Buying Equipment

[3Deep]

Earlier today I made a comment on another topic that brought me to this topic of buying equipment, first I know if I had the money to just spend wild I would have equipment that at our present time would be very useless to us, but we would have the newest toys on the block.  I know some of you will buy equipment at the drop of the a dime because you can, but do you really need it.  The point I thinK I'm asking is do you let your business dictate your equipment buying or you buy because you think you need it, and then end up buying more stuff just to use what you bought.  Greg Kitson made a great point in an article he wrote about the new LED exposure units coming to the market, yes you can burn screens faster, but then what about wash out, now you have to find a way to speed that up to take advantage of the new toy you just bought.  From what I gather this new CH3D is the jam, would I love to get my paws on one for our shop hell yes, but then I would have to totally buy everything all over again in our shop just to use the dare thing and then wait many years to hopefully make my money back.  Buying the latest equipment with all the new tech is great, but does your biz really need it, will this equipment make you more money soon as it hits your floor, will it unclog a bottleneck that you've been having, can you see the pot of gold at the end of the tunnel with your upgrade.  I ask these questions to myself some days about what do we really need that could stream line our shop and or what can I buy just to say I got this brand new thingofmajig sitting on our floor.  What can you guys add to this am I wrong in what  I 'm saying about buying equipment (I'm a cheap azz I know you all know this by now LOL)but I just believe the biz should dictate my upgrades....just look at all the equipment being sold yeah some old but there's a good share of lightly used stuff to too be had.

Darryl

[beanie357]

All our equipment purchases fall into several well defined categories. First is can we flip it?  Obviously, a few bucks from flipping is not a bad thing.
Second is replacing a piece as it does not perform as needed or does not do what is required as the business grows.
Third is expected growth or acquisition of a niche that warrants a given piece of equipment.

We try to bring all these into the decision tree. Unused equipment takes square footage, and as newer models come out, lose resale value. For instance, an Ste would be nice, but not justified at the moment. We have 2 amergrahs. Our runs tend to be several hundred and up. So our screen churn is not high enough to make it a good buy at the moment. That will change at some point. Most of these decisions can be financially calculated.

Could we buy a c3? Yes. Will we? No. Real estate for the next move would be a higher priority. Most of our decisions include this forward looking priority component.

[GraphicDisorder]

For us our shop prints just 4 days a week, this is due to us doing all the screens/seps for the week on Monday.  We have a nearly constant 2 week print line.  So when we decided to purchase the CH3D it was for a few reasons.  The main one being color count.  Our 8 color Sportsman was not enough, we often had 6-7 color jobs on it and at times had to run it in revolver to get the desired print due to lack of flashes or some colors that just don't step on each other well.  So for example a job we did on the sportsman that used to take Shelly and a person at the dryer (2 people only) 1.5 or so hours PER side on a regular job we have.  New press, was done in about 45 minutes per side.  The press is faster to print, faster/easier to set up/break down and we have more room for flashing now and more room for colors.  We are doing about a job a day more now with this press with NO more labor, NO other equipment.  Later with a faster dryer and a unloader we'd be doing things even faster. 

Things were similar for us on embroidery.  We had 11 heads when we snagged our 6 head Barudan.  1 employee running the show down there.  She would be able to get all 11 of the machines running and she was just waiting on machines.  So we added the 6 head and now the machines are waiting on her.  So at any point I can hire help and our output will be greater.  We went from 2-3 weeks to 1-2 week turns with that machine addition.

Remember machines are cheaper than people.  Period. 

[Underbase37]

Our growth for equipment & square footage is based on our projections of growth as a company and our clients projections based on growth history. The biggest thing I consider is where I'm trying to take the shop in the next 5 years, are the customers getting what they want. By this I judge as a shop are we giving the customer quality product and lead times they want to see. That aside if you are waiting on you're burning unit or your press and you're customer is waiting on you, without compromising quality. How can I speed things up. For us if I set up a 9 color all registered and ready to go in 45 min. that's great but if my large press will only move 52 does an hour, & I'm still waiting on my press as I can load faster than that, it would seem that most likely we increase to a faster press. The same goes for the screen room if I can burn 25 screens an hour but blow them out in 20 min. then then I would love to cut that time in half. That all said we still have some of our original equipment in use on a day to day production & its still relevant and useful.

Murphy37

[IntegrityShirts]

Every new-to-me purchase I make is based partially on time-savings.  I want everything to be faster than I can physically work it, even with helpers/catchers/unloaders. You have to balance out the cost vs. time saving aspect of each piece of equipment individually in my opinion. Yes an LED exposure unit can expose faster than you can wash out, but it still saves you time. Would I buy one? Not unless it was a really good deal used lol.

I work alone, 2.5hrs per day 5 days a week. I print 2-3 days a week and do art/film/customer service/screen prep/stack shirts the other times. I bought a used 10 color ac/servo machine because I wanted to be able to print shirts as fast as I can load/unload in those 2.5hrs a day. Now the only thing slowing down my shop is my ability to keep up. My 12.5hrs per week nets me the same money as my 8-2:30pm "day job" so I can't complain.

[screenprintguy]

Darryl, we are on with some of these guys here too. Sure, we could just buckle down and work 15-20 hrs a day, but there isn't much quality of life left in there. For a small shop, when we bought our DTS, a lot of people were trying to tell me that I was making a huge mistake in taking on a pricey piece of gear and not being a big enough shop for such a buy. Honestly, they were dead wrong. The DTS has made life so much better. You just would never know until you worked with one every day. There is no way we could ever see going back to film, it would be like going from a car, back to walking, just doesn't make sense. But like I said, one can never know until they had one. That being said, we try to be as conservative as possible so that when we see the need, we are able to buy. For instance, we have been looking for over a year now on what we need to do for more output, speed, overall capabilities in the shop. I look at a shop like Ink Brigade, sort of the same way they went. Small staff, lots of work to do, and looking to take on more. They added a second press instead of just upgrading what they had to something larger and faster. I feel adding the second press give us not only a huge back up plan, just in case since we do a lot of rush type work, but when one machine is running, and a big set up needs to be loaded and ready to go, we aren't bottle necked around one machine. It's a big sacrifice for sure, but I really think its better all the way around. We already work an average of 60 hours a week, I'm not big on going into a "second shift". I'd rather get it done in under a 12 hour day. I look at Dave from Bimmrider with this. He just broke their own production record of 45 jobs 200 screens, ONE shift. If they didn't have that 3'rd press. That would mean to keep that time line, they would have had to keep going all night and into the next day as I'm sure the C3 out paces the other two presses. I start looking at labor costs. Labor surely can out weight a lease payment very very fast. Basic math there. Of course, this is just my opinion and how I see if from our shop. We plan to add another press soon after our last payment on our DTS is made, and it's coming quick, and we know that it's a payment for a few years, but if things keep growing as they are, we will have to work both weekend days with staff, or go into more staff and hours within the 24 hour day to keep up and get it done. I do know one little fancy peice of gear I'm thinking about is that little squeegee washer from shur lock. 3 sets of squeegees and floods and I'm still yelling for a clean set, uhhhhhhgggggggggg!!!! Anyways, that's my take. All I can say, is just make sure you know you can handle it if you take on the responsibility. It's sad to see an almost new peice of gear on the used market because someone was sold on buying something they weren't ready for.

[TCT]

I have always bought equipment when there are a few major items that the new equipment will cover-

1) It will speed things up or make a task more efficient. When we bought our ECO we needed something that would print oversized, period. We had one job that we would get constant orders for with different colorways. ALL of the colorways except 1 required 2-3 flashes and had to be printed manually, OH and I wouldn't let anyone else print them. No one had real good experience on the manual, let alone experience printing a 14x19.5" image. There were times that I was printing just that logo 2-3 FULL days a week, for 3 weeks out of the month! I would dread those damn shirts, but it always seemed just as I would finish them we would get another PO for more. Once we got the ECO that job took maybe 2 hrs. and DONE! We do quite a bit of printing 19-23" tall, so I needed the oversized option.
When we got out tag printer, it was also a time thing. We used to have a girl that would work 4 hrs. a day 5 days a week and all she did was cut transfer sheets and use our tag heat transfer press. We even have a special 2 station air heat transfer press so it was still relatively fast. What she used to do in a week is now done in maybe one 4hr. shift. Not to mention the added time it would take us to print the transfer sheets, using a separate electric dryer, cost of transfer paper, ect. Some of those costs are minor but it still all added up in my decision. We were also having a large increase of people requesting custom tags. I was faced with posibably needing to buy another tag heat press, and find more storage for all of the tags in sizes/colors/editions.

2) Will the equipment help us with something we are getting a increase in requests for, or is there a particular niche it will help us serve. Back to the purchases in item #1, the ECO brought us oversized printing and it also brought us the option for more colors which we seemed to be getting requests for. Tag printer helped with the increase of tagging requests, it also allowed us to decrease what we charged for simple 1 color sleeve prints and allowed us to push that option more. Few people want a sleeve print at $1.00, but at $0.45 that is a different story.... Bags and baby clothes are not something we have to tear a regular sized automatic down for anymore also!

3)The funds are there. The tag printer was the first thing I did not buy outright, but with 0% for 5 months or whatever it was um, why not!? I have never had a equipment or "business" loan. Well that has come back to bite me in the rear, because now I don't have credit with the business to ask a bank for a loan now. I NEED a new dryer and it makes sense to replace the anatol press, but the set up I had planned on is a bit more than I have. There is also a situation with about $200K in medical bills that were racked up when my son was in the hospital, seems his case "slipped through the cracks" as our state was beginning to convert to our form of Obama care, now there is finger pointing bureaucratic BS and we get sent the bills. Point is I don't feel I have enough of the required cash to get the equipment. Owing a bank for equipment scares me, if I only owed them like 40% of the total bill I may feel better. Which is odd because I have a handsome amount of real estate loans and they don't make me nervous like the thought of a equipment loan does. 

4) How fast will it pay for itself? I am notorious for not doing numbers on paper and doing them in my head(I need to change) but I need to feel that whatever the purchase is, it cant take 5 years to pay for itself. I want to know if it breaks, I need to sell it, King Kong walks on it, ect. that it was not a total loss!

I have rattled on long enough and now have to get to work!

[Homer]

one of the main factors for us is quality of life. will it make things easier...we bought an LED unit for many reasons, speed was not one of them, it's awesome- but not the selling point for us. We don't add on another piece of equipment until we max out our efforts on what we already have. I have not gone DTS -yet- simply because I have other areas to improve upon. Once my system is close to perfect, I will start to streamline even further....but until we are maxed out with what we have, we'll keep on plugin Mon-Fri from 9-5...

not to turn this into another dts thread -but that is very high on my list....

[GraphicDisorder]

Homer and others hit it as well.  Quality of life.  Id like to enjoy my job.  Nobody wants to fight a process otherwise we'd all be hand printing on a table can curing in a stove.  If something is faster it often means its also easier.  This leads to happier shop over all.  I am sure our next deal will be either another embroidery machine or a DTS or just something to burn screens faster period.  Our ameragraph is about our next bottle neck followed by our dryer.  So we have work to do to get those new deals going I HOPE this year or so.  I am sure by the "math" we will adopt DTS before the pros say I should.  That's ok, ill be happy and we will have capacity to grow into. 

[inkman996]

Homer and others hit it as well.  Quality of life.  Id like to enjoy my job.  Nobody wants to fight a process otherwise we'd all be hand printing on a table can curing in a stove.  If something is faster it often means its also easier.  This leads to happier shop over all.  I am sure our next deal will be either another embroidery machine or a DTS or just something to burn screens faster period.  Our ameragraph is about our next bottle neck followed by our dryer.  So we have work to do to get those new deals going I HOPE this year or so.  I am sure by the "math" we will adopt DTS before the pros say I should.  That's ok, ill be happy and we will have capacity to grow into.

Here is a dumb question.

If you have bottlenecks then why don't you print five days a week instead of just 4?

[alan802]

We buy on a "need" basis now days.  If you want to buy the best press on the market and you can do it without putting financial strain on your business then I don't have an issue with it, I wouldn't do it but it's not something I'd talk someone out of. 

I know CTS is great for some smaller and mid sized shops but we are different I guess is all I can say.  We do 6-12 jobs per day which is 6-24 setups per day and my production crew works 39 hours a week so things are different here with regards to quality of life without CTS.  When we get up to 40-50 screens per day then that's when it will be worth the investment but right now, film really isn't a pain in the butt or a bottleneck in any way.  I'm not trying to say a one auto shop shouldn't go CTS because I believe Mike when he says it's the greatest thing for his shop.  I think it's better for Danny and Dave's shop but I trust Mike whole heartedly when he speaks about his CTS and his shop.  But I hope that others will believe me when I say it isn't going to have the same impact due to whatever reasons I don't want to get into because it's only going to turn into a pissing match.  It's much the same here with the question of CTS as it is at Tony's shop.  I've done more math and research on ROI with CTS than I care to admit and with our shop's figures and I know it won't make ENOUGH of a difference until we reach 40 screens per day.  With another shop down the road it might make sense at 20 screens per day, and even down to 10 screens per day it might very well make life so much better.  Dave's shop couldn't do what they do without CTS, no doubt, and if your shop is putting in 60 hours a week and one CTS machine will knock that down to 40 hours per week then get after it, I can fathom it now but a year or so ago I couldn't.

At the time we bought the RPM we didn't technically need it but that was a different time and now that we're doing double what we did when we had the Centurian it makes perfect sense to have the better auto now.  We could have held off another 18-24 months on it and it would have been a better business decision but it's all good now.

My approach with buying a new press will be because we need it to keep up and not have a bottleneck due to whatever reason.  I will keep us at a one auto shop as long as I can and if we need to buy a bigger auto to keep us from needing two of them then that's what we'll do.  I think CTS will hold us off from a second auto until we get around 2000 jobs per year and well into 7 figures but that's with our current average job specs and that could change quickly.  We might start doing a bunch of one color jobs with the average run size of 800 pieces instead of the 4/4 and 50 piece stuff we see now. There are some benefits to having two autos when technically you only need one but I'm still wanting to do as many jobs as we can with one auto before we add on.  There are plenty of shops here on the forum with multiple autos that don't subscribe to my theory and that's perfectly fine.  I do like the idea of having a second auto if you can have only one extra employee that is setting up a job on the other auto while one is printing and that theory is sound in my opinion and deserves some consideration for some shops. 

One thing I'll say is we've been able to increase our productivity by probably 50% without buying one big piece of equipment.  We are doing twice the number of jobs this year than we did on 07' and the new auto had a lot to do with that increase in capability.  But I have no doubt that many of the other changes we made had more impact on our productivity than buying the new auto did.  Rarely having to double stroke or run revolver mode will have a much bigger impact on your production numbers than buying a $150K press.  If that expensive press is the only way that you can do that then it's probably worth the investment.  But if you suck at all of the other parts of this process then an MHM 4000 won't do much to help you out. 

[tonypep]

Gives cred to the fact that; while we are all in the same business, we are all different in some ways.

[GraphicDisorder]

Homer and others hit it as well.  Quality of life.  Id like to enjoy my job.  Nobody wants to fight a process otherwise we'd all be hand printing on a table can curing in a stove.  If something is faster it often means its also easier.  This leads to happier shop over all.  I am sure our next deal will be either another embroidery machine or a DTS or just something to burn screens faster period.  Our ameragraph is about our next bottle neck followed by our dryer.  So we have work to do to get those new deals going I HOPE this year or so.  I am sure by the "math" we will adopt DTS before the pros say I should.  That's ok, ill be happy and we will have capacity to grow into.

Here is a dumb question.

If you have bottlenecks then why don't you print five days a week instead of just 4?

If we printed 5 days a week when would we do separations?  When would we do screens?  Those are done on our 5th day, in case you missed that. 

[mimosatexas]

No to follow it down the rabbit hole, but as a one man shop, I do different things on different days as well.  It is a lot more efficient than doing art/screens every day and printing every day. 

[Homer]

this may sound stupid but what has helped us most in the past few months -over any piece of equipment-  was scheduling...we were honestly all over the place but now we have a proper schedule that is easy to follow and productivity has gone through the roof...so again, before more equipment I have to break us down to the nuts and bolts and fix other issues...every shop is totally different, hence the D-white vs Magna threads...