Big contract advice?

[Dave271069]

Cheers all, gives me lot to think about, might just leave this one !

[Craig]

Dont be put off yet you just need to work out what you would like out of the job for yourself and also to cover your cost of electric and the other other main factor is if these people turned around and said they want them in dribs and drabs over say the next year then that will also be a deciding factor as you could do a few in and around other items but if the wanted 20k in 2 weeks you got no chance.

[Earl Smith]

My 2 cents on this job is to see if you can screen print it. To weed 20,000 pieces will drive you and your family crazy. The only problem I can see with screen printing is the space you will need to hang the bags out to dry.
20,000 pieces will also wear your cutter out.
You could suggest to the customer that he pays for transfers to be done. If its only one colour and you could get three on an A3 size transfer then it will be cheaper than vinyl. Especially for 20,000 transfers.
Then you have the old chestnut of tax. The supplier is going to pay you 5K for the job? This is a fair amount and he will probably declare this as a business expense. That will have your name on it so you , in theory at least, must also declare this as added income.
25p is too cheap , nearer 50 to 60 is more realistic.
Heres another problem. Your time will be taken up doing this job. What happens if a more lucrative job come in in the mean time. Do you stop doing the bags and do the more profitable job? Now the bag job is late being finished.
Just a few thoughts from me.

[John G]

What type of bag ? - post a pic of the bags and i'll tell you if its possible for me to screen print them.

[socialgiraffe]

Hi Dave

There are many times that an item simply can not be screen printed or the customer prefers vinyl as the colours are better etc etc, that is why they look at the vinyl route. So if you can get some sort of artwork visual it would be worth seeing what can or can not be done.

In my opinion the price of 25p per hit is close especially if you are competing with a volume screen printer. The cheapest UK screen printers I know of will print full colour to the front of a garment for 50p per garment on a run of over 500.

Pressing wise with vinyl you should be able to press 100 an hour so it will take 200 hours.
Weeding wise it is difficult to tell until seeing the artwork, however you could consider outsouricing the vinyl to someone with a Print & Cut machine. Yes the cost of the vinyl is more, but then the weeding is nominal.
Electricity will also be nominal and I think WDR worked it out on another thread to be less than 50p an hour at current electricity rates
If the job is coming over Christmas, you could always consider getting a university student in for a few weeks to do it at £6.00 per hour. This will take about 6p off your job, but then you are not doing the pressing. Likewise with the weeding, you could consider paying about 20p per item to be weeded and pressed, but then you are not actually doing anything but earning 5p per item.

Hope you get the contract Dave.

[John G]

Pressing wise with vinyl you should be able to press 100 an hour so it will take 200 hours.

I've got to disagree with that one - no way on this earth would anybody be able to press one every 36 seconds, and do this continuously, as you have suggested. Its just not possible due to lining the print up, taping, pressing, removing the carrier/backing sheet and pressing again.

The cheapest UK screen printers I know of will print full colour to the front of a garment for 50p per garment on a run of over 500.

That is some price - even with an auto carousel there's little or no money in it - that's just over 12p a print, lucky if it covers the ink and electricity, never mind the printers wage.

Can you name the company doing this as from now on I think i'll just farm all my work out.

[socialgiraffe]

Hi John

I use TMT 3.1 Heat Transfer Paper for cotton tote bags. These are pressed for 12 seconds @ 180 degrees. Have never used tape to position and never repress as they do not need it for bags. I do these at 100 an hour without even breaking a sweat to be honest. Very boring though!!!

I also use Siser garment vinyl through my Roland print and cut machine. Pressing times are about the same and as they are on a sticky backing there is no need to tape. Again, I would be comfortable to knock out 100 an hour of these.

I will say that this is easy positioning stuff. Obviously things like front left breast, or sleeves will probably reduce the amount down to 75 an hour.

With regards to the screen print, it is exactly why I knocked screen printing on the head. I used to employ 5 screen printers, plus other staff but the big boys kept dropping their prices as they needed work. Sorry but I would not be willing to give out the names of the companies that I know that charge these prices as it may be something they do not advertise, but below is one that I know of who I have nothing to do with:

keep me bags, they supply long handle cotton shoppers.
If my memory serves me right, the first colour is 19p and each subsequent colour is 4p. And I am pretty sure they give free screens over 500.

[John G]

I can understand why you don't want to name the screen printers - those prices should be illegal.:rolleyes: It really is a shame that the big guys can offer prices as low as this and that's exactly why there are fewer and fewer screen printers nowadays. Shame about you laying your printers off - happening everywhere and has happened to me more than once.

I was talking about vinyl, rather than TMT papers, but still cannot see anybody, especially on £6.00 an hour, working to your timings for a run of 20k.

I would be interested to find out what other members thought of the above pressing timings.

[pisquee]

Could you outsource the whole job to China?

[socialgiraffe]

It was a real shame as I thought that a couple of them were exceptionally talented.

I agree with you about the prices but it has essentially happened across all types of print. Look at litho, you can now go to somewhere like Vistaprint and get 500 cards printed for less than a tenner. My very first freelance job was some business cards and I remember paying £120 to get them printed and this was a few (ahem) years ago.

The same with embroidery. We used to have a machine until my ex business partner scum stole it. I remember the agency that supplies Blackberry asking if we wanted to bid on the embriodery for them. They said they are looking for quotes in the region of 80p per embroider regardless of item (i.e caps, sweatshirts, tees). There is no way we could compete. They told us that there was a company in Luton that had just purchased about 15 6 station 12 colour machines and this is what he was quoting.