For the past few months I have been wanting to try and do my own screenprinting on t-shirts. Every time this thought enters my head, I ask myself why? I have this little dream of opening up a “screen printed by hand” t-shirt shop on Etsy, but why? Surely the process of buying shirts, printing them by hand, curing the ink, photographing them, uploading pictures, writing a description, communicating with the buyer, packaging the shirt, making sure the right shirt goes to the right customer, and then driving to the post office would be more time consuming and therefore less profitable then selling my designs on a POD website. Not to mention that I would have to store the shirts, ink, screens and mailing supplies somewhere in my little apartment (which is finally clean, thank you God!). I still want to do it though, I think it’s an artsy thing. Just for kicks, I decided to break down all the costs and see what the actual profit might be.

First off I would need materials. Specifically blank t-shirts, screen printing supplies, ink, and mailing bags. The first obstacle is buying blank t-shirts at wholesale prices. In order to do that I have to have a wholesale account with a company such as American Apparel. In order to get an account I have to have a business tax ID number. In order to do that I have to register as a business with the state of Illinois and I don’t really want to go through all that trouble right now. Fortunately I found a website that sells moderately cool blank t-shirts at wholesale prices that does not require a tax ID number. So I figure that will work for a while, if I do decide to go ahead with it.

I’ve already ordered a starter screen printing kit called EZScreen, (I think, or else it’s PhotoEZ, can’t remember). I bought some extra screens and inks with it and also bought some super cheap white onesies at JCPenney to practice on.

Let’s assume that the average cost of a basic blank t-shirt is $4.50. I have no idea what the ink cost per shirt is, since it would depend on the size and number of colors in the design, but for the sake of this little experiment I’ll just assume a cost of $1.00 per shirt.

So now I have a base cost of $5.50 per shirt, which is pretty good considering that base price of many shirts at Cafepress is $10.00-$15.00 more than that.

Then I have to take into account all of the fees. Etsy charges $.20 to list an item and when it sells takes 3.5% of the selling price (not including shipping). Then when the buyer pays through Paypal, they charge $.30 + 2.9% of the payment (for businesses bringing in less than $3000 per month). Then I would also have to have mailing bags, which would cost about $.07 each.

So, assuming that I manage to sell a shirt for $25.00 and charge $4.00 for shipping, the fees would eat up $2.29. I might make some of that up on shipping costs, $4.00 is just an educated guess. Disregarding the shipping: $25.00 – $2.29 (fees/mailing bag) – $5.50 (shirt/ink) = $17.21 in profit. Print the shipping label from Paypal and then I can just drop it in the mail instead of driving to the Post Office. Not too shabby.

But then I start thinking about it and I run into more issues. First off, this would likely be a joint venture with my sister, which would cut my profit in half. (But it also might allow us to be twice as productive). We would have to divide the duties, and I’m thinking I would do the designing and screen making, since I’m the “artistic one”. We could both do the printing, and she could do the bookkeeping and mailing, since she’s the “smart one”. (Actually I’m smarter)

The problem comes when I start thinking about how much my time is worth. With my pod shops I can make a design once, and have potentially profit from it until the end of time with no additional work. I don’t have to make each individual shirt. I don’t have to answer questions from customers. I don’t have to drive to the Post Office and wait in line and fill out a customs form when someone from Canada buys a shirt. I don’t have to deal with returns. I don’t have to worry about Paypal locking up my bank account when someone files a claim. I can spend all my time designing and being artsy and I can take a week or a month off with no loss of income.

After taking everything into consideration I nearly talk myself out of it. But I still might try it for a few reasons. It would be fun. I would have more freedom in designing since I could put the design anywhere on the shirt, or do some sleeve printing, etc. I also think it’s not a good idea to rely only on pod websites, as recent changes have made clear.

So I’ll probably give it a shot after Christmas and see what happens.

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