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« Last post by whitewater on February 27, 2026, 10:07:50 AM »
Everything is so true here.
We recognized on what was happening. We could not sit and wait for our traditional customer to order from us. We identified who we would like for customers and started to aggressively to go after them.
We brought DTF in house, I like having the control. But we still use our auto, just not as much for smaller orders.
Also within the last year, we have been getting so much AI art, just from contractors, that without dtf I would have to turn it down.
This year is 20 years...alot has changed very recently.
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i dont think that some of these 'kitchen table shops' calculated the ROI of the equipment - by the time the machine is paid off its not really worth much because in those years the newer generation of printer is better and cheaper to run. i dont think we even broke even on our DTG printer (F2000 epson).
we used to print stickers on a roland ecosolvent printer and we werent making money on it.
i think the only thing that consistently makes us money is screenprint and embroidery. anything digital we have someone else make it and ship to us, its substantially cheaper, easier, faster and less of a headache for us.
if you buy a Roland sticker printer, how much profit can you make per sticker? pennies or dollars?
The issue is they dilute the market and set threasholds for expected pricing. It took me 40 years of making my best prints to learn how little most clients care about print, wash or application quality. IMO the growth in semi automated carousel press's (full automated sooner than most think, talk with the boys @ Supa they have the inside track) it is game over for 70% for traditional screen print shops in a few years time. On top of that you are going to see a lot of aquasitions and consolidation in this space, the fall out will not benfit a lot of smaller shops. Niche shops and volume shops that can leverage resources with uniqness and more decmile will be fine - The strugle is real The only thing preventing fully automated DTF application is loading, specificaly having the hems of a stack somewhat symetrical with no folds. I image you could pay a mill up charge of say $1 per dozen to have them packaged for automation. Do the math $1-2 more perdozen vs human labor, auto unloding has been around since Rich Hoffman (GOAT) the major down fall to auto unload was the print QC abilty, DTF greatly lessens the nedd to QC the print. For giggles dump the quarry into AI and see the numbers You want to make some $$$$ figure out how the mill can attach to shirt during packaging. Maybe a simplecard stock with puch pin locators the press could grab and pull onto pallet. Design it, patten it sell the rights to mfg/market and take your girl on a nice vacation. Pattent has been applied for :-)
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« Last post by Homer on February 26, 2026, 04:46:33 PM »
i dont think that some of these 'kitchen table shops' calculated the ROI of the equipment - by the time the machine is paid off its not really worth much because in those years the newer generation of printer is better and cheaper to run. i dont think we even broke even on our DTG printer (F2000 epson).
we used to print stickers on a roland ecosolvent printer and we werent making money on it.
i think the only thing that consistently makes us money is screenprint and embroidery. anything digital we have someone else make it and ship to us, its substantially cheaper, easier, faster and less of a headache for us.
if you buy a Roland sticker printer, how much profit can you make per sticker? pennies or dollars?
We have 2 "sticker printers" but we don't really make stickers in that sense, we do car wraps, fleet graphics, signage etc. Sticker shops don't exist around here since it's so easy to go to sticker mule and get 50 stickers for 25 cents... The CriKet Karens Tom is speaking of is a major issue though. Like I've said a million times, they completely suck the value right out of a printed shirt... "Kathy Krafter" has a cute idea for a Cheer T shirt and all of a sudden the cheer team is buying their goods from her, cool there goes another account. They only see the price, zero value in anything else..... Look what's going on with AI and artwork..... It used to take time and skill to create a custom design. Now any idiot with a phone can cough up any design you want, print ready, send it to S&S/ Ninja, get your DTFs and blank Ts and HEY you're in business, zero equipment except an Ebay heat press!...And color count means nothing so you can't really price based on number of print colors anymore....it sucks, HOWEVER the people that buy from us are buying from the relationships and service we provide. Just so happens we sell these type of goods....I know a lot of larger companies wouldn't trust Suzy in her basement to print off 10k worth of merch so go ahead, take all the "Baby's 1st Birthday" T's, but please don't tag me in those posts looking for someone.... You want a fun industry, look at what's going on with music! If anyone follows Rick Beato on YouTube, he's really good at explaining it...AI and technology is causing some serious damage.... It's like we're all in this race to be bigger, better and faster but we have no idea where the finish line is and no real reason to get there first...
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« Last post by Zelko-4-EVA on February 26, 2026, 11:17:08 AM »
i dont think that some of these 'kitchen table shops' calculated the ROI of the equipment - by the time the machine is paid off its not really worth much because in those years the newer generation of printer is better and cheaper to run. i dont think we even broke even on our DTG printer (F2000 epson).
we used to print stickers on a roland ecosolvent printer and we werent making money on it.
i think the only thing that consistently makes us money is screenprint and embroidery. anything digital we have someone else make it and ship to us, its substantially cheaper, easier, faster and less of a headache for us.
if you buy a Roland sticker printer, how much profit can you make per sticker? pennies or dollars?
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Someone on my personal FB feed asked if anyone could make a few tees for a birthday party and I was surprised by the numbers of "I can" that popped up along with those that tagged others. The amount of kitchen table "shops" there are here was unexpected. There were even quite a few who were doing even more such as those with dtf and uv-dtf printers. I also learned that one of the regular shops in town got a larger dtf printer and is selling gang sheets on their fb page. Just last week a regular customer was looking at my Roland VG-2 and said they were thinking about getting one because they thought they could make good money judging by prices they see on sticker mule. Just turned 60 a few weeks ago and it's also 25 years doing this nonsense. I realize none of my equipment, even though it's maintained, will be worth squat. I know this has been discussed before at length, but I truly wonder how long traditional screen printing with be able to hold on. Not meant to be a doom and gloom post, but this is a changing landscape. PS...I've already had schools cutting back on orders, but that's another topic $$$
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This is the sticky part half competent employee
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sharp #11 and half competent employee will get better results. For 12k it better rock me to sleep...
Better yet, get a Keen Cut Evo 3 smart fold. BEST money I've spent in a long time.
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« Last post by Evo on February 25, 2026, 01:41:51 PM »
Bump...ttt
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« Last post by Homer on February 24, 2026, 01:02:38 PM »
sharp #11 and half competent employee will get better results. For 12k it better rock me to sleep...
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« Last post by Admiral on February 23, 2026, 12:58:08 PM »
https://www.printomizeamerica.com/products/flatbed-dtf-cutter-24x35
Yep, you would have to use this first, then put them all in a neat stack yourself, taking away a LOT of time that helps this whole process make sense. We calculated it won't work for us, not as is at least. If you do only DTF printing and larger runs, it can probably make a lot of sense though!
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