25-30K screen printed transfer hats. How to handle this?

[DannyGruninger]

What is the design? I would be way more prone to trying those hat pallets that action makes and screen print them on a press...... We do lots of hat transfer orders but they are usually never more then 2-3k pcs.... That many hats pressing would be a bear of a project.... One time we pressed 50k beanies and it was a couple week project lol

[zanegun08]

Get them made overseas, or try to find a Made in US factory (good luck though) you can charge the same cost both ways, but having the hat factory do it they can print them flat in panels, and then sew in, so your design isn't as limited, and you can offer custom options for an upsell.

So when you are making money having a different factory doing work, you can be making money domestically doing other work that isn't cents on the dollar.

If you want to press them on, I would have Imagemark / Matsui make the transfers, make a couple cents on that markup, and then you would be whatever the application and hat markup is, but it is high labor no mater the process.

Send it out, make better money domestically, and in the end you made more money overall than being tied up for cents.  We struggle with this a lot here as everyone wants to be a hero and do stuff in house, but at the end of the day, a hat factory can do it better and cheaper, you can focus on what you do best, and the client and business wins in the end.

I would price them what it costs both domestically and overseas, and tell them the pro's and con's of each.  That hat is already from overseas, so the decoration may be as well, then they can do branding on the inside for the same price as well typically.

[royster13]

You might want to consider pad printing them....

[mimosatexas]

I'm all for doing stuff in house, but this kind of volume screams to be outsourced. 

[Sbrem]

Get them made overseas, or try to find a Made in US factory (good luck though) you can charge the same cost both ways, but having the hat factory do it they can print them flat in panels, and then sew in, so your design isn't as limited, and you can offer custom options for an upsell.

So when you are making money having a different factory doing work, you can be making money domestically doing other work that isn't cents on the dollar.

If you want to press them on, I would have Imagemark / Matsui make the transfers, make a couple cents on that markup, and then you would be whatever the application and hat markup is, but it is high labor no mater the process.

Send it out, make better money domestically, and in the end you made more money overall than being tied up for cents.  We struggle with this a lot here as everyone wants to be a hero and do stuff in house, but at the end of the day, a hat factory can do it better and cheaper, you can focus on what you do best, and the client and business wins in the end.

I would price them what it costs both domestically and overseas, and tell them the pro's and con's of each.  That hat is already from overseas, so the decoration may be as well, then they can do branding on the inside for the same price as well typically.

This... I'm the first one to try to DIY to the point of tremendous time wasting, but I've learned. It's like selling promotional items really.

Steve

[im_mcguire]

We are still getting the specifics as far as the art on this job. What we do know is our contact will be providing the hats, we will be pressing them only. I will be figuring out what makes sense as far as what to charge for this, and if it doesn't make "cents" then it just may not be worth the time. This job could make up for some of the loss we had at the beginning of the year. So we could use it, as long as it's profitable.

[zanegun08]

What we do know is our contact will be providing the hats, we will be pressing them only.

So no markup on the hats.  We don't know what the image looks like, and will you be printing the transfers or subbing that out?

If everything went really good, I would say you would have a minimum of 1 minute per hat, or about 420 hours of labor to do just the pressing on 25k hats. (receiving hats, taking out of packaging, staging for pressing, lining up the transfer, pressing it, removing transfer, repacking hats, preparing for shipping).  This doesn't even include printing the transfers, or cutting apart transfer sheets.

So what could you realistically charge, say a 1 color transfer at this quantity, .50 cents, .75 cents, $1.00, ?  Would they go for it at that cost?

I don't know where you are, but our employees are probably making around 12 an hour, so the real cost to the business + overhead to turn on the lights is probably somewhere around 18-20 an hour for heat pressing, so 420 hours is $8400 in labor.  I'd say transfer cost and materials is marginal unless you are buying equipment to do the job.  I would get the transfers made elsewhere personally for this quantity, we only print on 12 x 12" sheets so it would be a lot of prints and cutting apart, I'd order them elsewhere as they'd probably be cents from overseas, and come cut down to size.

So at 25k pieces, charging 50 cents (what I think it would take to get the job in my market), that is $12,500.  Subtract out the $8400 in labor and lets say the transfer price was included in that cost, and you made yourself a whopping $4100 in 2 weeks of 5 people full time.

I saw in another thread you could bring people over to help with pressing, possibly paying them overtime on a offset press salary (which I assume is higher), so now your profit margins just shrunk down.

Now you gotta ask yourself if in two weeks of 5 people full time doing other tasks, would they make more than $4100 profit.  I would sure hope so.  We often struggle with this as well, but you gotta look at the opportunities you may be missing by taking on this job.

There are a lot of unknowns as well, and maybe it will work great for you and become an ongoing money maker.  But a customer supplied promo hat (assuming as its a trucker) just doesn't have much room for profitability.  Although some of our customers sell truckers for $25 to $30, but they aren't moving 25k hats or possibly 100k hats a year, especially at those prices.

[tonypep]

Makes me think of the toy store franchise job that surfaces every year. 800k shirts f/b. But wait for it..........over 90 ship tos (including Alaska) and some one has to figure the freight on all that. But theres more.........two sizes of art and you have to ship each day so constantly tearing down/setting up. Took 2 wks to get all that extra info so if you quoted it up front you're f'd. Oh and chargebacks if you're late

[ZooCity]

Makes me think of the toy store franchise job that surfaces every year. 800k shirts f/b. But wait for it..........over 90 ship tos (including Alaska) and some one has to figure the freight on all that. But theres more.........two sizes of art and you have to ship each day so constantly tearing down/setting up. Took 2 wks to get all that extra info so if you quoted it up front you're f'd. Oh and chargebacks if you're late

Sounds like the last time I tried to bid on a gov't job....except the ultimate order qty was undisclosed and no information provided on the frequency and number of shipments.

I agree with others that these should be imprinted prior to construction and zanegun really laid it out as to why.  Since it sounds limited to caps they are providing I would make certain you are charging what you need and have the lead time to get it done.  If they haven't purchased caps yet, explain to them how you can save them money and hassle by providing the whole kit and kaboodle.

[Sbrem]

Way back my old shop did 100K shirts 1/0, for $0.125, so we grossed $12,500, and looking back, it really wasn't worth, other than to say we could get it done. Things to consider besides the challenge of running huge orders...

Steve

[zanegun08]

Way back my old shop did 100K shirts 1/0, for $0.125, so we grossed $12,500, and looking back, it really wasn't worth, other than to say we could get it done. Things to consider besides the challenge of running huge orders...

Except a press can go at 750 pieces per hour easily as I'm assuming white tee, so ~400 man hours (3 people on the press for 133 press hours), and way back in the day the wages were say $15 with overhead, as I'm assuming you mean way back.  So 6k in labor, made ~$6500, but you would need 6 people (2 presses), two weeks.

Still not worth it, as printing normal not for penny jobs you would've made more, but depending on the time of year it could be good filler work if you didn't have the work otherwise.

I'd rather do the shirts than the hat transfers, but I'd also rather print 100 x 1000 piece jobs, than 1 x 100,000 job, that job should stay overseas.