Web Based

More and more these days companies are relying on the Internet for sales and marketing of their products. It is no secret that web generated sales are increasing at an exponential rate, The direct to garment business is ideal for Internet sales and building of customer databases and mailing lists. A lot of orders printed on direct to garment printers are short run, the average order being 5 garments per sales. The orders are usually highly customized & have a lot of colors. Traditional printing methods cannot easily cater for these print requirements.

There are ready made tools available that allow you to start your online business as either a single website or as a multi-tier affinity website system whereby you can literally have hundreds of websites selling your product.

We highly recommend that you research DecoNetwork for instant online sales, design and marketing opportunities.

Talk to your DTG dealer for further information on web generated sales.

Store Front

Shop front apparel decoration businesses have been around for many years, this alone is a clear sign that if properly planned and executed a shop front based business can be highly successful.  Many of these businesses have evolved from some form of complimentary business – such as a sewing store adding in-house embroidery to complement their products to moderate to large screen printers opening a retail location to market their products.  Only recently has the demand for highly custom (oftentimes one-off) t-shirt printing become a viable entry into this marketplace.

As with any store front business – there are three very important factors to consider, in order, to maximize the potential for your business.  They are – location, location, location.  Your decision to run a storefront business means that you are counting on a decent amount of your business traffic coming from people passing by your shop and making a mental note of the location to return when they have the need.  Now, one twist on that would be a storefront in a heavy traffic area leading to a “destination” such as an amusement park, or tourist destination.  Another example would be a store or kiosk in a shopping mall where individuals might be tempted to make an impulse purchase because of the store front.

Regardless of your model for a storefront, it is important to supplement your new business with alternative methods of advertising – yellow pages, direct mail, sponsorships and the like.  If you are an existing business that is adding a storefront you can advertise to your existing customer base through email campaigns or special invitations to your “Grand Opening”.

Direct to garment printing is ideal for walk in traffic as a garment decorator.  The ability to quickly go from computer screen to garment in a matter of minutes allows you to either fulfill the order or get a commitment on the spot – try doing that with screen printing.

One of the biggest advantages of having a retail storefront is the opportunities to add-on to the original order.  If you properly merchandise your business your customers will be exposed to all of the different products you can decorate for them – be it beach towels, hoodies or sweats.  Add this to the desire of a good percentage of consumers who want a more personalized experience when they spend their hard earned money and you have a good recipe for a successful business.

Fashion/Strike Off

A huge emerging market is the fashion industry who are now turning to DTG printing methods in order to create limited but very high margin product ranges. Fashion ranges can be branded for specific events, inventory can be controlled by producing limited numbers for certain shops only. This is particularly true in the street wear industry.

One of the biggest growth areas in the fashion industry is the ability to generate instant stike-offs. A surfwear company that wants to submit a few hundred designs to their retail outlets to create the next summer or winter range of retail clothing can now print samples on demand at a very low cost. The burden and high cost of creating films, screens etc has been completely eliminated by adoption of digital technology.

Graphic artists now have the freedom to make instant design changes. A design is made, immediately printed on a garment and designs are adjusted if the results are not satisfactory, this was a complete impossibility before the arrival of DTG technology.

Increasing demand for panel prints with white inks for fashion companies is now available for medium to large production platforms. Consider the workflow diagrams below for production concepts with lean-tech production flow carts.

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Printer Cell Rack Layout
Printer cell Flow Rack p1
Printer cell Flow Rack p2
Printer cell Flow Rack p3

Contract Production

DTG printing does not have to be solely about retail or B2B sales. There is a huge amount of contract production that can be generated through like minded businesses who may not ever wish to implement in house DTG production, but who still have a need for a DTG printing service.

Consider all your local, embroidery, screenprint, promotional, signage, trophy, uniform, streetwear, workwear and even event management businesses. It is unrealistic to think that they would all run their own DTG machine. Make contact with them, offer your services and develop relationships, who knows, there could be a huge opportunity for a reciprocal business relationship that can generate a stable income.