If you have ever looked at someone’s T-Shirt design and thought you could do better, well, maybe you could. If you’ve ever gone into a clothes shop and seen racks full of printed t-shirts and hoodies that are covered in designs and thought that they are something that you may enjoy coming up with, then starting a small garment printing company might be up your street.
This is a contributed post and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of Meet The Harris Family.
Creating Your Designs
You can create your designs using software such as Photoshop or illustrator. Depending on what you would like to put on your T-shirts, you will be able to create simple designs or text-based prints relatively quickly using the software.
Be imaginative. If you’re planning on selling them, you will want to create a product that you think people will buy.
Cutting Your Vinyl Transfers
Once you’re happy with the design, you will need to print it onto the garment. To do this, you will need a vinyl cutter and a heat press.
Using a programmable machine, you can cut out bespoke vinyl designs that you can press onto almost any garment. Check out the vinylcuttingmachineguide best vinyl cutting machine for the job. You’ll want a machine that will be pretty hardwearing as they may end up getting a lot of use, especially if you start selling a lot of garments.
Your vinyl cutter will score your design into a sheet of vinyl. You will then need to remove any of the excess vinyl that surrounds your design before you are ready to apply it to the garment.
Creating Your Garments
Once the vinyl is cut out, you can get it onto your T-shirt. You will need to place the garment under a heat press with the vinyl in the right place. If you are printing a run of the same item, you will need to make sure that you are always placing the design in exactly the same position on the T-shirt. The heat press works similarly as ironing on a design, but it is a lot quicker and easier to do.
Attention To Detail
Getting your design looking perfect is vital. You’ll need to make sure that it is straight and that there is no stretching or distortion of the print. The vinyl may ripple under the heat press if you do not take care to get it right, and if you hold the garment under the heat for too long, it may become discoloured or shiny.
Selling Your Garments
There are a few ways that you could go about selling your items. One simple and cheap option would be to open an Esty store. You could market yourself across a range of social media and then process all of your sales through Etsy. There will be very little in the way of operational overheads this way, so aside from the cost of the equipment and the supplies needed to make the items, you will be able to maximize your potential profits quite easily.
