Thinking about DTG

[Appstro]

Can someone tell me how I can justify buying the brother DTG with the cost being so high. I cannot wrap my head around this. The printer and pre treat are about $25000.00 When I use the brother ROI calculator and input realistic numbers I come up with 6-7 years before I see a profit. Won't the printer be pretty much toast at that point? I would love to read some positive info and suggestions on making the DTG thing practical. I get quite a few requests for small runs but the pricing and known white ink issues with DTG have me running away.

[Frog]

Can someone tell me how I can justify buying the brother DTG with the cost being so high. I cannot wrap my head around this. The printer and pre treat are about $25000.00 When I use the brother ROI calculator and input realistic numbers I come up with 6-7 years before I see a profit. Won't the printer be pretty much toast at that point? I would love to read some positive info and suggestions on making the DTG thing practical. I get quite a few requests for small runs but the pricing and known white ink issues with DTG have me running away.

Perhaps it's not for you. The right shop making and selling just 50 shirts a week would do fine. Folks like you or I who need a month or two for that kind of output just may need to farm it out.
Hey, just think, if you offered that service for shops like ours, it could be paid for in no time!

[Maxie]

Be careful, DTG printers need to work a lot.
Not only from the financial aspect of the cost of the machine.
They have to maintained regularly and heads cleaned with expensive ink.
This has to be done all the time even if you are not printing.

[Frog]

Be careful, DTG printers need to work a lot.
Not only from the financial aspect of the cost of the machine.
They have to maintained regularly and heads cleaned with expensive ink.
This has to be done all the time even if you are not printing.

Another reason for investing in one and offering the service to other printers may be a great plan.
Of course, like any biggish business move, it needs to be studied, planned, and marketed well.

[Maff]

I've been considering this for a while, since I get a few orders a week that would seem to work well on a DTG. But I've been looking into Epson based printers that come with a smaller price tag, under $20K and some closer to $10K including an auto Pre Treat machine and other fees.  The thing that makes me hesitate is that I don't feel it will be as simple as just plug it in and print shirts with the press of a button.  From my research it seems that getting all of the little variables with the machine, ink, pretreat, artwork, shirt type, etc. to all work correctly takes a great deal of learning and practice before you are really printing shirts in a production manner. They also need to be constantly used and maintained even in the slow months.  But the technology is moving really fast and with inks that now cure in 35sec and on a wider range of fabric types... it's hard to resist.
Than again, for my shop, this budget may be better spent towards an Automatic screen printing machine

[pwalsh]

Can someone tell me how I can justify buying the brother DTG with the cost being so high. I cannot wrap my head around this. The printer and pre treat are about $25000.00 When I use the brother ROI calculator and input realistic numbers I come up with 6-7 years before I see a profit. Won't the printer be pretty much toast at that point? I would love to read some positive info and suggestions on making the DTG thing practical. I get quite a few requests for small runs but the pricing and known white ink issues with DTG have me running away.

Appstro:  Your question about whether DTG is a good fit for your business and whether you will achieve a satisfactory ROI on introducing this technology is really going to come down to the customer and market segments that you are serving.  When it comes to DTG printing with purpose built machines like the Brother, the good new is that they really have the process down.  Users of their equipment can expect reliable and predictable results printing on light and dark colored garments and a range of other specialty items.  Nazdar SourceOne has many hundreds of customers who have purchased Brother DTG systems from us, who have achieved profitable revenue growth in their businesses. From my perspective the two most important factors for anyone looking to purchase and implement DTG printing are:  (1)  Understand what your true cost of production is, and (2) make sure that you have access to a source of customers who are willing to pay the premium associated with acquiring short run, mass customizable, garments with full color graphics.  As a rule these people are different than your traditional screen print customers who are looking for a deal on a one, two, or three color print on 50 shirts.

When it comes to crunching the numbers, as much as I respect the folks from Brother I am reluctant about using a non-customer specific ROI Calculator.  I try to encourage customers to run the numbers based on their real world situation, to see if they support the investment in any new equipment.  Making a decision on the viability of investing in DTG for a shop that already has screen-printing in house, and that is servicing a customer base that’s used to paying screen-printing prices for their printed garments can be a challenge, given the differences in production costs between screen-print and DTG.  The attached files are PDF’s of some work that we did a number of years ago comparing typical screen-print production costs to include all elements of the pre-press, on press set-up, on-press production, and post press screen cleaning and reclaim processes to the “almost” Plug & Play of Digital DTG printing.   As you’ll see in the examples DTG comes out a mile in front in total print production cost  as the number of colors in the print increases, and the quantity remains low.

 Screen-printing definitely  has a production cost advantage when the design only calls up one or two colors and/or the total quantity of garments being printed increases.  As a general rule the speed of screen-print production is much higher, and cost of consumables is much lower, than it is for digital.  The challenge that screen-printing faces in this comparison comes from the fixed “make ready” costs that are incurred to output films, prepare and image screens, set them up on press, load ink, squeegees and flood bars, then having to clean everything down to prepare for the next job.  These expenses are largely the same regardless of whether you print 1 shirt or 1,000.  One last comment is that these examples are probably 6 or 7 years old and were comparing prints on light colored shirts using the Brother GT-541 versus screen-printing.  I will make it a project to refresh the numbers to take into consideration the additional costs in both screen-printing and DTG to print on Dark colored shirts and repost the updated numbers. 

Note:  I have the complete Excel workbook that the PDF examples were developed from and would gladly share it with anyone at TSB who is looking for a quick and reasonably accurate method to calculate their screen-printing or DTG production costs.  Just email me your contact info and I will send it across.

[mooseman]

I kind of remember a few years ago, not too many years ago, that the buzz among us was DTG was going to put  all of us traditional printers out of business or at least hurt us a bunch.

The other thought that hit me from this topic is never trust the fox to tell you the chickens are safe.

Lastly I think Sam SoCalMF bought a DTG owned it for about 3 minutes and dumped it because it was not generating $$$$$$$.
Don't know where Sammy is today but a call to him might be wise as he seems to peel the onion back pretty well and can probably offer some real world view.
mooseman

[Frog]

I kind of remember a few years ago, not too many years ago, that the buzz among us was DTG was going to put  all of us traditional printers out of business or at least hurt us a bunch.

The other thought that hit me from this topic is never trust the fox to tell you the chickens are safe.

Lastly I think Sam SoCalMF bought a DTG owned it for about 3 minutes and dumped it because it was not generating $$$$$$$.
Don't know where Sammy is today but a call to him might be wise as he seems to peel the onion back pretty well and can probably offer some real world view.
mooseman

And, unfortunately, within those three minutes, mine was one of the (late)jobs to be done on it.
To be fair, he had an i-Dot (which unfortunately looks a bit like idiot) which was M&R's less-than-stellar Epson-based first attempt in this field.
Add to that, he relied on staff, who apparently in this instance did not keep him apprised of issues in a timely fashion.

[mooseman]

Frog, on a side note I see you changed your by-line, I just figured out what the last one meant then you go and change it.
By the way do you know the meaning of "And the papers want to know whose shirts you wear"

mooseman

[Frog]

Frog, on a side note I see you changed your by-line, I just figured out what the last one meant then you go and change it.
By the way do you know the meaning of "And the papers want to know whose shirts you wear"

mooseman

I guess if you figured out what the last one meant, it was time to change the furshlugginer line!

As for the current one, I may not know what it originally meant, but it seemed appropriate here. Oh, I did hear him playing "You'll Never Walk Alone" in the background.

[mooseman]

"And the papers want to know whose shirts you wear" translation what football (soccer) team do you root for.

[Frog]

"And the papers want to know whose shirts you wear" translation what football (soccer) team do you root for.

Hence his love of "You'll Never Walk Alone" and his shirt is red  (Tom is a Liverpudlian)

[Maff]

Can someone tell me how I can justify buying the brother DTG with the cost being so high. I cannot wrap my head around this. The printer and pre treat are about $25000.00 When I use the brother ROI calculator and input realistic numbers I come up with 6-7 years before I see a profit. Won't the printer be pretty much toast at that point? I would love to read some positive info and suggestions on making the DTG thing practical. I get quite a few requests for small runs but the pricing and known white ink issues with DTG have me running away.

(2) make sure that you have access to a source of customers who are willing to pay the premium associated with acquiring short run, mass customizable, garments with full color graphics.  As a rule these people are different than your traditional screen print customers who are looking for a deal on a one, two, or three color print on 50 shirts.

I also think this really important and that the customer base for digital prints is growing.  I think there are a lot more customers out there that understand the difference now between screen printing and digial and are seeking this work out... it's just a matter of marketing yourself in front of them.

[mooseman]

"And the papers want to know whose shirts you wear" translation what football (soccer) team do you root for.

Hence his love of "You'll Never Walk Alone" and his shirt is red  (Tom is a Liverpudlian)

Frog
youz is just toooooo many lilypads ahead of me
mooseman

[Sbrem]

If you don't like the price tag, consider going to a contractor who has the biggest fastest machines, because the lower pricing will be reflected. We bought a used Brother GT-541, which worked pretty well for a while, then sales fell way off, and the machine went south. Expensive lesson learned. I use AIR Conway in Philadelphia. Good work, decent price, good communications, they do have a 12 piece minimum. If you want 6, you pay for 12, no further discussion. I know it will be done right, and we can spend our money elsewhere. Were we to adopt a different business model which would need to have the printing in house, because it would pay off and we would have more control, then it would make more sense.

Steve