Let's Talk About Profit Killers

One of the great things about screen printing versus DTF is that, for continual runs, it’s more efficient and requires less handling. By handling I mean—how many times you touch the garment between pulling it from the box and putting it back in the box to ship out.

Think about how you can minimize the handling. Then think about what extra handling is costing you.

Take an order of tri-blends, for example. The less handling, the better. These garments are often called “spongey” and fibrillate easily. Tri-blends are woven from three different yarned fibers—cotton, rayon, and polyester. The more that fabric is handled, the more the polyester abrades, which makes the cotton and rayon fibers fuzzy. On top of that, polyester fibers tend to repel from the cotton and rayon because they carry a different “charge.” So every time you load a shirt, shift it on the platen, pull it into place, and pat it down, you’re not just giving the shirt a back massage it didn’t pay for—you’re losing time and creating more fuzz.

The goal is simple: pull the blank from the shirt cart and load it onto the platen in as few movements as possible. My method was to pull the shirt onto the platen past its final placement, then use the shoulders of the blank to pull it back toward me into position. With tri-blends, I’d use both hands to quickly “rake” the fibers into one direction and let the squeegee do the rest of the work. The goal for me and my printers was to keep the press on auto as long as possible and lock into a good rhythm.

Tools vs. Time

These days, we have hot heads, stampinator, and roller squeegees to help flatten fibers. But not too many years ago, those tools didn’t exist. Needing these new tools can mean that something else in your printing technique or process needs to improve.

Normally, you should not need to heat-press shirts before printing—that’s wasted time, and wasted time kills your profit per hour.

Another killer: how much you are moving during production. Are you walking steps back and forth from press to dryer? Move your press or dryer closer to each other so you can just pivot at the waist instead of pacing laps across the shop floor. (In my shop you could barely squeeze between the end of the dryer and the press. This was by design.)

The Key Questions

Here’s what I want you to ask yourself this week:

Am I over-handling the garment?

Is my profit per hour suffering?

Am I moving around more than I should?

I once heard the phrase “economy of movement,” and it stuck with me. It’s about efficiency—how little energy you expend to achieve a result. One of my shop’s goals was to minimize how much the printer had to walk to and from the press. We put things on wheels and brought ink, blanks, and screens to the operator.

Now ask yourself: are you traveling around your production floor too much? How can you minimize that?

And it doesn’t stop at production. Are you exchanging too many emails with clients about edits or invoicing? We set a limit—three edits after the initial design, then additional edits were billable. That policy showed our time was valuable, and it stopped us from slamming on the brakes every time a client wanted “just one more change.”

Is your contract client sending garments in bags with tags you have to un-bag and de-tag? Are you getting paid for that? I once fired a client over this. A few months later, she came back—this time ready to follow our rules, which included separating her orders by P.O. and doing her own un-bagging if she wanted contract pricing.

Bottom Line

Be aware of the little things that kill your profit. Over-handling. Over-moving. Over-emailing. Over-accommodating. Address them now, or before you know it, you’ll be printing at a loss.