The decoration industry is composed of businesses that utilize six different decoration methods: embroidery, sublimation, direct-to-garment printing, screen print transfers, wide format printing, and screen printing. Some of these businesses focus on just one or two of the these processes. Others offer most, if not all, of them. The ability of a business to be able to fulfill more of their customers’ customization needs can help to gain new customers, and to hold on to existing ones.
Print Fundraising’s goal is for our clients to be able to press their own screen print transfers and outsource any orders they may have for the other decoration processes to us. Being able to offer your customers all six of these decoration processes gives them more options to satisfy their needs and gives you a greater chance of closing a sale. Direct-to-garment, wide format, and sublimation printing all offer full-color, no-minimum printing capabilities. These are attractive features that can entice consumers, but it takes time to learn the processes and the equipment is much more expensive than just a heat press.
Embroidery is also more complicated than pressing screen print transfers, and it can only use up to 15 colors at a time (though using that many is actually quite rare). This is why we want to be your one-stop-shop for outsourcing any of the decoration processes you do not do in-house. Your customers have many needs, so why not fulfill them all? With our help, you can offer embroidered hats, polos, bags, and accessories and make your margin whatever you want.
With sublimation, you can offer products like mugs, plaques, photo panels, and much more. These products make excellent gifts, and with photo-quality custom printing capabilities, they have a high perceived value among customers. Blank products for sublimation are expensive, but because of the perceived value you can easily create a viable margin for your business.
Direct-to-garment printing also allows for full-color, photo quality printing, but onto cotton and certain blended apparel products rather than hard goods. DTG printing works somewhat similar to an inkjet printer, but with several extra steps to the process. However, the end result is a beautifully printed, custom garment.
Wide format printing offers photo quality vinyl banners, canvas, stickers, posters, and wall clings to your customers. Each of these decoration processes adds exciting and fun products to your catalog that your customers will love. Vinyl banners can be used at sporting events, for graduations, and other special events. The other available products all have similar versatility, making them products that practically sell themselves.
Finally, screen printing is the decoration method that does the most volume of the six, by far. This is because screen printing is a decoration method built for volume. The primary problems with screen printing for most product decorators is that full-color designs are difficult to produce and that it is cost prohibitive to print small runs. Going through the extensive setup process to just print a few garments would be a waste of resources and money. Also, whatever products are screen printed become inventory that may or may not sell. That is why we sell schools on the idea of using heat press transfers; they are purchasing blank apparel that can be decorated on demand, and therefore eliminating the need for holding printed inventory that may or may not sell.
Print Fundraising feels that, to unlock the true potential of your business, you have to offer customers something more than a t-shirt. That is why we offer you the ability to offer your customers all six of the product decoration processes. We want your business to succeed, and with our program we believe you will do just that.
