Pricing custom decorated products can be difficult. There are many variable costs that go into decorating a custom product, and it is important to be able to quickly and accurately quote a customer. When pricing custom-decorated products, it is best to keep the product and decoration price separate. This makes quantity discounts easier to calculate and lets the customer know the different product prices quickly. While screen printing is the most common form of apparel decoration, the majority of the custom decoration processes are no minimum, full color processes. DTG, sublimation, and wide format printing all use CMYK inks & digital printers to create finished products. Embroidery is similar, but it does not use CMYK. Instead, each color has its own thread. Since these processes have no minimum, low-run orders with higher margins are more common.
Screen printing and screen print transfers are the two decoration processes that have larger quantity discounts because the costs associated with production come primarily from the setup. Each color in screen printing takes more time, and thus costs more money. Other decoration processes that use digital artwork and print using CMYK inks are much easier to print. Since each color requires more setup time in screen printing, the amount of colors in the artwork is one of the two big determinants of the price. The other factor is the total quantity of prints, because all the setup required for multicolor prints is excessive for small orders. No minimum decoration processes should also have quantity discounts, but not nearly as steep as screen printing. The unit production costs for full color decoration processes does not drop as much as for screen printing. Screen printing profits are low per-unit, but that money is made up due to the volume of prints.
We, at Print Fundraising, have taken the time to create pricing sheet templates for both blank apparel products & accessories and screen print transfers / printing services. These templates allow you to easily view the wholesale price and then create retail prices by setting your profit margins. You should always keep track of your supplier costs, retail prices, and margins. There is a lot of variety in custom gift decoration, so being aware of the difference between the processes and how they affect prices is critical to finding success in the product decoration industry. We feel that with our pricing templates, your decoration business can be as successful as you want it to be.
