design and what you want to output, you are going to be happy with it.

Your staff or however you do your production is going to find it easy to do, I mean, to get the desired output that you want, and then your customers ultimately are going to be happy with it. So being able to design stuff and actually print and get what you want is really great in both of these technologies. So next, kind of preparing your shop, getting ready to print, that’s what we’re going to go through next. And by the way, I’m doing a little bit different here with my pauses and such because remember, I am going through a slideshow. All right, so preparing your shop, right?

We’ve got a few things that I’ve listed here in my slideshow. So one we’ll talk, space requirements. For the most part, what we like to say is if you’re a screen print shop and you’ve got a four-color setup, manual setup, the space that you’re using with that is going to take up more than what you would need for a direct to film system, okay? A compact system, you can operate in 200-ish square feet without a problem. I mean, this is room to walk around, and a larger system, you could three, 400 square feet.

I mean, this is all very … These are conservative numbers. It all depends on your shop and how many heat presses and such you need, but the space requirements is reasonably compact, and because most of the work is being done within the equipment, you don’t need lots of other equipment around. You essentially are going to have your printer. You may or may not have an extraction unit, depending if you already have one or how your shop is set up, and then you’re going to have heat press equipment, and then, of course, a computer on the side to load things in.

And that’s just about it. That’s all you have for equipment. So all of that can fit in a nice, tight space. You don’t need a ton of space to operate this. The other is climate and environment.

So you are going to want to be in a temperature, humidity-controlled environment. The rule of thumb we kind of say is if you’re comfortable, the machine is going to be comfortable, but you’re going to want a nice relative humidity, you’re going to want a nice relative temperature, you’re not going to want to run this in an open air shop, so you’re not going to have the bays open and giant fans blowing towards your printer. This is going to be in a closed environment, and you’re going to want to control it. So if it’s freezing outside, you don’t want it freezing inside. That’s probably the big thing that’s going to matter the most.

If it’s really, really dry, if you live in the desert and you have an open air shop, that’s not going to be conducive for direct to film printing, so that’s the big takeaway from there. Power requirements is another thing to go over. In a nutshell with this, it’s less power than you’re running with your screen-printing, essentially. If you’ve got an automatic press and a big dryer, definitely requiring less power than that. We’ve got all the specs on all this type of stuff, but you’re running heat press machines and a compact dryer and a printer.

So the printer is just like any other printer out there. It doesn’t require a lot of power. It’s not going to draw a lot. Your heat presses are going to be standard. Most of your heat presses, you can run off of 110 plugs, so that’s pretty standard too, and the dryer is reasonably compact too.

So all in all, because of the compact nature of this, you’re not going to necessarily need brand new electrical if you’re already set up for screen-printing. If you’re not set up for screen-printing, you probably are going to want to discuss with a pro about that. So we’ve got, here at ColDesi … On all of our slides here, by the way, I’ve got a phone number and a website if you’re watching it, but if not, ColDesi.com or [email protected] is an email. You can email questions directly.

We’ll make sure we get them answered, or you can visit C-O-L-D-E-S-I.com, and you can live chat or go to the direct to film area and get a lot of these very, very specific details I’m not going to get into because it’s super boring. It’s not conducive for a podcast, but we’ve got that information, and the good news is, is you typically are not going to need specialty things happening, especially if you have screen-printing already. Okay, so kind of the best choice for your shop is what I’ve said called this next topic. So what do you need is direct to film, right? For you, which direct film printer should you have? Okay?

So I’ve brought through a lot of different pieces of information, and we’ll just kind of bullet through those. So competition, right? This is stats that we’ve put together, surveys, etc. 75% of shops have or will integrate direct to film by 2025, okay? So that number is huge.

If you have not pulled the trigger yet and you are just a typical screen print shop, chances are, if somebody is calling around asking for something specific that you cannot produce with your screen-printing equipment, whether it’s a short run or a specific number of colors, or a full digital print, the next phone call they will make somebody is going to say yes, especially by next year. So it’s being adopted all across the board. Now, that doesn’t mean everybody’s fully converting over. We have customers that just have it for certain jobs. We have other customers that 90% of their business has moved over to direct to film.

Another is kind of the near me on-demand trends. Customers want more now. That’s what I kind of said to this, right? We’re in a market where folks are going to want as many colors as they want on whatever color shirt they want today, tomorrow, if they can get that. The great thing about direct to film is it allows that to happen.

You do not have to spend eight hours setting up a job, then run the job, and then spend maybe potentially eight hours getting back to normal. You can actually queue up jobs and print them up essentially on-demand. So, I mean, you could do stuff, and we have tons of customers delivering stuff same next day because of the fact that it’s digital, it’s reasonably easy to do, and it’s quick. Full-color digital, now that I said that, is another. Clients want digital because they can get it, right?

And that’s kind of the nature of things right now, right? Fast food is a success because people can get it, not because it’s the best, not because it’s the healthiest or anything like that, but if you can get it, people are going to want it, and a certain percentage of people are going to want it. So when folks know that they can get a picture of a baby or a puppy, or a bride and groom on a shirt, and they know they can get it reasonably quick and for a reasonable price, more people are going to ask for it, and you don’t want to be stuck behind with the only one saying no. Short runs is very similar to this. Folks know that they can buy one shirt.

They know they can buy 10 or 15, and that the number of colors doesn’t matter anymore. 20 years ago, that would not have been true, right? You could have called around everywhere and said, “I want a picture of a puppy on a shirt. I need 10 of them,” and everyone would’ve said no, or they would’ve provided some alternate way of being able to achieve that, and now, a ton of shops can say yes to that, and it’s growing. And then the last bit of the market analysis I said was logos of the future, okay?

So as digital expands, more clients will need digital. So what do I mean by that is similar to as I just mentioned before. If 20 years ago, if you’d have called around and you said, “I have a logo,” and you sent a picture of the logo, and it was literally a picture of a dog, like an actual picture of a dog, and then it said pet grooming, everybody would’ve said no to that. They couldn’t do it with embroidery, you couldn’t do it with screen-printing, couldn’t do it with vinyl, you couldn’t do it with any of the technology that people had 20 plus years ago, and even further. Now, everybody has digital or growing, everybody has digital.

So as that happens, logos are beginning to evolve. People are putting gradients in logos. They’re no longer capping the number of colors because the digital is available for it, because they actually can get that stuff printed, whether it’s business cards, flyers, brochures, the internet, of course, and even T-shirts and hats. You can get full color, so people are making full color digital logos. Scalability, kind of this is another thing to consider for your shop.

So one of the important things about direct to film printing is the fact that once you start to offer it, your customers are going to want it, right? So if we’ve had shops, they come in and they bring something really small sheet-fed machine that’s clearly not available for scalability on this, it’s essentially the same speed as like a DTG printer or something like that, and that doesn’t accommodate for growth, which is why these roll-to-roll style of printers that ColDesi has do accommodate for that growth. So you want to go ahead and take a look at your production, how much you print per hour now, and I would start to go into the assumption that you’re going to want most of that business to convert over to direct to film. So the more the advice is don’t go with the minimum machine you need, go with something that you can grow into, and consistently, we hear that from shops, and we have found a lot of shops have… They buy a small printer, and they end up getting another one within a year because it can’t keep up.

So definitely look at the space you have, how much you expect to print out of it, and really look at the number of orders you’re printing today, knowing the fact that we have shops that have 90% converted over to direct to film, right? That’s a huge number, especially when you’re considering how much output that could be per day, okay? The next great part about scalability on direct to film is the actual training. It’s really easy to bring folks in and teach them how to operate a heat press, where they can do a couple of shirts a minute, right? So that’s a fantastic thing, because teaching people how to screen-print is a process, it’s hard to find talent, and it’s really hard to get somebody who’s also going to stick around for a long period of time nowadays, so training is really great.

You can scale in both directions of long and short runs, is another part of scalability. So if you currently are doing medium, small size runs, 50 shirts, 100 shirts, and you want to scale up, you can do that with a direct to film printer. If you’re currently are only offering, or most of your jobs are only 100 to 500 pieces or something like that, you can also begin to scale down, and we’ve had plenty of customers that have integrated systems where they say, “If a customer wants to order something, as long as they place the order by this cutoff time, it will make it into that afternoon’s run.” And then they line up all the jobs together, and they could deliver the same day, prints, even if the customer only wants one or two or 10 shirts. And another thing about scalability that’s really interesting is the low-cost nature of the scalability, right?

So what I mean by that is if you have a four-color press or an eight-color screen press right now, and you’re kind of reaching the maximum capability you can print with that, in order to level up, it’s going to cost you a good amount of money and/or space. You’re going to need either bigger press, or automation, or larger ways to print or create screens, all the different processes. We know all the different processes from automatic color mixing to how you clean your screens, and all of that stuff actually can get particularly expensive and take up a lot of space. When you’ve got a direct to film printer, let’s say you bought a 24-inch two-head direct to film printer, which is kind of like the medium size, and you’re starting to reach the capability of what you have now in regards to production, now you’re producing the maximum amount per hour out of your shop, chances are you can just add another heat press and significantly increase your output, because that’s usually the choke point on this, is the heat press. So you could potentially have two, or three, or four heat press machines depending on what you’re printing and your printer can keep going and you can have an operator running that all day or even on multiple shifts, and you’re adding heat presses to be able to keep up.

So your growth is low cost, meaning compact size, 16 by 20 heat press, couple thousand dollars, and it doesn’t take up a lot of space, right? A few feet by five feet, something like that is plenty of room to be able to operate fully-operated heat press. So it’s great scalability, direct to film is very friendly, and the big takeaway is just make sure you get the right equipment for your shop and consider how you plan on scaling. Next, we’re going to talk about the investment. So what is it going to cost to be able to get a commercial high production piece of equipment for direct to film? The number we’re talking about today at the time of recording this is about 15 to $35,000, or 400 and 900 a month financed, and this is for varying pieces of equipment.

Maybe you need heat presses or not, extractors, ink, all that stuff. So the equipment cost is pretty reasonable, considering that some of you listening to this could have one piece of your screen-printing equipment could have cost you that much. Not even enough to make shirts, but you’ve got a whole system that can produce final printed shirts within that 15 to 35 or 400, 900 a month. Also on investment, in regard to consumables, this is the biggest thing that people don’t think about often, and when I talk about it to folks is you see the eyes open up, right? It’s a light consumable inventory, which means that you have basically five to seven colors, depending on the printer you get.

Adhesive and film, and that’s it. That’s essentially your entire inventory. I mean, there’s little things, cleaning solutions and stuff, but for the most part, that’s what you’re operating with. Compare that to screen printing, you can have… I mean, I’ve seen walls of colors, gallon cans everywhere, pre-mixed things and containers for certain…

You have a customer with a certain color of purple, so you keep some of that. That inventory almost never shrinks. It almost is evergrowing. And you also have an inventory of screens, because if you have 40 customers that are often repeats, you probably keep those screens, and if those jobs are four-color, you’ve got four screens you’re storing. So your screen inventory is almost infinitely growing and your color inventory is growing.

That’s not true with direct to film printing. It’s a light consumable inventory. And heat press machines, as far as investment goes, typically, I like to say you probably already have a heat press that works for this. If you have a T-shirt shop, the heat press you have probably works for this. The big thing is, is you want even pressure, you want even temperature.

Those are the big things, and you hopefully want a way to be able to measure what that is so you’re not guessing, but any good quality brand heat press, generally speaking, will work. There are way too many heat presses out there to get too much in the details of it, but definitely just talk with one of the pros at ColDesi here, and they’ll go ahead and dive into the details if your specific one will work. All right. Next, let’s go ahead and talk about operations. What does it look like to operate a direct to film printing system? Okay?

So let’s just talk about the start and end of the day. The beginning of the day is … I mean, relatively, you walk in, make sure everything’s fired up. You’ll do a nozzle check. Basically, a print test takes a couple minutes, and if everything is good, you start working, you load jobs up, and you hit print.

If maybe you fill up top-off ink, top-off powder, stuff like that. So all that’s a few minutes, and you’re ready to print. You’re ready to go into production. At the end of the day, you have a cleaning routine that you do. So there’s certain parts you clean. There’s mainly taking cleaning solution and a cloth, and wiping certain areas down to keep the actual printer itself clean.

And that’s essentially the start and end of your day. You just test to make sure everything is working well, and clean it. And if you did your cleaning at the end of the day, when you come back the next day, that beginning is essentially no work. It’s very quick. Job setup and post-job labor.

So there is relatively no pre and post-work. Unlike screen printing, there’s a lot of pre-work and a lot of post-work. A lot of setup, a lot of cleanup. That is not the case with direct to film. You have your start and end of the day, but during the day, as you’re doing jobs, when you go to move from one job to the next, that’s all handled digitally.

So you are queuing jobs up, and they’re coming out of the printer, and you don’t have to change or do anything in between jobs, and that’s huge, especially if you’re kind of running jobs that aren’t ready to be heat-pressed yet, so maybe you’re starting to print, but you’ve ordered shirts and the shirts that haven’t arrived yet. They don’t come in until tomorrow or until later in the day. You start to run jobs and you prep and cut and have all your transfers ready to go, and the next job is coming out immediately. The other thing to discuss in regards to operations is handling reruns. How do you handle reruns?

Because it’s digital, I think it’s relatively self-explanatory, that when you want to print a job again, you just literally hit print again, right? You don’t even necessarily have to do that many, because you can store these transfers. So a lot of folks, what they will do is if they have a particular customer that is often a return customer, they will go ahead and they will print the job, print a handful of extras, you can store them in a cabinet, and then when you need them again for a customer, it’s going to take you 30 seconds to make a shirt. The last part to cover operations is color matching. This is stuff that folks ask a lot about, “How can I match colors?”

“Can I print Pantones? What if my customer has a particular corporate logo?” So the type of printing that we’re doing here has a really large color gamut. So you can cover tons of colors, tons of colors. And when you need to match a certain color, what you would do before with screen-printing essentially is take a bunch of ink and mix them together until you get the right color, get that approved by the customer, and then you run your job off of that setup.

Well, you can do similarly but all digital. So if there’s a certain color, a certain green you’re trying to match, or red or blue or whatever it is, and you can print it as the art sits, and if you need an adjustment, you can make that adjustment either right in the RIP software or in your graphics software, and it can be done in both directions, and you can even queue up a few at a time. So maybe you do one a little higher saturation, one a little lower saturation, and the original artwork in the middle. You can print all three of those at the same time, so you can easily test and run and adjust. And here at ColDesi, we have experts that will help you learn how to do that if you have any struggles.

But for the most part, there are millions and millions and millions of logos for corporations and people who need specific colors being printed every single day in direct to film throughout the world. So the fact of the matter is that it can be done, and it’s happening every day. Okay, so let’s talk about a bit of what you need next. So equipment requirements. You have your essential direct to film equipment, printer, dryer, heat press.

The printer is what’s going to print the ink. The dryer is what is going to dry and kind of cook, cure the adhesive, and then the heat press is what you use to actually adhere it to the shirt. So those are the steps. You print ink on the film. When it’s an automated process, the ink then travels through a shaker, which essentially is spreading powdered adhesive onto the ink, that comes out as kind of powdered that runs through a dryer.

The dryer essentially heats up, that adhesive powder bonds it to the ink, and as it comes out, it’s now dry and it can be stacked, stored, or placed on a T-shirt ready to be pressed. The supplementary equipment that you need, you do want to ventilate or extract because you’re using a dryer, and adhesive, and ink and such. There’s going to be things that get released out, and you’re going to want to extract that out of the environment, so you’re going to have an extraction unit, or … I mean, it kind of is an air filter in so many words for anybody who just hasn’t turned. Just think of it that way.

That’s the easiest way to think of it, but you’re going to want to ventilate this stuff out, and that’s going to be a supplemental piece of equipment you’re going to need. And a simple one, it goes without saying, but it is a great point, is transfer storage. So you’re going to want to wait place to store transfers, so whether it’s Tupperware bins or some sort of baggy systems. I mean, I’ve seen everything, but you’re going to want to wait to store transfers that’s kind of airtight and in a closet where you can keep it out of the light, and this way, you will have those transfer store for months and months and months. Folks ask, “How long does a transfer last for once you’ve printed it?”

The official answer that I’ve heard most folks say is kind of the official one is six months. The reason that’s official one is because it’s a very safe number. However, we’ve got a gentleman that works here that printed a bunch of logos two years ago, and every month, he takes one out of his desk drawer, puts it on a shirt, presses it, and adds it to the shirt. And he has been doing that for two years, and these transfers are still viable. There’s no problem with them at all, essentially.

However, because there’s a million different environments out there and humidities, and temperatures, and all that stuff, six months is a good, safe place. All right. We talked about supplies, but that is an essential part. You need your ink, you need your adhesive, you need your film. And then the other things you’re going to need, I kind of labeled those as considerations, but cleaning solutions, cloths, stuff like that to keep your equipment clean. Of course, scissors and things like that doesn’t even need to be mentioned.

And then, another thing is what we call a repair kits, so ink lines, dampers, and other essential machine parts. It’s great to keep this stuff on hand, because some of these things are consumable over time, that they wear out like an ink damper’s part of the printing system, and that will wear out over time, so it’s good to keep these things in stock. Of course, we sell them all and plenty of people just buy them on demand as they need it, but I’ve been in this industry for, gosh, about 15 years, and I’ve sold tons of different equipment, and the folks who have the lowest blood pressure are the folks who have repair kits or what they call emergency kits on hand, so it’s a great idea just to keep some of that stuff. It’s not necessarily that much money, and it gets you to continue printing in the event that something goes out at an unexpected time. Now, maintenance. We touched a bit on maintenance, but let’s just go ahead and just go through it real quick, because this is a common question.

You’ve got a daily, monthly, annual kind of routine you’re going to go through, right? The annual one might be replacing those dampers, which will take a little bit of time. The daily stuff is wiping things down. So essentially, keep it clean. That’s the big part of the maintenance, keep it clean.

Supply levels, you have ink, adhesive, and film. These are all very visual to be able to see when they’re low, so you’ll be able to do this every morning or at some sort of a clockwork, and the machine has some warnings and some things to let you know where those supplies are. We talked about the environment, temperature and humidity controlled, and then we talked about storing transfers. You want those stored, climate controlled in a closed environment. All right, so what’s next?

“Do you continue screen print operations?” This is, folks are really curious, “Where is my screen printing equipment going to end up?” And the most important thing in this whole question topic is to understand that your shop is unique and it’s unlike any other. That’s the most important thing to consider, so you have to consider, “What types of jobs are you going to do?,” “What types of jobs may you be doing in the future?,” and, “What are your customers’ like and demand?” Okay?

And then you can kind of weigh out pros and cons of everything, but I’ll say some general things that I’ve learned. One is, one in two color jobs, when you’re over a couple 100 pieces, a lot of folks will keep and use their screen-printing equipment for that. So maybe it’s just one color jobs over 200, they’ll go ahead and screen that. Another that they keep it for is maybe specialty, like sleeve leg or infant size or something, and they just leave their screen print set up just for that. So they will direct a film everything, but if they need to drop in some sleeve, logos, or something like that, they just do that on the screen.

So some folks will mix and match. Part of the shirt is direct to film, part of it is depending on the specialty application. If you’ve got a large automatic or a large very multi-color press, there are folks who deprecate some of that stuff because they find it hard to do eight or nine or 10 colors with all of that set up when they could easily do that on the direct to film, especially since most jobs being done out there are under 500 pieces, most jobs being done are 100 to 500. We’ve surveyed and asked all around, that’s most jobs, and because that’s most jobs, direct to film works really well in that space. So high color up to 500, it’s fantastic.

Once you’re breaking beyond that, if you do have a lot of five, 10,000-piece orders, you’re a particularly big shop, you may still be using that automatic to fulfill some of that. So we talked about specializing equipment in that, we talked about setting the parameters that fits your needs. You’ll find that color and job size number, and then really, just which equipment do you have is worth the space and the time it takes to maintain it or keep it up and running? And you may just find that you can sell off some equipment, you could store some equipment, you can convert areas of your shop like a dark room or a storage area, you can convert it into a revenue generating space now. Maybe you never had a room for a cutter or you never had a room for an embroidery machine and you’ve wanted to do that, you could potentially turn some of your shop into revenue-generating space, or the last thing about dealing with the space is we talk to folks who say they plan on downsizing the size of their shop, not because they’re producing less, they just don’t need the space anymore.

So they lease an entire length of an industrial plaza, and maybe that last bay, they no longer need, and that could reduce their rent by hundreds, no, if not, thousands of dollars in a month. So these are all things that folks do, and that’s what I would consider. The important thing to do is kind of write some of these things out, write out all the different types of jobs you do, and imagine where they can be, and then, of course, just go along with the journey, and you’ll figure it out. All right. Now, production costs.

What’s the cost of ink, adhesive film, cost per print, et cetera? So a simple number, a short number that people say is 0.0054 cents per square inch. So how does anybody do that math, right? So we kind of just say a full front is going to be less than 50 cents to be able to … When you’re printing a left chest logo, is going to be change, if you’re thinking about that, a dime or something like that.

So the cost per print is pretty low. It’s relatively low. The ink and the adhesive in the film go a really long way, so a full order is doing thousands. The best way to really determine this, which I love, is perfect. For one, is during your jobs, the software will job cost for you, so before you print your first print, you can see how much the job is going to cost you, so you take the customer’s art, load it up, it’s going to tell you how much it’s going to cost per print to do that, including all the supplies, and then therefore, you can go ahead and turn around and charge your customer properly for that.

Alternatively to that is if before you start printing and you want to know what a couple of popular jobs cost, you can send art to our team here at ColDesi, and they can job cost it for you, or they can help estimate, at least get pretty close to what that cost would be, and we can even print that sample for you, so they can print a sample for you. They’ve done live webinars, live one-on-one, folks where they send their art in, they print it for them, or we have art. Sometimes it’s close enough. “Here’s a logo. This is how much it costs to print it.”

They print it, they put it on a shirt, they send it right to you, and this way, you can feel it, touch it, wash it yourself. So the production cost in a nutshell is low enough to be plenty profitable for screen print shops to have adopted this all over the country, and there’s a reason why that, what I say before, 75% of shops have or plan to adopt by 2025. So the cost is low enough for everybody to want to do that, and that’s really the bottom line. Okay. So, in my slideshow here, I kind of have the final questions. As I mentioned before, these are FAQ, so I’m just going to kind of rapid-fire through these and wrap it up.

So the first one, that by the time I get here, everyone says, “Well, how do I get a sample?” That’s easy enough, right? You go to ColDesi.com, you email [email protected], give us a call, and just say, “Hey, I need to see it for myself.” So people ask the next, which leads to the next question, “How does it wash and feel?” Well, you can see for yourself by getting a sample.

And the ColDesi prints are designed to feel great, wash great, and make your customers happy, and as we said, not all ink and film and printers are the same, so you’re definitely going to want to see the ones from ColDesi if you’ve not loved something you’ve seen before potentially, but your customers are going to love the way it feels. It stretches great, it washes great, it goes on all different types of materials, cotton, poly, blends, all of that stuff. Next folks ask is kind of about the quality, is the color quality. That does come up a lot. The colors that come off this are beautiful and vibrant.

Now, the specialty things you don’t achieve, like metallic gold, you can maybe do that with screen-printing through a specialty process, and that’s not going to happen out of a CMYK printer, but all the colors you’re going to get out are going to be beautiful. If you have particular art that you are concerned about, the best thing you can do is get the art in to the ColDesi team and have them print it, because that’s it right there, right? Take your biggest customer’s art, and send it through, and make sure you’re happy with it. Next questions are about the process. “How much does it cost to print?”

I actually just covered that, so I’m glad that we went through there, but go ahead and ask our team about specific artwork, whether it’s ones we have, so we can go ahead and send you a sample of something that’s already done, ready to go, and we can tell you how much it cost to print. That’s the most common, the way that people do it. “And how do I determine the best size printer?” And I covered this, but essentially, what I would say would be go through the process and the plan that I discussed before. Look at all your jobs.

Consider, “If I didn’t have to prep those jobs, which ones do I think I would run through my direct to film printer?” Get a count on those, right? “How often do those come through? How often do you have to produce? How long does it take you to produce now?”

And I would fulfill a printer that, at bare minimum, meets that requirement, and I would add 25, 30, 50% more. That’s typically the number you want to go for because your customers are really going to like what happens, and as … I’m sorry, what they get, I should say. They’re going to like what they get. And once you start selling folks, “You know what I could do that same thing in full color,” they’re going to want it and they’re going to ask for more of that stuff, and it’s the same amount of work for you, so you’re going to be happy that you keep those customers.

Now, I actually skipped this question, “What’s the process start to finish?” We have a demo that you can watch that covers this whole thing, right? So just contact us and just say, “Hey, I just want to see a full demo,” and they can send you videos, and you could literally watch every step. But essentially, what happens is you take your artwork, just digital art, however it’s done. You do not need to color-separate, you don’t necessarily have to have a vector, you just want a high-quality print.

Whatever you ask it to print, it will, low quality or high. So you have a high-quality logo, you run that into a software, the software is going to process it and prepare it for the printer, and say you need 100 of them, you hit times 100, and then you hit go. The film that you’ve loaded into the printer will feed through and print your color and your white ink. It will print a white base to cover all of the colors, and this way, you can put it on any color shirt, so it’ll work on dark color shirts, light colors, et cetera. Sublimation, for an example, doesn’t work on dark colors. There is no underbase for it.

So I always say to folks, if you don’t understand the process, “If you spill spaghetti sauce on a white shirt versus spilling spaghetti sauce on a dark shirt, the tomato sauce is basically not going to be seen on a dark-colored shirt, and it’s going to stand out like crazy on a light-colored shirt,” and that’s why sublimation works great on it. For direct to film, you have that white underbase and you have the white adhesive, so you can put it on any color, but it will print out, then it will put your powder adhesive on. I mentioned this earlier. It runs through a dryer, which essentially cooks that all together, and then now, you have your transfers on a roll. You cut those up using scissors, cutter, whatever you need.

It really depends on how you gang up your jobs and how you cut those up, and then those go over to a heat press. You put your shirt on, you put your transfer on top, and you press it, and the press time, relatively speaking, we’ll just say, is 10, 15 seconds. That’s like a press. Typically, you peel, and then a lot of folks will do a post-press afterwards for about five more seconds just to kind of push it into the shirt, improve washability look, feel, et cetera. So that covers the process.

And last few questions, “What heat press do I need? I actually covered this earlier, but chances are, the heat press you have will work if you use it for other transfers. The big thing, you want quality heat, quality pressure. That’s basically the rule of thumb for all transfers in general, but most heat presses folks have air presses they run, they’ve got swing-away, clamshells, all those styles work. “How’s this different from other transfers?,” another question, because people have had toner transfers before, which they like or don’t like the process.

It doesn’t matter. They’re different than that, right? This is a liquid ink going on and a powdered adhesive that’s cured, so it’s very soft and malleable, which is different than, say, vinyl or toner transfer, that is more textured, right? You put that on a shirt, and you feel it a lot more. This is a lot softer hand.

Some folks say it feels almost like a really, really thin coating or something on the shirt. It’s very thin, it’s very soft. You can squish it in your hands, you can stretch it. It’s got like, I don’t want to say rubbery, because sometimes that can sound negative, but it’s got that stretch and return type of a feel to it, and it feels nice in your hands, compared to if you’ve done print and cut, or really thick vinyl or any of these other things, they don’t really feel great in your hand. It feels like there’s paper on the shirt or there’s plastic on the shirt.

It feels heavy and not breathable at all. You don’t get that with direct to film. And as I said, you may have felt a direct to film transfer before and not liked it. I would challenge you to check out the ColDesi one if you have, just to be sure, because it probably is different. And the last bit is, I mentioned it earlier, but you can print on just about any type of shirt, so lights, darks, poly, cotton, blends, et cetera.

The last question is, folks ask a lot about the safety of the ink, the adhesive, all stuff like that, “Oh, someone on the internet said it wasn’t safe,” things of that nature. So this is simple to address. For one, if your area that you work in has specific safety requirements on materials you use, what you put on apparel, what you use in your shop, if the building you have has certain rules, or you’re just generally concerned that you want to make sure that you’re operating with things that are safe to use, then we have safety data sheets on this. So I would just say if any of those things apply, which is usually why people are asking, because the building they have doesn’t allow it, the city doesn’t have, they have to get a certain license to do certain things, if you need any of that, just contact our team, ask for the safety data sheets. That’s the best way to handle that, and that’ll tell you all there.

And chances are, if you are screen-printing now, stuff that you’re using now is probably has a much scarier-looking safety data sheet than the direct to film stuff, because there’s a lot of chemicals involved on the screen printing side of things. So I doubt you’re stepping into worse territory, but the bottom line on that is to just go ahead and get a safety data sheet if you have any concerns so you can look over it yourself, and that’s the official stuff. All right, so the last bit is … We’ll wrap up with a commercial, right? I hope I’ve answered a ton of questions that you’ve had.

Hopefully you’ve learned something here. There’s so much more to cover, I know, but this is, I feel, a pretty good amount of information in a compact period of time considering. If you’ve want to see demonstrations, get a sample, get a sample of your own artwork, do a one-on-one demo, whatever it is, you can go to ColDesi.com, you can email [email protected], or you can give us a call, and any of those are great way to reach us. And we have a team of folks that specifically handle all different types of shops, so if you’re a startup, if you’re kind of consider yourself a standard screen print shop, if you are a unique situation, maybe you don’t even consider yourself a screen print shop, you just happen to produce something in a vertical line of work, and this is part of the process that you think can improve how things are produced in your plant or whatever it might be, just reach out to us, and the folks that are over here that are DTF experts will help you out. So thank you so much for listening to this episode of the Custom Apparel Startups podcast.

I hopefully did my best on doing a slideshow that might not be watched, but as mentioned, go ahead and go to customapparelstartups.com, and you can watch this on video or see all the slides if you want to, or if you have anything specific you need, just reach out to our team. So thank you very much again, and have a good business.

The post Episode 198 – How To Convert A Screen Printing Shop To DTF appeared first on Custom Apparel Startups.

In this insightful episode of Custom Apparel Startups, we welcome Howard Potter back to discuss the nuances between Direct to Film (DTF) printing and traditional Screen Printing. With his deep-rooted knowledge from A&P Master Images, Howard breaks down the pros and cons of each technology, helping entrepreneurs make informed decisions tailored to their business needs.

The conversation begins with an overview of each printing method’s technical demands and operational scopes. Howard elaborates on the initial investment costs, ease of operation, and scalability potential of DTF and Screen Printing, giving listeners a comprehensive comparison.

Highlighting key factors like print quality, production speed, and cost-effectiveness, Howard shares his firsthand experiences with both methods. He discusses how DTF offers flexibility and precision with lower setup times, making it ideal for small to medium runs.

Conversely, Screen Printing is celebrated for its economic benefits in large batch productions and its lasting print quality.

Further, Howard addresses common misconceptions and challenges associated with each method, such as the steep learning curve of Screen Printing and the upfront costs associated with transitioning to or starting with DTF.

Listeners will come away with a clear understanding of which printing method might best suit their current operations and future growth plans, armed with Howard Potter’s practical advice and industry insights. Whether you’re a startup in the apparel industry or looking to expand your existing setup, this episode serves as an essential guide to mastering these popular printing techniques.

Marc Vila:

Howard Potter:

Marc Vila:

And these processes that are digital printing processes, where we’re printing pixels with either toner or droplets of ink, versus processes where we’re manually laying down or producing colors, like screen printing and vinyl. So, Howard, you have a ton of experience in both of these processes. So, maybe we just start off with what processes did you get started with? Why did you choose that? And then how did you evolve into doing some of the other ones? And a good description of that.

Howard Potter:

And so, we started off with that and it literally led to the next thing we got into, which isn’t on this topic, but embroidery, because again, it was another item. It didn’t take up a lot of space. It started off with a single head embroidery machine. As our company grew and we moved the business out of our home, we then expanded into screen printing. Our first screen print space took up roughly about, I’d say 500 to 600 square feet. And you can get away with less, but comfortably being able to move, have your supplies, a manual press, a small dryer with a 24-inch belt on it widthwise by eight foot long and space to clean and pressure, wash your screens, burn your screens, emulsify them.

And then, from there, I mean we were pretty heavy into screen printing for a while because the direct-to-garment printing was being announced over that time period. And we’re talking probably 12 years ago, 13 years ago. And when I researched the direct-to-garment printing, it didn’t have the output that I was looking for at the time, and it was very costly to get into a printer. And you still needed parts of either heat pressing or running them through a dryer to cure the ink. So, that’s probably one of the few processes we skipped over, and we allowed our sublimation and our screen printing to catch both sides at the time.

Now, fast forward, 2024, I should say, actually I think it was the end of 2022 when we had just started researching the direct-to-film printer that you guys actually make, which is your DTF-24H4. We researched that because when I got the email on what it was, I was like, “I think this just solved all my issues between screen… If not all, but the majority, 95%, 98% of my issues with screen printing and sublimation to where I don’t need to buy all those extra supplies, I don’t need all those extra man hours for cleaning screens, emulsifying screens, registering them, cleaning up after everything.”

And the more I researched in the direct-to-film, I realized no matter what size unit you buy, even if you buy the largest unit, it’s still very compact, clean, organized, takes up less space, doesn’t pull nearly as much power, it takes less setup time, your in production more than you are prep time. It’s easier for the designers to design for, it gives your customer more capabilities than they ever had before because they were stuck by, is it a white item with full color? Or is it spot color or a simulated process with screen printing or half-tones with screen printing just with spot color half-tones and what’s that going to cost me? Whereas direct-to-film actually simplifies everything. It’s even easier to sell because it goes on so many different products. Customer service doesn’t have to worry about a setup charge, breaking down the callers, any of that. They just sell it for what it is.

Marc Vila:

Howard Potter:

Marc Vila:

And the key thing with that was is that it’s a small space, those technologies are small space and they don’t require really special power or special ventilation. Nowadays, both of those technologies, the price has come down significantly from when you started. You can get a pretty nice sublimation set up for 1,000 bucks-ish, like Sawgrass, brand name printer. And it’s not super high-speed or anything, but you can make a business out of that. And then, embroidery too. Back 20 years ago, an embroidery machine would easily be $15,000, $20,000 for a full setup, and now you can get them for $10,000. You can get quality equipment for $10,000-ish.

And I’d like to describe a few of the things you had said too. So, the way I think about customization, and I think it’s an important thing to understand for anybody in the business or getting into it, is I really consider there’s three ways of decorating because we said analog and digital, which are true, that’s two ways to separate. But another way to separate is actually how things are adhered to the garment. And they’re either adhered through a chemical reaction through some sort of bonding or adhesive, or through a mechanical interaction. And so, starting the opposite. Mechanical is embroidery. It’s knots. It’s thread and knots. There’s a mechanical machine moving and tying stuff together. Friction is holding that whole thing together.

And then, we’ve got the chemical reaction stuff. And that’s really on that sublimation side. Sometimes that’s in screen printing when you put certain things in the fabric to remove color out the fabric, so you can add other colors in. And you’re actually physically chemically changing the dye and the garment. And then, we’ve got our adhesion styles, so direct-to-film, white toner printing, vinyl, those are all adhesion. So, we’re actually, we take a color, whatever that is, whether it’s from liquid ink or from vinyl or whatever it might be. And there’s glue in so many words being put on the back of it. And then, that glue goes on a shirt. And generally speaking, heat and pressure activate the glue.

So, if somebody’s listening who doesn’t understand what that means, it’s almost like a glue stick. When you heat it gets all melty and it soaks into whatever you’re wanting to glue. And then, once it cools down again, it gets hard again just like it was before. And that’s how direct-to-film and vinyl, all those basically are working that way. So, I think it’s important to understand there’s chemical reactions and that. Now, saying that, all of these processes, as you mentioned, going into the next, they take up different amounts of space. And you had said that when you went into screen printing, I noted that you said you wanted about 500 square feet to comfortably work. Just as a quick visual, a two-car garage is going to be like 400 or 500 square feet.

Howard Potter:

Marc Vila:

Howard Potter:

Marc Vila:

Howard Potter:

Marc Vila:

Because that’s two totally different situations. I mean, you could throw in a big giant screen print set up back there if you wanted to, and the you have plenty of room for ventilation, as you mentioned. You got plenty of square feet because that building might be 1,000, 2,000 square feet. Way different than if you live in a condo in Miami. So, I think that it’s a dangerous question to ask. So, understanding the differences between the strengths and weaknesses of this stuff is important. And then, also understanding what’s right for your space and your business is important. So, maybe we can go into a little bit on maybe bullet point or back and forth on the strengths and weaknesses of the different types of technology.

And I have a thought in my head and then I’ll pass it to you. We’ll split analog and digital as we mentioned before, right? So, digital is everything that you are printing individual dots to make whatever image you want. Let’s define digital as that. And then, analog is we are either manually picking or making colors and putting them down individually. So, before you said you had started with a four-color screen press set up, that means you could do four colors at a time. That’s the maximum amount of colors you would do in a piece of art without other complex work happening. So, kind of saying that that’s the difference between those two there.

One of the strengths of the analog stuff is, generally speaking, it’s just really inexpensive to do per piece. That’s the biggest strength of it is a roll of vinyl, if you’re just talking about using vinyl as an example, 30 bucks for a 20-inch by five yard roller, 30 bucks maybe. So, if you’re doing little logos, like little left chest or if that image that’s on your hat, if you were doing that in vinyl, doesn’t cost like nothing, 15 cents. And the same for screen printing. What would that cost in screen printing ink, like a penny?

Howard Potter:

So, how do you maximize the usage of that when you break down… And don’t get me wrong, screen printing, we still do it, we’re just not doing it as much. When you break down, all right, I’m only spending say five or 15 grand, whatever it is to get in the basics of screen printing, we spent upwards of 25,000 to get into it initially. And when you look at those things, you’re like, “All right, 25 grand, I’m looking at probably a $450 a month payment. I could run one order a day and make that payment easily. But how much time am I losing cleaning screens, prepping screens, doing the artwork?”

So, how we had to do things back then because there was only three or four of us at a certain point when we got into screen printing, one day would be dedicated to artwork and printing positives. The next day would be burning screens and cleaning screens. The third day would be actually producing orders. When you break that down, you got the cost of the chemicals, the water, the electric, you got to insure everything too. Let’s not forget that. And the great thing is they’re less mechanical parts, so it’s harder and it takes longer for things to break down, less maintenance, but there’s all that added cost and time and physically touching everything, even if it’s just you.

And especially going into the future with the way things are going with the workforce, you have to maximize time now, not later because if you learn to do that better now you’re going to be more productive later financially too. So, that’s where when we go from analog to digital and you take something like direct-to-film, you’re taking all that extra time of prep work, finish work out of it, and you’re prepping less and producing more consistently with whoever’s there and it’s easier to teach.

Screen printing, there’s a lot of finesse to it. You got to know how to burn a screen just right. Get your lighting, your time down. What emulsions do you like to use? How many coats of emulsion are you going to put on a screen? Are you doing two coats on both sides? Doing a reverse stroke on one side? There’s a lot of different variables and training that goes into it. Whereas if you’re into the digital age of direct-to-film, there’s less training, there’s more producing out the gate, there’s quicker turnaround and your dollar in training someone on direct-to-film versus screen printing.

But where screen printing can shine is when you have customers needing 100 or 500 or 1,000 pieces and you only need to print one or two colors. And if you’re doing a one color on a manual, you’re going to pound them out pretty quickly, and on auto, you’re going even faster. So, when you’re at a one to two color, depending on the quantity, which I usually say 50 to 100 pieces or more, is where you start to see that still hold true to that still that’s still cost-effective time-wise, but it makes you more profitable that way. But if you’re starting out of your home, direct-to-film versus screen printing, even with the smaller units, you’re going to get more bang for your buck and you’re going to be more productive and cost-effective running that direct-to-film than you are screen printing, and it’s going to require less people.

Marc Vila:

Howard Potter:

Marc Vila:

And this is something I see very common that happens in the startup is somebody… And by the way, this is the true with mowing your own lawn. This is the same thing if you want to paint your house. It’s the same thing if you want to get into baking or bread making or cooking or smoking meats, the tools to get started… You can smoke meat in a generic brand kettle style grill, not even like a Weber, but a cheap one from like 100 dollars. You can smoke meat in that. Now, the challenge is if you have really cheap knives, you’re going to hate cutting up everything ahead of time and trying to get the little fats off and all that stuff’s going to be really hard. You’re keeping the temperature the same in that cheap metal thin case is going to be really, really hard. All these things are harder. It’s a lot more work, right?

Because you didn’t want to buy, say a Traeger or recteq brand type of smoker that was going to cost you $1,500. So, you spend $100 not $1,500. Very appealing. You can do it. The challenge is that if you don’t work through all the extra work and all the challenges to have success, the chances of success are smaller. The chances of you saying, “Smoking meats is way too hard. It’s way too much work. It’s so easy to waste money and ruin stuff. I don’t want to do it again.” And then, you give up.

And I think that is exactly the true of all the other examples. If you get a really cheap mower, you’re going to hate mowing your lawn, it’s not going to look good. If you have a crappy edger, it’s going to get tangled all the time, and it’s going to take you twice as long to do it. So, it’s a little bit of that with some of these analog processes. If you start with a really cheap screen printing set up, yes, you can get started.

Which by the way, I’m pro. I am pro that. I am pro do something, don’t not do it. So, if you have to do it, you need to mentally be prepared that it’s going to be a bunch of work, it’s going to have headaches and you’re going to want to get out of that situation. Alternatively, if you are willing and able, if you got the guts and you’re able to do it, you got to have guts to take… You had to have guts to put five grand into a sublimation printer 20 years ago. That took guts. That’s a decent amount of money. How old were you, like 21?

Howard Potter:

Marc Vila:

Howard Potter:

Marc Vila:

Howard Potter:

Marc Vila:

Howard Potter:

Marc Vila:

Howard Potter:

Marc Vila:

Howard Potter:

Marc Vila:

Howard Potter:

Marc Vila:

Versus saying, “Out of my paycheck every week, I’m going to put in $60,” or whatever the number. Because you probably would not have put in more than 50, 60 bucks a paycheck, I imagine at that time if you were to save to buy one. That means that same number, five grand divided by 60 bucks a paycheck, it is going to take you 83 pay cycles. If you’re getting paid every two weeks, that’s years. I’m not going to try to do the math, but that’s years to get started. At that point in time, you’ve lost the gusto, you’ve lost the dream, you’re tired. You may give up between now and then. So, I say do it and then pay it off if you can. And we sidebarred into this conversation, but I think that’s great because both of these things we said are extremely important.

Howard Potter:

Marc Vila:

Howard Potter:

Marc Vila:

Howard Potter:

Marc Vila:

Howard Potter:

And the difference, we talk about analog versus the digital, the cost startup cost can switch, but the backend cost switch as well. Like we were saying earlier, meaning screen printing can be cheaper upfront to get started in, but you have way more cost than your labor. Whereas direct-to-film, you could have more upfront cost depending on what machine you go with, but you’re going to have way more profitable backend because you have less time waiting around for something to be produced. You’re instantly up and running fast with quality.

Marc Vila:

Howard Potter:

Marc Vila:

Howard Potter:

Marc Vila:

Howard Potter:

So, I don’t care what manufacturer it is of what the equipment or what the process is, you have your tax, you have your sales reps, you have your information that’s out there, whatever number someone gives you, say they tell you you can produce 80 shirts an hour, whatever the process is, we’ll lowball it to 50. Be safe. Always budget on the air of caution. No different than building a home. You always figure 5% to 10% over budget, right? Well, in this case budget lower production numbers and lower output to make sure your costs are still going to make it. So, we went with the DTF-24H4 machine, and we knew that it would take over screen printing from what we tested before we even bought the unit.

And so, we bought a unit that we could have went with the middle one of the DTF-24H2, which is a two-head versus a four-head. Well, what did I think about? Well, two extra sets of heads, it could print faster. That means my team is at the printer less time in the day. We can grow into the machine. These are things that people really need to analyze before they make the plunge. Now, what is your goal? Is this a hobby or are you going to take it serious? Mine started as a hobby because I went to school for design. I was making great money pouring metal, but some things happened in life with my child, which forced me to make it a full-time job, which I’m glad I did to this day. But take the payment. Say, it’s $500 a month. I’ll do the math right here on the calculator. $500 a month. You have a minimum, I say 22 business days a month because you want to have your weekends and stuff, the average person.

Marc Vila:

Howard Potter:

Marc Vila:

And especially, if you’re A, a startup or two, trying to grow your business, the digital stuff, this is computers and machines doing work for you, that’s what they are. So, a direct-to-film printer, since we’re using that example a lot, that is applying all the colors, applying the adhesive it, putting it for a roll-fed machine, putting it into a roll that’s getting ready to go into the next step of production. It’s doing all of those steps. The analog system, a human does all of those things in so many words. A human picks all the colors, physically, goes to a shelf and picks off buckets. If the color’s not there, a human mixes the color visually looks at it-

Howard Potter:

Marc Vila:

On the digital side, what I’ll do is if I have a color I’m really trying to hit that I know is a weird orange or red, which in general those colors can be weird. In my software, I will go in and I’ll print 80 saturation, 90 saturation, 100 saturation. I’ll change for these four hues. I’ll bring all of that into one piece, hit print, walk away, go do something, come back, all of them are printed. And then, I can look at my six examples. Number two was the right one, that was the 90% saturation on the magenta. Boom, done, and I’m going. Where the human would’ve gone one, add more, one, add more. So, that step turns from 30 minutes to six minutes, I don’t know.

Howard Potter:

Marc Vila:

Howard Potter:

Marc Vila:

Howard Potter:

Marc Vila:

That whole demo area took up this huge space because all of these rolls… And then, if we were doing, oh, St. Patrick’s Day is coming up. Let’s do a St Patrick’s Day video for YouTube using our vinyl cutter. We want to do it in dark green and glitter green. So, we would order from the warehouse dark green and glitter green. We would cut out those design… The rest of that roll would sit there until we had another green design. So, you end up taking up all this… So, whether it’s the liquid or it’s the vinyl, every color becomes inventory. And then, if you run out of that color, you’re going to have to order it, order a new one or mix a new one if you hopefully have all the ingredients to mix it. Where digital, typically CMYK, that’s your inventory, or maybe there’s light magenta or light cyan too.

Howard Potter:

Marc Vila:

Howard Potter:

Marc Vila:

Howard Potter:

Marc Vila:

Howard Potter:

Marc Vila:

You can’t answer that question without asking, “Do you have a big space to work with? Are you in an apartment? Can you invest some money? Who are you going to sell to? What are you going to make?” I mean, there’s a lot of-

Howard Potter:

Marc Vila:

Howard Potter:

Marc Vila:

Howard Potter:

Marc Vila:

And then of course, a little ColDesi plug. The folks over here at ColDesi spend so much time learning about all the different technologies, all the different capabilities, all the different reasons why you would or would not buy something. They get paid to sell a vinyl cutter. They get paid to sell a DTF. So, to them, they want you to be happy and get the right thing because that’s the culture here. So, I would say you should talk to some experts. And I think it’s a good idea if you’re talking to experts, you talk to experts that sell different things because if you call the guy who just sells screen printing equipment, he is going to sell you screen printing equipment. If you call the person who just sells-

Howard Potter:

Marc Vila:

Howard Potter:

Marc Vila:

Howard Potter:

Marc Vila:

So, you did those right things. So, you made mistakes, but you made a lot of great decisions, which is why you stuck around. So, I think that’s wonderful. And I think that anybody listening here who maybe you don’t know anything about the industry yet and you’re learning, that’s why you’re listening to this episode. And you may listen and this is reality. Someone’s going to listen and say, “Yeah, but I made a mistake. I messed up my credit when I was 19 years old. I don’t have five grand.” And I would just say, “You take the steps then. You take the steps to fix that. Maybe it’s not tomorrow or maybe someone else helps you out to it.”

Howard Potter:

Marc Vila:

Howard Potter:

Marc Vila:

Howard Potter:

Marc Vila:

Howard Potter:

Marc Vila:

But analog shops are losing business to digital because of all the benefits of digital, which we didn’t go into these yet, but as many colors as you want, as small of quantities as you want-

Howard Potter:

Marc Vila:

Howard Potter:

Marc Vila:

Howard Potter:

Marc Vila:

And if you’re only doing analog stuff now and you’re like, “Oh, I’m still researching this DTF,” I mean, I’m going to encourage you to move, make the move, get going, take the step because we’re still in a really hot time. So, that wraps everything up for me here. Howard, thank you so much again for jumping on. I know that this little bit of time or this hour that we’ve been on the phone right here is going to have a lasting impact for a lot of people out there. And I hope you know that every time we do one of these podcasts, there’s a bunch of people out there who we change their life in one way or another. It sounds so simple and corny, but it’s a fact because every time we do an episode, I will get a phone call or an email or a Facebook comment that said, “Because of this, I did it. Because of this, I changed this.” So, I want you to just got to go to bed thinking about that.

Howard Potter:

Marc Vila:

Right now, both Howard and I clearly are fans of direct-to-film printing, it’s a super cool technology. But the other stuff that’s all out there is great for other applications too. So, do the research, jump on there, learn watch videos, and enjoy. Thanks again, Howard. We’ll see you next time.

Howard Potter:

The post Episode 197 – DTF vs Screenprinting with Howard Potter appeared first on Custom Apparel Startups.

In this compelling follow-up episode of Custom Apparel Startups, we’re delighted to welcome back Howard Potter, of A&P Master Images, for another deep dive into the world of custom apparel. This time, Howard sheds light on the troubles encountered when starting a t-shirt business and shares invaluable advice for both new and established entrepreneurs in the industry.

Kicking off the episode, we tackle one of the most daunting questions for newcomers: “Which machine to buy?” We stress the importance of broad research and caution against getting tunnel-visioned on a single technology. The landscape of apparel printing is vast and choosing the right equipment is crucial for your business’s specific needs and goals.

Growth is a central theme of our conversation. Howard underscores the necessity of forward-thinking, particularly in terms of spatial planning. Anticipating future expansion is vital; many businesses struggle because they run out of room or fail to utilize their current space efficiently. He offers practical tips on scanning your property and equipment regularly to identify items that can be repurposed or removed, thus making way for essential upgrades or additions.

Howard also introduces the concept of “temporary fixes” for immediate problems, but he warns against relying on these for too long. The discussion moves towards a critical analysis of production, time, and space utilization. He advises that operating at 95% capacity is a clear sign that expansion is overdue. Ideally, businesses should start thinking about improving their space or equipment when they hit the 70-75% threshold to avoid stagnation and ensure continuous growth.

Beyond the technical aspects of running a t-shirt business, Howard emphasizes the foundation of any successful venture: providing excellent service, treating people right, creating outstanding products, and committing to education and transparency. These principles, he argues, are non-negotiable for long-term success in the custom apparel industry.

This episode is a treasure trove of insights for anyone looking to navigate the challenges of starting or expanding a t-shirt business. Howard Potter’s expertise and candid advice make it a must-listen for entrepreneurs eager to make their mark in the world of custom apparel.

Here is the list of tips for growing your business:

Marc Vila:

So Howard, I want to welcome you. Thank you so much. I just greatly appreciate your time and I know you’re helping a bunch of people out there. Why don’t you just give us, again, a quick little quip on who you are and what you do for anybody who might not have listened to the last episode?

Howard Potter:

Marc Vila:

And so I wanted to discuss what are some troubles or some problems that you have in growing a T-shirt or any customization business, and how did you solve them? So you can kind of be very specific with problems you’ve had or just some in general. And I’ll just start with, I’ll kind of open the floor with one because we discussed it in the last episode, so if you didn’t listen to that, you should. But one of the problems is deciding what equipment to get or what technology to work with.

And the problem for that is I think much simpler. The answer, I should say, to that problem is much simpler than it really is, right? Because the long answer is, “What do I want to do? And what do I want to sell?” And space and power and all this stuff. That’s the long answer. The short answer is don’t all of a sudden think you should get a piece of technology because you read about it once on the internet or your friend did it or you’ve heard the words before and assume that’s what you get.

And we run into that all the time. We have people who will call up and say, “I want sublimation.” And then, “What are you going to make?” “I’m going to make concert shirts for death metal bands.” “Great. They probably don’t want a bunch of white T-shirts, so you don’t want sublimation. You probably want to do something that’s good with darks and cotton.” “No, I’ve heard sublimation.” And they get stuck there and it’s like, “You should break free.”

So my answer to deciding the equipment is break free of what you think you should buy. Direct-to-film is hot right now. I don’t know if it’s good for you, listening, because I don’t know what you’re looking to make. So break free of what you hear you should get. Research. Let that knowledge just decide on what is actually best for your business model, customer, space, personal capabilities, all of those things. And then that will drive the decision forward. So the simple answer is just do some research, educate yourself, then make a decision.

So that’s how I’m kicking it off. Howard, how about you? What are some troubles you suspect folks will run into and how can they resolve them?

Howard Potter:

One of the problems I still have to this day is growth, which people wouldn’t think that’s a problem, but it’s a good-bad problem is what we call that. And if we go back to the grassroots of starting out of our house in roughly a 15′ by 15′ room, we did that for about four or five years, and we hit to about 125,000 in production out of our house, which the average shop in the United States only does usually about a quarter million to 350,000. And so we had to make a decision of are we going to move, buy a larger house and build something out back and just work out of it? Are we going to take this thing retail and be professional and have a brick-and-mortar?

So we went through those trials and tribulations, and what we did was we moved into a plaza and rented a 650-square-foot space. Now, again, when I went into that space, I also made sure I looked around and I was like, “All right, what else is here?” And what I mean by that is, is there room to grow? A lot of people, when you’re growing, they don’t see the dotted line. And one thing a builder that’s had over 50, 60 years of building experience taught me from his family was when you plan something, plan it with a dotted line. So if you go past that, there’s room for expansion, there’s room for growth. No matter if it’s space or technology, whatever, think outside the box.

So I was probably about 26 when we moved into this space. The next door had someone in it, the upstairs was fully empty. Within a year, I took on more space upstairs. I was able to negotiate a deal, just had to figure out the ergonomics of the workflow. And literally over a five-year period, we went from having 650 square feet of that entire building to 4,000 of it, which was like 67% of the entire plaza at the time.

And this was back in 2012, 2013. We plateaued in the sense of we’re still growing, but we had no more room to grow where we were at. So I started talking to the owner of the property about purchasing it. Again, planning. While I’m thinking about it, I’m like, “Well, if I want more space, I’ve got to kick people out, but if I keep those businesses in, it’s residual revenue to pay for the mortgage,” and I’m like, “do I want to stop my growth for pennies on the dollar or do I want to get bigger and keep up with this?”

So we reached out to our home city where we live, which is not even a five-minute drive, and found that there was some properties that they had that weren’t really marketed, and they started showing them to us. So we actually made the investment to purchase a 5,400-square-foot building with an acre of land. Again, we already did projections, again, research and projections, knowing in a three-year period where we were going to be at next. So we knew the building wasn’t going to be big enough for long-term, but we figured if we can get two to five years out of that additional space, that would be great.

Well, we buy the building, acre of land. We move in. Six months later, we outgrew it. So why did we outgrow it? It wasn’t just growth. It’s going back to technology. We invested in more equipment to keep up with all the production that we needed to get out so we could turn over the orders faster.

Let’s fast-forward to today. Last year, we had invested and built a 3,000-square-foot facility behind our existing building, and we were able to move probably a good 60% of our equipment into that building to create more retail space and production space within the existing building. And I’m here telling you, again, I outgrew that already. Now we’re looking to triple the size of that building, but again, we have the land, so it’s not like we have to move.

Marc Vila:

So one is recognizing when the space doesn’t work anymore, and then taking the leap. And when you take that leap, kind of say, “Well, I’m not going to take the leap just to solve for my problem today. I’m going to take the leap into renting a space, buying a space,” whatever’s right for you, “building a bigger house, building a steel building on your property.” I mean, whatever your life is for you.

But when you take that leap, if you were the last example I said is let’s just say you already have land. You’re going to build a steel building outside your property to make into your shop. Well, if you’re considering a steel building that is 2,000 square feet, 1,000 square feet, maybe how much is it for 1,500? Because you need 1,000. How much is it to build a 1,500 one? Oh, wow, that’s actually not that much more. I have the space. What am I going to do with that extra 500? Well, the plan is to grow your business. You’re going to fill it up and then you probably will wish you would’ve gotten the 2,000-square-foot one potentially, but that’s the dream.

But I think that that’s like the good lesson is to plan for the growth and make sure that you don’t stop yourself. Because the problem is, we talked about in the last episode, people buying a machine that’s potentially too small and can’t grow. There’s another theme that you brought up again, space, making sure you have the space to grow. Very often we run into folks who either stop themselves with equipment and don’t reinvest or didn’t buy a big enough one in the first place, and then you’re stuck and it’s hard to get out sometimes when you get stuck.

So whenever you can, I think the answer you’re providing to me that I’m reading it as is whenever you can, build yourself a space, I don’t mean physically, I just mean in general, whether technology, printing, whatever it is, get yourself space that lets you grow because then you have room to get into it. You’ve got a motivational to fill that vacuum, whether it’s physical, technology, whatever it is.

Howard Potter:

And so another way to utilize more space, you’re eventually going to need stock for supplies, or you need stock for finished products. So we have a tractor trailer on our property. We have a 16′, a 24′, another 24′ and a 6′ trailer for housing different types of things instead of getting more building space. You know?

Marc Vila:

Howard Potter:

And the other thing too is when I’m looking at more space, you got to execute what’s there first. Make sure you maximize every square foot as possible. Then from there, you want to get to the planning phase of where do I see myself three to five years from now? And you want to make sure you’re not going past the 90, 95% percentile of being maxed-out all the time because then that means you need more manpower to ramp up production to get it out of your face faster. So you want to make sure things are moving accordingly.

Once you’re at that 75, 80%, you want to start doing your research of what the next phase is. You don’t want to start doing your research when you need it. It’s got to be a minimum, you want to plan a minimum of six months ahead of time because things are going to change. So if you start having the conversation now, you’re measuring twice and cutting once more often.

So in my story, yeah, we kept growing, but it was good because it was controlled growth and I didn’t have to fight for the space. I worked up to the space, and then I would take on a little bit more space than I needed so I could grow into it. No different than a direct-to-film printer, for example. You buy more than what you need within a safe zone, whatever your financial safe zone is. So in our case, we talked about, you were mentioning, well, if you got 1,000 square feet, you were going to go for 1,500, but you really want 2,000. With our new building, it was built technically two stories. Where the offices were, we had the ceiling reinforced so we could stack stuff up with the forks on my tractor.

Well, once we looked into it, for $38,000 more, we had custom stairs built, a half-wall, additional lighting, and flooring put in, and we gained another 900 square feet with easy access.

Marc Vila:

You kind of talked about either running out of room or not properly utilizing, whether it’s space or things, whether it’s equipment, whatever it is. So it could be shelving, it could be a piece of equipment, it could be actual space. So it’s a great idea to frequently go through and assess everything, your space, what you’re using, what it’s being used for, the capacity. Can you repurpose space? Can you throw things away? Can you retire things? Can you sell things? Can you reorganize your space to fit better?

So these are things we do in our houses all the time, right? I mean, you reorganize your garage, you reorganize your closet because it’s a mess, and you give some clothes away so you can make room for other clothes or for a shoe rack. We do that all the time personally, so do it with your business.

And one of the things you had said was kind of maybe temporary solutions to things. So for you, it was you needed some storage. You can get a tractor trailer out there that can hold some things, and it’s not the most convenient way to hold those things, but it solves it immediately, reasonably inexpensive, reasonably convenient. So if you can fix problems within your business with a quick, temporary solution… And we do this at home too, right?

I’ve been reorganizing some space in my garage for some hobbies I do. And I said, “You know what? If I had one more shelf, I can move all this stuff. I know I don’t want that shelf for a long time because I’m going to put it in front of another shelf. It’s not optimal, but it’s 60 bucks at Lowe’s. It will put all this stuff. It frees up that corner. Now that corner, I can put these table and these shelves and I can actually start doing something immediately until the bigger project of changing all of those other shelves out happens.” So you can do that in your business.

And then the second thing is you talked about kind of percentage of output, percentage of time. I’m also going to add percentage of space. I really liked this because you had said that if you’re at 95% production, 95% workload, 95% space, I think it works for all those things, then you’re already capped out, even if you’re not at 100%. You’re ready to the point where growth is going to be hindered by it so you should be thinking about improving space equipment, staff, whatever it is at 70, 75% of output or capability, rather than waiting till you’ve reached 95, 100%.

Howard Potter:

Marc Vila:

Howard Potter:

Marc Vila:

Well, we covered, I think… I covered a few things. This is what I have so far, and then we could talk about if we want to add one other tiny little quiz to kind of wrap it up.

But we said… I started it off with what equipment to buy, and that’s real important. We have a whole episode about choosing a direct-to-film printer that we did with Howard, and you can listen to that and we dive a bit more into that conversation. But that’s a really important problem, and the solution is really simple.

We talked about growth being a problem. That actually is… I’m really glad you said that. I did not expect you to start with that actually, but it is, gosh, is it a problem for so many of our customers, for us here at ColDesi, for everything. Growth is a challenge. If you want to get to it, deciding if you want to because that’s a whole nother separate conversation is do you want to grow? And what does that mean?

Howard Potter:

Marc Vila:

Howard Potter:

But even going past that, what I researched was, I mean, our industry as a whole is roughly $50-plus billion, but in the United States, there’s roughly less than 400,000 people in the United States that know anything about any of these processes. So there’s a percent of a percent that know anything about it. So we actually have the upper hand and the advantage to control where we want to go with this and make it our destiny. We just have to know that that opportunity’s there and how are we going to tackle it, and what do we want out of it?

So you have constant supply of resources and you have constant demand. You’re in the middle doing this, teetering, where am I going to go? You have to make that decision on a regular basis because you can grow as large as you want to.

Marc Vila:

So if you go to not in our industry, a fictional business, an insurance office, and you say, “I want everyone, all my staff, I want everybody to wear Nike or Adidas polos and khakis. That’s our uniform. We want to be,” whatever your reason is. So you tell folks, “Go to Dick’s Sporting Hoods, go to wherever, buy Nike or Adidas polos.” What are they going to cost? 50, 70 bucks, right?

Howard Potter:

Marc Vila:

Howard Potter:

Marc Vila:

Howard Potter:

Marc Vila:

Howard Potter:

So to give everybody a rough idea, when we started out of our house, my first year, I did maybe 10 grand and I went to 25, 50, 75, 125, whatever. Now today, I’m very proud to say this, we employ 30 full-time staff with full benefits, and our company broke over $3.5 million last year, and we’re still not anywhere near the biggest of the biggest companies in the United States, but we’re still naturally growing and gaining market share.

And how did we do that? It was basic family values. Treat people how you want to be treated, have great customer service, get back to them within a timely manner. And the third thing, make sure your quality is working to set the bar every day.

So when you were touching on getting your logo customized, why we struggled in our area at first with growth, even though we were growing, was we had to explain to people our stuff was a dollar more at times because we did put more thread into it. We used 100$ USA-made polyester thread, and it was educating the customer. Once that caught on, it created a steamroll of, “Wait a minute. When I need these people, they’re there. When they tell me they’re going to have something done, it’s done. And God forbid they do make a mistake, they’re there to fix it.”

Guess what? You’re never paying for marketing. Your customer is your advertising because they’re wearing what you’ve done for them.

Marc Vila:

So a problem is you can’t grow, right? And the solution is… It’s actually so simple, it seems like it’s not a right answer, but if you do this, I’m telling you, you have… 40 other people have said almost the same story you’ve said to me just in that little quip there. If you can’t grow or you’re not growing, provide great service, treat people right, create a good-quality product that you can be proud of, and educate your customers. And you didn’t say something, you didn’t say this word, but I would say be transparent with your customers too.

Howard Potter:

Marc Vila:

Howard Potter:

Marc Vila:

I don’t know how that conversation goes. It goes with however your personality works, but you can be transparent with customers. Let them know you want to create great things. If they cost more, let them know why it costs more.

And yeah, I mean, some people don’t care about customer service, don’t care about quality, don’t care. They just want something super cheap. And if that is the business model you’re running, then go for that. Make the cheapest, fastest thing you get, and you’re a process efficiency person and lowest cost. But most of the people in our industry that are successful that I speak to and that have grown their business, whether it’s slowly or quickly over years, tell the same story. “I treat customers right. I let them know why I’m selling it. If there’s a problem, I do my best to honestly resolve it as best as I can. I apologize for when I make a mistake. I find a solution when there’s a problem.”

You mentioned in the last episode that screen printing, you messed up on a shirt, you already tore everything down. You have two things. You can say, “Hey, customer, I know you needed 50 shirts. I only have 49. I’m going to refund you that 10 bucks, 20 bucks for that shirt I didn’t make.” Which I mean, I guess that’s a moral thing to do, but did that make the customer happy?

Howard Potter:

Marc Vila:

Howard Potter:

Marc Vila:

Howard Potter:

Marc Vila:

Howard Potter:

If a customer makes an honest mistake approving an order, whether it’s the physical product or the artwork, whatever the case may be, and we customize it and we give it to them and they’re like, “Oh my God, I messed up. It wasn’t you, it was me. I shouldn’t have approved this. I was looking for my phone, dah, dah, dah, dah,” if they’re respectful and they’re transparent themselves saying, “Listen, it wasn’t you. It was me. What do I got to do to get this fixed? I’ll pay for it,” whatever, 99% of the time, we budget about 10 grand a year now where we pay to fix it one time for free.

And there’s a specific story that’s very dear to me because it was for a local police officer that had passed away, and another one of our local troopers was putting on the event, and he had accidentally approved the proof with one number transposed or whatever because that’s how it was given to us. And we’re talking a $1,700 screen print order, and he opens up the box. He’s like, “I can’t believe I made this mistake.” He goes, “I’m such an idiot. I can’t believe I did this.” I said, “Well, what’s the matter?” I said, “Let’s look at it. Can we fix it?” He goes, “The numbers are backwards.” I said, “Yeah, there’s no way on a couple hundred shirts,” or whatever it was at the time, I said, “there’s no way we’re going to be able to do this.” He goes, “Listen.” He goes, “I don’t care what it costs. I’ll pay to replace it, dah, dah, dah.”

And my wife and I looked at each other because we’ve never bitten off one shot like that for someone, went back to our office, worked the numbers, figured out what it was going to cost us, and we went back out to them and said, “Listen, you’ve been a long-time customer. You’ve got a lot going on. This was a really dear friend of yours. We’re going to absorb this because we can write it off. We’re going to absorb this.” And just the emotion on his face was enough thank you right there. But we went and reproduced the order correctly, and our social media lit up because he had done a whole post about what we had done for not only him, but for the event.

And so we didn’t do it for that, but it led to that. Doing good because good is good to do. You know what I mean?

Marc Vila:

But what you should not do is draw hard lines that, “You approved it. No.” You should never have that line. The line should exist, but I think it should be a dotted line maybe, not a hard line.

Howard Potter:

Marc Vila:

But the secondary thing you think about is, is this a marketing opportunity? Is this a customer service opportunity? What are all the opportunities? And we could probably do a whole episode just on this, but I would have potentially some sort of a checklist and say, or a scoring model, “And if I can check off three out of 10 boxes, I’m going to break the rule,” or, “if I can score over 10 points and give everything a point, I’m going to break the rule.”

And in this case, just a fictional version of it, it’s an old, long-time customer. One point. There’s emotion involved, there’s death, and there’s community service. These people serve the community, another checked box. And then this person’s also connected to the community, so there’s a marketing checkbox. And I mean, there’s nothing wrong with checking the box to say, “This is a good marketing opportunity too,” because that doesn’t make it immoral, thinking of it that way. But you should think about all those things. And if you check a bunch of these boxes, you’re like, “We need to break this rule. Of course we do. It’s going to make us feel good. It’s going to make us do good for the community, and also, it’s probably going to help the business.”

So I think that that’s a great story, for one. I mean, it speaks a lot about you and your wife as people, but it is a really great way, a lesson to learn because I see a lot of customers who I’ve talked to over the years and talk about their hard rules and what they will never do because they got burnt before. But if you want to get… We talked about making pizzas a couple times here. If you want to make really great pizzas and you’re going to mess with a super hot oven or a grill, you’re going to burn yourself.

Do you want to make great… And I said this to my daughter when I was teaching her how to cook. She was pulling something out that was really hot, and she’s like, “Oh, it hurts.” And I said, “Yes, it’s not burning you. It’s just hot. Do it quick. It’s just part of making the recipe.”

Howard Potter:

Marc Vila:

So I think when you’re crossing that line of the rules and you’re doing these customer service things, it’s going to sting, it’s going to be hot, but as long as you’re not causing injury to your business, you’re making the pie, you’re getting better.

Howard Potter:

Marc Vila:

So what I would encourage a listeners out there to do is, for one, one exercise you could literally do right now is talking about the percentage of output, time, space, et cetera. Do an analysis of your business. Schedule time this week or next week to go out there, look at your business. What’s a space I’m working in? Is there wasted space, wasted equipment, wasted time? Can I improve that? If you can, do it. If there’s a piece of equipment you haven’t used in two years, use it or get rid of it. Make the space for something else. If you can reorganize something, if you could buy a $60 shelf to put stuff in and get those boxes off the ground and make room to have more room to work in, use the space. So that’s one thing you can do right now.

And then the second thing, I think, that’s a longer-term thing is to consider your growth, consider how’s your customer service? How do you treat people? What’s the quality of your product? And is it where you want to be? This one’s harder to do, in my opinion, because we’ve got a little bit of cognitive dissonance in our brains. We’ve got all of these things where when you’re doing something and you’ve taken time to do something or you’ve spent money on something, you justify that everything is right and it’s the way it should be. So you’ve got to step out of your business a little bit, completely step back as much as you can, look at it from as high as you can, and say, “Is my quality right? Can my customer service be better? Can I treat people better?” Whatever it is. “Am I educating my customers enough? Am I charging the right prices? And if I’m not, why not?” And ask all these questions.

And this is something I heard a psychologist say something about self-improvement. He said, “At night, lay down and think about the thing that you want to change in your life. The thing that you can’t say to yourself that is in your brain that you won’t say out loud to yourself is the biggest change and the hardest one to do.” So I think that’s the same for your business. If you’re looking at all those things and you have one that you’re scared to answer, whether it’s the quality of your output or your pricing, if that’s the scariest one, then you got to ruminate on that for a little bit and see what you can do to improve it.

Howard Potter:

Marc Vila:

Howard Potter:

Marc Vila:

Well, there’s going to be… I’ll definitely say something. We’ve done about 200ish episodes, and I’m being 100% honest here with you is that I, at the end of every episode, whether I was with Mark Stevenson, who used to also be on the show and other guests, we usually assess afterwards, like, “How good was that?” And there were episodes where we were like, “Dang, that’s going to help a lot of people.” And the other episodes were like, “Good information. I don’t know if it’s groundbreaking.”

This episode, I felt something really positive about this episode, honestly, myself. I think that for the people out there who listen to this and they take your thoughts to heart, and they will actually change their business and do better. I really feel that about this episode.

Howard Potter:

Marc Vila:

Well, thanks everybody for listening. A million thanks to Howard for coming on and sharing your knowledge and your experience with folks out there and looking forward to having you on again. Again, these are kind of little more mini-episodes. Normally an episode’s 45 minutes to an hour. These are a bit cut down, but we want to dive into one question, answer it for you, and hopefully you walk away with having had a really great moment to help you improve your business and all that.

So thanks again, Howard.

Howard Potter:

Marc Vila:

The post Episode 196 – Overcoming Struggles of Growing a Business with Howard Potter appeared first on Custom Apparel Startups.

In the latest episode of Custom Apparel Startups, we are excited to feature Howard Potter, from A&P Master Images, who brings his wealth of knowledge to the table on the topic of Direct to Film (DTF) Printing. Our discussion, “What You Should Know Before Buying a DTF Printer,” covers the A to Z of preparing to make an informed purchase of a DTF printer for your business.

Howard emphasizes the paramount importance of conducting thorough research to identify a trustworthy company. It’s crucial to partner with a company that not only sells you a printer but also supports you throughout your printing journey. Equally important is considering the space your operation has available, as DTF printers come in various sizes and have specific space requirements for optimal operation.

He advises potential buyers to request samples from providers. This step ensures that the print quality meets your business’s standards and expectations before making a significant investment. Additionally, Howard stresses the importance of investing in quality supplies, including inks and films, to guarantee the best output and durability of your printed products.

A central part of our conversation revolves around the challenges businesses might face, particularly concerning time management and staffing. DTF printing, while lucrative, demands careful planning and allocation of resources. Howard shares insights from his experience, noting that even the largest units are not overly complicated in terms of power requirements, which can be a common concern.

Highlighting the potential of DTF printing, Howard reveals an impressive fact: it is possible to generate more than $500,000 in revenue with a single DTF printer in a year. This statistic not only underscores the efficiency and profitability of DTF printing but also serves as a powerful motivation for businesses considering entering the space.

This episode is packed with invaluable advice for anyone looking to venture into DTF printing or expand their existing operations. Howard Potter’s expert insights provide a roadmap for navigating the complexities of purchasing a DTF printer, making this episode an essential listen for those in the custom apparel industry.

Here are the top considerations before purchasing a DTF Printer:

Marc Vila:
Hello everybody and welcome to another episode of the Custom Apparel Startups podcast. My name is Marc Vila. And today we’re going to do something a little bit different, we’re going to do a mini podcast series. And we have a very special guest with us that I’ll introduce momentarily. But the point of these podcasts are to talk about one specific topic where we’re going to dive semi deep into a question and get some real world answers from a real world professional out there. And without further ado, time to introduce. So we’ve got Howard Potter with us today. And I figure rather than me talking and telling all about your story, I’d like you just to tell us a little bit about you. So Howard, why don’t you tell us about what you do, what kind of business you’re in, and maybe how long you’ve been in it?

Howard Potter:
Again, thank you for having me on. My wife and I started A&P Master Images about 21 years ago. It’s a family owned business. Both of our kids are in it. We do everything from design, work, build online stores, screen print, embroidery, direct-to-film, sublimation, rhinestones, sewing, you name it. We offer over 10 different processes and services within our company, and we’ve been very blessed to grow this thing to what it is today, so, again, thank you for having us on.

Marc Vila:
Excellent. And everything that you said there I think is enough to show that all of those processes are challenging in and of their own, selling those processes each individually have their own benefits and pros and cons, so you’ve learned a lot. And the most recent technology that has swept the market is direct-to-film printing, which is one you’ve mentioned. So you do sewing, which is a very old technology that’s been around for generations and generations, and direct-to-film, which is a new technology, and I think that asking you questions about direct-to-film is really important because you’ve gone through rhinestones, you’ve gone through cutting, you’ve gone through screen printing, all these other things that you’ve gone through, you learn a lesson, you go, you learn a lesson, you go. Just before this started, we were actually had a brief conversation with each other and we talked about cooking, and if you like to cook with your family or your family likes to cook for you, the more you cook or bake, the better you get at it in general.

So if you’re handed a cut of meat or a particular baking recipe, and you’ve been baking or cooking or grilling or barbecue for 20 years, once you get that new one, you’re immediately probably going to be better than the person who’s never done it before. And we run into a lot of folks here who are either brand new to the industry or maybe just been in a few years and they’re thinking about direct-to-film printing, they don’t have that experience. So the question I want to start today, or the question we’re going to cover today, Howard, is what should you know or what are some decision-making things when it comes to buying a direct-to-film printer? So what should you know before buying a direct-to-film printer? And I’ll give you the floor to answer that however you see fit. What are some things you should know and some things that are part of the decision making process if you’re going to buy one and what you’re going to buy?

Howard Potter:
Okay. The history of my direct-to-film experience is now just over a year old, about almost a year and a half old now, from research to production, everything. What actually sparked the interest was the email that came about where I’d seen the equipment come through on my email and I immediately started researching. And a lot of people are going to ask, “Well, why’d you stop in the middle of your day and start researching?” Because we talk about processes like screen printing. It’s a process that’s very, very old, still very lucrative, still very good, but there’s a lot of steps to it, there’s a lot of technique to it. It’s more demanding of your time, there’s a higher risk to making mistakes, there’s a higher risk to not being able to fix your mistakes in a timely fashion.

So I’ve been screen printing now for, out of 21 years of business, at least 15, 16 years of it, and have done very well with that part of the process where at one point I think almost two years ago before we got into direct-to-film, I think we did close to 900,000 just in screen printing. And so the thing that I asked myself was if I’m going to get into direct-to-film, what’s the longevity of it? What’s the quality of the prints? How much space does it take up? How long does it take to learn? How much educational time is it going to take for me not only to educate my staff but my customer? So I took about four hours, which is a very short time period to research a process, to realize there’s different quality levels of inks and powders and mixtures. But other than that, you’re not dealing with very many other components besides a quality machine, quality ink, quality adhesive powder, and then you have your quality company that you want to team up with to purchase all this from that you know you can rely on.

So once I got past all that, that’s where ColDesi came in, because I have a longstanding history of working with your guys’ company on rhinestones and different processes, buying materials and things like that, and supplies, and I was like, “Wow, let me look at their printers.” And I think at the time you had three different models. And from there I’m like, “All right, what’s our business plan?” Well, our business plan is to keep growing. We grow by 15 to 30% a year. So I had to research and make contacts I think it was with Mike Angel, one of your guys’ sales reps there, great source.

And I asked him, I said, “What are the dimensions of these machines? How much space do I need around the machine to comfortably work for safety and for production purposes?” And so we stopped, we talked, we went over all those things, and I knew out the gate that the middle machine that you guys sold, which I believe it was the two head, just before you get to the forehead, would do the job. But when I looked at the cost comparison from the second machine to your largest unit, I’m like for, “$250 to $300 at most a month more for everything I’m looking at, I can go into the biggest unit they make and I can grow into the machine and only take up a little bit more square footage than if I went with the middle size unit.”

For us, it comes down to the ergonomics of the equipment. It came down to not only that, it pulls less power than screen printing. Screen printing, I have two dryers that pull 60 amps each. And when we first got into direct-to-film, we only had the machine running for an hour or two at a time with only a 30 amp unit for the entire power consumption. So I looked at the power, the ease and all that type of stuff. And after those four hours, I reached out to you guys and also went over, hey, can we get samples of the prints so I could test the durability and the quality?

And I want to say it was with three to five days, you guys had some test samples, prints and we tested them. And how I test is most people will think you’ll just go home and test the laundering at home, right? No, we went to a customer of ours that owns a local laundry mat and we had them literally put it in with every load they were washing for a day. It had to have gotten washed almost 30 times that day with some quick cycles, and hot heat, extremely hot commercial heat, and it held up really well, so I was really impressed with that. Because at the end of the day when we started screen printing, we wanted to be one of the best out there quality wise and turnaround time, so our screen printing will last two, three years. When you look at direct-to-film, I believe you guys state that it’ll last a minimum of 55 washes before it even starts to even think about showing any signs.

Now, I can tell you, over a year later, I’m wearing stuff that still looks like brand new and I wear it at least once a week. So we’re past a year I’m already getting and it still looks like new. So it’s nice that you guys give a base minimum, but it actually lasts longer than that if you’re doing a good job on your end, on your production artwork, your adhesive powder, and all that. So you also have to look at what’s the consumer need. Do they need a physical print that’s going to last four or five years? The average person don’t keep a shirt four or five years. It’s usually a year to a year and a half they’re throwing it out and getting another one. So this process, the ease of the use, the quality, it hits all those different spectrums for you the person that’s going to be selling retail or wholesale. So for us, it checked a lot of boxes.

Marc Vila:
That’s great. And actually, I opened up my notepad here so I could take some notes on some points you made, because I want to be able to write in the notes of this episode the answer to the question. So let me just go back and summarize, and then I’ll just make a couple quick comments on some things that I really liked that you said. For one, research the process was the first answer that I got from you that I heard. It was you saw some information come in and you said, “You know what? Let me look at it.” You took a few hours, I think you said four hours, to just go through whatever it was, watch videos, read articles, just understand the process. So I think that that’s important is understanding the process. Then you had mentioned about finding a company that you can trust. And of course I try to keep the Custom Apparel Startups podcast semi-agnostic from recommending ColDesi.

I work for ColDesi, that’s no secret in the podcast, and we try to just give the right answer, and then ColDesi as an organization just tries to provide the best product and service we can. So we hope that the right answer is ColDesi, and I like that you shouted us out on that. But all the things we’re going to talk about today are all things that everyone from salespeople to management and in between talk about on a day-to-day basis, and we try to answer these questions and say, “How do we make a printer that answers all this?” So you said find a company you can trust, I think that’s important. There are printers, cutters, screen printing, everything that you named that you sell you can buy from eBay, you can buy from Amazon, you can buy from overseas by yourself, but that takes away a company you can trust.

I trust that if I need a toothbrush, I’ll order it from Amazon and get it tomorrow. Whatever. And even a phone charging cable. However, if I buy a direct-to-film printer or a cutter from there that’s a generic brand, I’m going to have no relationship with Amazon on that. There’s going to be no conversation there. So those are things we talk about a lot. The next on the list, just to bullet through these next few, consider the space you’re going to be working in, I thought that was great. Way too often people don’t consider power or space when they’re making equipment decisions, and they could have gone bigger because they have more room, or they got something a bit too big and they can’t get it in or out, or they don’t even have the right power. So consider your space and all that else.

Get samples, I really liked that. I tell folks all the time, we get comments on social media mostly, but everywhere, what does it feel like, what does it wash? And this is not just direct-to-film, this is every technology we sell people ask that and I just say, “Just ask for a sample. They’re free. You call us up or live chat, say, “I’m interested in direct-to-film printing or direct to garment printing or whatever you want, can I have a sample?” And we’ll send it, and wash it, wear it, touch it, feel it, do whatever you can because the proof is right there.” And I think that’s part of working with an organization you can trust is that there’s no shyness about getting samples out as long as your expectation is set correctly. And then the last bit, which was actually you said towards the beginning, but I wrote it down late, was quality supplies, making sure that your working with an organization and a printer that uses good ink, good powder or glue, good films, and then of course the parts within the equipment are important too.

So all of those together, I loved all that stuff. And I can go on and on about it, but I think you answered it well. Now to go a little bit deeper into some of this stuff, you had mentioned something about that there were multiple models, and one of them was going to get the job done, but you decided to go a little bit bigger because it was just a couple hundred dollars more a month. And the mindset that… Well, how do I word this? The troubling mindset with folks is someone who’s been in business for 20 years, you don’t look at a machine payment like it’s a car payment. You’re looking at as this is a cost of owning business, what’s it going to produce and what is this output?

And for folks new to business or brand new to business or very short time in business, they consider the payment to be more of a liability than maybe it is. So I would like to ask, when you’re making a decision on a direct-to-film printer, how did you go through that thought process without considering, well, wow, 200 and something dollars more a month, that’s a lot more money. Somebody might think of it that way. You thought of it differently. And I’m curious on that thought process.

Howard Potter:
Yeah, there’s multiple factors that go into it. So let’s go back to the unit that I purchased, which was your guys’ 4 head. It’s given me two sets of print heads, so I can print a lot faster. I want to say it’s about an hour and a half, two hours, somewhere around there to almost print a full roll of this material. So if you’re on the middle of the road machine that you guys offer or that most people would offer, it prints a lot slower. So right there, you’re gaining time. Now, let’s be honest, the average screen print shop or shop in general doesn’t have more than one to four staff, so what’s limited on you every day? Your time, your resources, your manpower. So buying the larger unit out the gate gains you revenue naturally because your employee isn’t standing at that printer as long. So that’s step one.

Step two, they could actually, the size, most shops screen printing takes up more square footage, pretty much I would say quadruple the square footage and then some, depending on your size of company. Your largest machine you sell, you’re talking for 150 square feet with the printer, and that’s being generous with it, because I measured mine, and it’s roughly to safely have space all around it comfortably with supplies you’re talking eight foot by 15 feet of space, that can fit in most homes or garages. The fact that it’s off a 30 amp breaker is the same as your dryer in your house, so your power consumption… So even if you wanted to start up out of your house with the largest unit you guys make, you could be making serious money and growing into this thing. To give some facts and figures, last year we had your guys’ unit running for 11 months after we got it up and running and we did a slow roll of it, we still produced a little over a half million dollars worth of production with that one printer and still didn’t maximize its capabilities.

So when I’m looking at the payments, I’m looking at all different factors, looking at the space, is it going to make my staff’s job easier, because when we compare direct-to-film versus screen printing, I’m not burning screens, I’m not printing positives, my designers don’t have to sit there and make multiple layers for the artwork to get it set up, they’re not having to clean screens, they’re not having to clean squeegees, they’re not having to clean spatulas, they’re not going to have to wipe up the ink around the stations from the screen printing ink, so that automatically gets you into faster production instantly. So it makes my designer’s job easier. Now, again, if I’m a smaller shop, which I’ve been there because we started out of our house, out of a 15 foot by 15 foot room, your time’s limited. So this machine naturally pays for itself because of you’re gaining time on all different avenues, you’re not taking up a ton of space, it’s a cleaner work environment. So there’s a lot of benefits all the way around with this.

Marc Vila:
Okay, great. I love that answer actually. And I took a few more notes that… And all this will be in the notes for those who go to the website or are watching this on YouTube. I’ll have these notes in there. But one of the things you mentioned that I like a lot is one of… Or I’ll paraphrase this, but one of the biggest challenges is time or the staff of your time or the time of yourself, whoever’s running the equipment, that’s the biggest challenge consistently in all of business. So this is a completely side story, but this is literally how it works and why this is so important is that I had worked for a restaurant when I was young and they were open for breakfast and lunch, and they wanted to try opening up for dinner. Right?

Howard Potter:
Mm-hmm.

Marc Vila:
The challenge wasn’t the recipes, because they had great chefs. It wasn’t the menu, it wasn’t ordering the supplies, it wasn’t advertising. That was all easy, that was easy to do, every single one of those things. It was you couldn’t have people work from 05:00 AM getting ready for breakfast until 10 o’clock at night when dinner is done. So they needed essentially a whole separate staff and they couldn’t all just start working night with no experience, so they had to split the staff. So I had worked some weekends for breakfast and then weekdays for dinner. All the challenge was the time and the staff. So it doesn’t matter if you’re screen printing, if you’re direct-to-film printing, if you’re running a restaurant. Whatever you’re doing, time is everything. I don’t even remember who said this, but I’m going to pretend to quote it anyway, it was something to the effect of physicists saying that some of the stuff that they’re scared of… I think it’s actually it was an Interstellar, I believe he said the only thing he was scared of was time because time is the one thing that we can’t control.

So when you’re investing in a good piece of equipment, time is what you consider as the killer. And I had spoke with somebody who was doing vinyl cutting, and they were doing a lot. They were doing I think 200,000 a year in revenue in cutting vinyl, so that’s moving a lot of vinyl material, but it was working like 15 hours a day, weeding, weeding, weeding. So the cost of the equipment was really low, but the cost of the time. And the gentleman said, he’s like, “I was basically getting ready to just shut the doors.” And somebody was like, “How can you shut the doors? You’re doing a quarter million dollars in revenue.” And he’s like, “No sleep, no time with my family. Can’t golf anymore. Can’t go out drinking with my buddies anymore.” All the things he loved to do, he stopped doing. So he ended up getting a direct-to-film printer, boom, all of that. You mentioned something else that you said that you were printing about a roll in an hour to be-

Howard Potter:
About an hour and a half, two hours roughly, yeah,.

Marc Vila:
Hour and a half, two hours, sorry.

Howard Potter:
It depends on the file loading and everything we’re doing.

Marc Vila:
And so just for those who don’t know, that’s 100 meters worth of material. And then the answer of that is very variable depending on what you’re printing. The larger the prints, the more space, the longer they take to print. But that’s why that number can vary. You could print an entire roll in 30 minutes if you have tons of negative space, you could probably do it in three hours if you’re filling up every single millimeter of that role. So that’s how much you’re talking about there. Another piece of note I said is a large unit isn’t necessarily complicated in space and power, which is great. It was back to a consideration earlier that you had mentioned. But when you’re looking at all different types of equipment and you’re considering what you’re going to do, consider the power, take a look in your home or business, what breakers do you currently have now, what power do you have available.

And this is not only true of direct-to-film printers, but anything. Heat press machines can use up a bit of power too. But all of this stuff is not unreasonable compared to when you say some large-scale screen printing equipment does require some pretty special electricity. If we would just want to use a simple terminology, it’s not something that’s just a ready installed where you may or may not already have some of the stuff enough to run a direct-to-film printer quote already installed in your home or business. And then the success story is the last note I just made here is that not even necessarily pushing it to the max. You had a half million in revenue in one printer. And I think that’s a great story to tell about getting an equipment for your goal. Not always. There’s a balance for everything. You’re not going to buy 40 machines at once. That’s ridiculous. But there’s a healthy balance in that.

Howard Potter:
Well, the thing is too, the payment being a couple hundred dollars more or $250 more, whatever it ends up actually being with everything that you invest, you have to look at it this way. If you know you’re going to be in business, I don’t care if it’s 10 more years, 15 more years, whatever it’s going to be, you only have so much square footage to work within, so you need to maximize. So how we do everything in our company is our embroidery, for example, we did 900,000 in embroidery in 650 square feet. So I take that dollar amount that we did in actual production divided by the number of square feet, now I got a gauge of what am I actually producing per square foot. So I’ve maximized my output and my value per square foot in my space. And like I said, I’ve started in very small spaces. If I would’ve had something like this, I probably would’ve never got it in the screen printing.

And it’s nothing against screen printing, screen printing’s always going to have a purpose, but let’s think about something, you get done printing screen printing a 24 shirt or 50 shirt order that’s a three color front, two color back, and one of them happens to get messed up and you don’t notice it when you’re packing out the order, the customer gets it, and they have to have it, because it’s for an event and everyone in the company’s got to have it. What do you do?

You either don’t replace it and you just wipe it off the bill, and you lose the customer forever. Great, you didn’t have to deal with the headache. Or you have to reregister five screens that can roughly take you 10 to 15 minutes per screen, reset all the ink, retest print, then print one final piece. You’re going to have an hour, hour and a half right into that. Or you have a direct-to-film printer, you warm it back up in 10 to 15 minutes, and under a half an hour you have the print set up and done and heat pressed on and out the door with zero extra bodies having to pitch in. One person can handle all that.

Marc Vila:
Right. And one person can do that. And I would also imagine that, and maybe you do or don’t do this, but it’s probably pretty easy if you’re printing the fronts and the backs there to just print two extra fronts and two extra backs that you just cut and store and put in the customer’s file.

Howard Potter:
Yeah, no, that’s exactly it. And the other factor is too, I love screen printing, we still screen print to this day, but we’ve actually made… So here’s the other thing. This is where direct-to-film, if you’re already screen printing, adds value to your screen printing. So I tell everybody, I’m like, “All right, you’re getting a full color print for the price of a one to two color screen print. So now we’re not screen printing nearly as much and it’s usually bigger, bigger orders on our automated press, not so much on our manual. So now that just made it even easier for my team. Two, we’re turning our dryers on less, but we still have them in case we need them.” So it made that end a little bit more streamlined. Now our minimum screen print order is a minimum of 12 pieces.

But what’s happening is everyone’s going away from the screen printing to the direct-to-film because they want that full color now, now that the capability’s there. And let’s face it, what do you have with screen printing? You have setup fees for every screen. Direct-to-film, unless you choose to charge a setup, you never have to charge a setup fee. You just build in your cost of your artwork time or whatever, and that’s it. You’re done. So it’s a cleaner interface, requires less people, less space, less cleanup. It’s checked so many. And if you’re starting from your house, you don’t really ever have to evolve from your house unless you choose to.

Marc Vila:
I love everything you said that. And I like the evolution of this conversation a little bit because it went into what should you consider when you’re buying one, but it’s also a bit of why it might be right for you too, because that question really it’s part of the question, because the first thing that we said was research the process. Once you understand how it works, if you’ve got a good visionary mind and you’re thinking about business, then you start considering the things like, well, how fast does it, are my customers going to be happy with it? What can I sell that’s different? And thinking about the forward movement of technology.

So I think we answered this question thoroughly and there’s a million little rabbit holes we can get into, and I hope to again on some more episodes, but we can wrap this up for now. And we’re going to speak more with Howard on a few other topics, so definitely stay tuned for other episodes. Howard, thanks so much for coming on. You can feel free to drop a final thought if you want to for now. I’ll give you the floor for a moment.

Howard Potter:
The biggest thing I want people to start thinking about in our industry, and, again, I started this when I was 22 out of my home, it’s one of those things that’s an evolving industry. Technology is always leading the way, and sometimes we get caught up in the minutiae of every day, not looking to turn to more of the technology to make our life easier. So we’re not that guy in the vinyl shop weeding vinyl and not having the time with our family, or feeling like we’re just never getting ahead. So I’m very thankful for being on this podcast because I get to learn and remember things that I taught myself or things that I need to look back at, and I hope everyone just keeps gaining more information and knowledge and ask themselves more questions about what could be better within their company from this podcast.

Marc Vila:
That’s excellent. I work in marketing, and the same is true for that just as it is in this industry that we work in and that I market in. But if you just consider thinking about businesses over the years of our lives and businesses that have come and gone, and if we just consider big brands, we grew up going to Blockbuster Video. Friday night, that was the best if you can get a pizza and go and pick out a movie, and you had to get there early enough because you knew you wanted to watch that one, and you didn’t want all the copies to be gone. And Blockbuster Video owned this, and Netflix just took them over.

And there’s plenty of story there, but they tried to do the streaming and they tried to do… But they were just like they had this model that was working really well and the world was changing, and they did not adapt and change when they had the power and ability to, and the same happens in marketing if you aren’t considering the new platforms or considering how you’re going to market or new ways to market. And then the same in our industry, as you mentioned, you’ve got to adapt your business, offer different technology. Maybe you don’t get into every new technology because that doesn’t make sense, just like I’m not going to market in every single place, but you got to find the ones that are right for you and you have to move forward.

Otherwise, eventually you will get stuck, and you don’t want to end up being the shop that has an old sign with a customer base that’s [inaudible 00:30:41] slowly. And like yourself, you mentioned your children, if you’re the type of person that’s looking to build a legacy type of business, something you could pass off to your kids, which when we survey our customers, I don’t remember the number, but it was a huge number, surprisingly, 80% or something like that, 85% said one of the main reasons they wanted to do this was something that passed to their family. So if you’re thinking about that, what you said is right on it. I think that was a great finishing thought.

So thank you so much. Hopefully people are going to find this really valuable. I know a lot of people will. So thanks everybody for listening to another episode of the Custom Apparel Startups podcast. You can go to customapparelstartups.com and you can see this video and read some of the notes that we’re going to put in there. You can go to coldesi.com and see some of the equipment that we’ve talked about. And thanks again to Howard. We’ll see you again next time.

Howard Potter:
Thanks.

Marc Vila:
Great.

The post Episode 195 – What You Should Know Before Buying a DTF Printer with Howard Potter appeared first on Custom Apparel Startups.

Mike Angel shares his expertise in apparel decorating, focusing on the cutting-edge technique called direct to film printing, or DTF printing for short. This method has completely revolutionized the world of apparel decorating, offering numerous advantages over traditional methods. It is not only faster and easier, but also more cost-effective and versatile.

With a DTF printer, you have the flexibility to take on both small and large-scale projects. You can effortlessly create and print the same design on a wide range of fabrics, allowing for endless possibilities in customization. Unlike other technologies, DTF transfers require lower temperatures and shorter press times, making it ideal for more delicate fabrics as well as durable fabrics.

DTF prints boast exceptional color and detail, surpassing many other apparel decorating methods for apparel decorating with photo-realistic images, and the prints are highly durable, withstanding stretching and washing with ease.

Marc Vila:
Hello, everybody, and welcome to another episode of the Custom Apparel Startups podcast. And today, we have another special guest. We’ve invited on Mike Angel here from ColDesi, so thank you and welcome to the show. Would you just give everybody just a quick summary of what you do here at ColDesi?

Mike Angel:
All right. Thank you for having me, Marc. My name is Mike Angel and I head on-demand business development for ColDesi, and on-demand means all things e-commerce and all things with volumes as little as one, if that makes sense. What we concentrate on with on-demand is being able to sell products, digital printed products online, and also be able to produce them efficiently. That includes e-commerce technology, order management technology, as well as equipment like DTF printers, which are phenomenal for on-demand types of businesses.

Marc Vila:
There’s lots of 20s right now, right? So 2021, 2022 was really big. 2023 were really big jumps in the direct-to-film printing industry. And you’ve been in this industry 60 years or something like that?

Mike Angel:
Yeah, 572 years.

Marc Vila:
572 years. But in all seriousness, did you start in the ’90s? Or when did you start working in this industry?

Mike Angel:
In 1998.

Marc Vila:
1998, okay. So you’ve been in this industry about a decade longer than myself. And I feel like I know a lot so I’m throwing another decade of experience on that. I can only imagine all the things you’ve learned. And over the years, you’ve seen DTG printing come alive, embroidery machines evolve, white toner printing come in. But a lot of people are talking about how direct-to-film printing is different than a lot of those. And I’m just curious on what’s your opinion on is direct-to-film different than those and what is different about it?

Mike Angel:
Yeah, that’s a great question. So DTF, direct-to-film, is a game changer. I hate to use that term. Throughout the years, we’ve used that several times. But it truly is, and there are two things that are special about DTF. The first is it is its own thing in terms of the technical aspect of direct-to-film printing. In other words, the print itself. So it can be people try to compare it to vinyl or toner transfers or screen printing, but it truly is its own media medium. Medium?

Marc Vila:
Yeah, both.

Mike Angel:
Right?

Marc Vila:
Yeah. Because the media that it goes on is a specialty type of film, and the medium itself is actually what is being created is different than everything else.

Mike Angel:
Right. So technically, it’s a water-based pigment that has high washability. It has very vibrant look. The pigment can be profiled so it’s easily profiled to match customer color palettes. We’ve got 50 plus washes before you see degradation to the prints. You need a spectrophotometer to see it after 50 plus washes. We’ve had studies done at the Florida State University’s textile lab. It has a white ink backing which not only provides the opacity and gives the artwork pop, but provides the ability for the powdered adhesive to stick to. So basically what you have is a solidified ink, for lack of a better way to describe it. And that glue is what’s pressed on to any type of fabric.

So that is a combination that we haven’t seen before, to be able to take one printed piece of artwork and apply that same print across a wide variety of products. So anything, cotton, anything polyester. And that could go for apparel. It could go for just straight material. It could go for caps, soft-sided coolers. So you have your soft goods, backpacks. It’s unbelievable. It also has a low weld time, so it’s a very low time. You’re talking 7, 10 seconds worth of press time, and very low temperatures comparative to some of the other transfer systems. So at whether your cotton products, you’re up around 300 degrees to really get a good melt and weld and adhesion to the fabric. But if you’re on something a little more delicate like performance wear, which is very proper, you’re wearing a performance polo right now.

Marc Vila:
Miss that patches.

Mike Angel:
I’ll address that in a second why this is so significant, but you can then drop the temperature down at 270-ish, so there’s no dye migration or releasing from the substrate. And so right off the bat, technically you’ve got a beautiful print that’s stretchy, that feels good, and goes across a wide variety of products. And the transfers themselves don’t have a shelf life so you can pre-make some and store them without any issues as well. So very versatile.

The second thing that this all addresses is the ability to meet that on-demand process and philosophy we’ve been talking about. To be able to now profitably print one unit. That’s, to use the word again, game changer in the industry, to profitably be able to produce one unit. So you have a very low material cost as well. Material cost is around a half a cent per square inch. So a 10 by 10 piece of artwork’s going to run you at 50 cents or so, and you can produce it quickly. It can go across a wide variety of products.

And with that, you’re able to then sell as little as one product, hopefully through your web store. And the end customers will pay a premium for the ability to purchase just one for you because traditionally they haven’t been able to do that. You have minimum quantities, color requirements, how many color separations and all these requirements and setup fees and all sorts of things. But you can now produce as little as one unit profitably, get a premium for it, but also be able to scale with the same technology and produce many. So now you can produce redundant runs. So whether it’s 1 or whether it’s 1,000, you can do with the DTF system.

Marc Vila:
Yeah, and the setup time is pretty minimal for whether you’re doing 1 or 1,000. It’s literally going on a computer and typing in 1 or typing in 1,000 and hitting go.

Mike Angel:
True digital production.

Marc Vila:
Yeah. And so you said a lot of great things there so a few things popped in my head. One, you compared to some other technologies. So popular the technology for decades now is sublimation printing. It’s a great way to create a transfer and store it for a period of time and then place it on a piece of apparel or hard good or something like that. The problem with sublimation goods is you’re very limited on the materials and the colors and the materials that you can work with. So a ton of people are doing that technology and then they tell customers no when they want a dark blue shirt with a white logo on it because you literally cannot do that. So then alternatively, they’ll be screen printed or vinyl cut it, which has been again, another technology for decades which are both great and they look good and they wash well and all that stuff because their technology has been around forever.

The challenge is what I have right now is a 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6-color logo. So for one, if a customer hands you this, you’re probably going to, if you’re doing one of those methods, your first instinct is probably to see if you can get them to reduce the number of colors because that’s more work for you. And you either have to charge them more for the work, do more work for less money than another customer, or convince them to do it in one color. Direct-to-film printing as a digital process, so it really doesn’t matter if it’s 1 color or 100, it’s the same amount of work. So that’s a wonderful change too to the business is the amount of colors and if there’s gradients or anything like that. For the most part you can just be, “Oh, sure. I can print that logo.”

And then we’ve got other technologies like DTG or white toner printing, which are digital processes that you don’t have to worry about colors. And the materials you’re going to print on, I don’t want to get too much in the weeds on those things but both of those are reasonably versatile to some degree. But the problem with those is just the time. So white toner printing and DTG printing, depending on what you’re printing, how large it is, et cetera, et cetera, can eat up a decent amount of time to get those printed. And it’s not a crazy amount of time, minutes, let’s just say, a few minutes, which is not that big of a deal, but times 100 is 300 minutes. That’s a decent amount of time to work.

Where on your direct-to-film printer, to do 300, you’re clicking print, it’s going through the process. You’re not having to do all your transfers one at a time at that point in time, you’re just going through the process and you’re doing other things in your shop while it’s printing 300 of these. And then when you’re done, you’re applying them to the shirts, like you said, 7 to 10 seconds at a time, versus other processes with either curing on DTG or on white toner, could be 30 seconds or 45 seconds or a minute or depending on what you’re printing, it’s a little different. So we can just say minimum, half the heat press time, and then you’re not doing a single garment at a time when you’re printing process. You’re printing on a roll. So that’s really cool things comparing to those technologies.

Then there’s screen print transfers, which I’m not going to claim to be a super dark expert on, but I’ve done them before. And I’ll say that when I had done screen print transfers before, this was before or right when I got or just before I got in the industry, I was selling some apparel and I would order screen print transfers. And I remember one thing with these was that if I touched them while they were too hot or tapped them with my heat press again, I could melt off a part of the transfer or damage it. And for one, direct-to-film does not do that. You could tap it with the heat press a bunch of times. If you had a wrinkle in the shirt, you can just iron it. You can just hit it again and it still holds up. Can you tell me a bit more about comparing it to screen print transfers and benefits or not?

Mike Angel:
Yeah. Screen print transfers are going to fall into the same category in terms of minimum requirements. You’re not going to be able to order one screen print transfer. You’ve got to order a batch of them. You’ve got a minimum quantity. And we’re also talking about screen print so there’s color separation.

Marc Vila:
And can you just break that down what that means for just a minute for anybody who might not know?

Mike Angel:
So for every color in a logo or piece of artwork, there needs to be a screen burnt. There needs to be a screen made. And so with that comes a cost factor. The more colors, the more the print’s going to cost you, and the more the minimum requirement is going to be because you have to set up a press to do so. And so it’s cost-prohibitive to be able to, again, sell online and meet the demands of the current customer base. This is what the customer is asking for. The customers these days have budgets or they don’t want to order a couple of hundred to meet a certain price point, or they want the ability to buy a wider variety of products at less quantities. That’s just the way it is across the industry. So that’s a major difference technically. You mentioned some of the difference in terms of technically, mechanically, the heat temperatures are different, the application process is a bit different and not as tolerant and easy as it is with DTS.

Marc Vila:
Right, right. I found the first time I did a direct-to-film transfer, I just like, “Wow, that was easy.” And I’ve done I feel like every type of technology out there. I’ve done just about all of them in the customization industry outside of a few. And maybe just the only stuff I haven’t done is probably laser or something like that, but that’s a machine doing all the work anyway. But anything that involves hands, I’ve pretty much touched all the different types of transfers. And all of them have their little quirks, but the first time I did direct-to-film, I was literally just like, closed it, I opened it, and I was like, “Wow, that was actually fricking super easy.”

And you mentioned the performance fabrics. One of the challenges with doing performance fabrics are they can, I’m just going to use a bunch of words, distort, discolor, burn, change the consistency of the fabric easy. So if you have to do sublimation which is really high temperature, or you have to put it under a heat press for a really long period of time, you can actually end up with a section of your shirt that looks a little bit different. So when you get to bring that temperature all the way down to, what, 270, 280, 290, depending, something within that range for 7, 8, 9 seconds, that really minimizes the chance of that happening.

The way I think about it, at least sometimes, if you had a plastic spatula and you dropped it in a pan for a second and picked it up, nothing’s going to happen to it. It’s designed to be able to handle that heat. You’ll just pick it up, everything’s fine. But if you drop that spatula on the pan and didn’t realize it and you let it sit in there for one minute, you’re going to have a spatula that is either completely melted or at minimum warped in out of shape that you’ll never get back into shape. And I think that’s the difference is that you could put a piece of apparel that is susceptible to heat over time.

And then I was watching something on TV last night, and I’ll finish with this example because I like it. So I was watching MythBusters. You’re familiar with the show?

Mike Angel:
Yeah.

Marc Vila:
It was just old season. Of course it hasn’t been on the TV for a while. But they did this myth where it was a video of people shooting shrimp out of an air cannon, and they shot it through breadcrumbs and eggs and fire. And then in the end, the fake internet video, they fried shrimp through a cannon. And so the MythBusters were trying to say can we even cook a shrimp that way? And they set up forges that make swords, I don’t know, five of them, thousands of degrees. And they shot raw shrimp through them, thousands of degrees for, I don’t know, 10, 20 feet. And the shrimp was raw on the other end because heat is okay for a short period of time for just about anything. You can put your hand on a candle.

So I think that’s something to consider. That’s a great thing about DTF is because of the short time and temperature, just the tolerance of apparel is much greater and much less dangerous to messing things up versus sublimation or anything where you have to physically put heat on something for sometimes literally a minute, right?

Mike Angel:
Right, that’s correct.

Marc Vila:
Okay, great. So yeah, that was about 15 minutes on direct-to-film printing. And so what we’ll probably do is maybe even we’ll have this episode in full. I’m hoping what we’ll do is we’ll also for those watching or listening, I am planning on probably cutting it too. So maybe we just have this little 15 minute direct-to-film talk separately. So if you’re watching that and you’re curious about some of the mentions of selling online, then please be sure to go to customapparelstartups.com and look for the episode with Mike Angel where we talk about Shopify because there’s a whole longer section just about that. Just add that note at the end there. But thanks for joining us. We really appreciate it. I’m sure a bunch of people have learned a lot and are curious, and we hope to have you on again to talk about some more topics. Do you have any final thoughts or words or anything you wanted to get out before everyone hit stop?

Mike Angel:
Oh, I just encourage everyone to sell online, to make sure that your business is selling online, and to know that we’ve done a lot of the heavy lifting to help you fast track and get that done and really help your business.

Marc Vila:
Yeah, it truly is. We mentioned a lot of reasons why, but I think ultimately the kicker in business is time is the number one, and then that’s everything I think really when it really comes down to it. So if somebody has to, just going through the example for a minute, if somebody’s got to fill out a form and bring it to somebody and that person has to bring it to somebody else who delivers it to you, and then you produce a shirt and you bring it back somewhere else and it goes there, sometimes people just don’t want to do it. Somebody’s just like, “I don’t have time to go to school and fill out the form. I don’t want to have that bad.”

And then also the time for your business that you have to get an email, reply to it, get it again, reply to it, finally get the order, deliver it. Send them a proof, mock-up, like you said, make sure they say yes. And now it’s like a week before the order even got placed and then the person just says, “You know what? I was getting a hat for a baseball game and it’s already passed. Season’s over, we lost. I don’t need it anymore.” So this just allows your customers to directly go. They can order. It’s easy, reduces ton of time for them. The mock-up’s already done. You get the order, it’s got the right logo in it, the right color, everything because the customer’s seen it and approved it, and you can just print it and bring it right to them.

Whether you deliver in person or mail it, that’s up to you. But there is 100% chance that somebody would not have placed an order with you versus them placing it online. So you will get more orders just for being online for the convenience, for those percentage of people who are just be, “Nah, nevermind. It’s too much work.” Because we all do that, right? How many times have you driven down the road and it’s on the left. The store is on the left side of the highway and you’re like, “Nevermind. I don’t really feel… I don’t want to cross traffic that bad to get an extra whatever. I’ll just not get it.” And then you don’t buy it. So it’s true of physical locations and virtual locations.

Well, anyway, thanks again.

Mike Angel:
Yeah, thank you.

Marc Vila:
Everybody out there, appreciate you listening. Please visit coldesi.com to check out everything that we mentioned, all the different pieces of equipment and all that stuff. We have all that stuff available to learn about. And check out ClickWear and the on-demand products if those are right for you too. And go to customapparelstartups.com where you can check out this episode online, and I’ll put in some notes and some links to the various things that we spoke about as well. So thanks, everybody, and have a good business.

The post CAS MiniCast – High Performance DTF Printing with Mike Angel appeared first on Custom Apparel Startups.