Gaining the Most from Your Transfer Sheet
There are a lot of advantages to using screen printed transfers to print your custom apparel. One of the many reasons is that you can order your t-shirt transfers as a gang sheet. This can be a huge cost savings to you in your t-shirt printing business.
To back up a moment, a screen printed transfer is simply a design that is screen printed onto a special release paper instead of directly printed onto a t-shirt or other apparel. We print this transfer for you, and then all you have to do is heat apply it with a heat press onto a blank shirt. It’s that easy. We can use your own artwork that you upload, or we have literally thousands upon thousands of artwork layouts that you can customize to make your own design. You don’t have to be an artist.
Screen printed transfers are priced by how many sheets you order and the number of colors in your design. The more sheets you order, the cheaper the “per sheet” price is. We mentioned that you can save printing costs by using gang sheets. A gang sheet is when you have multiple images on one sheet. Since our transfers are priced by the sheet, it doesn’t matter how many images you have on your sheet; it is all the same price, whether you have 1 image or 10 images on a sheet. This is where you can really save some money using transfers.
Your transfer sheet is yours to design as you wish. Fill it with as much as you can to get the most out of your order. Our transfer sheet size is 11.25” x 14”.
Typically, a standard adult size print is about 11” wide. Depending on the design orientation, meaning if it is more of a horizontal or vertical design, you may be able to fit more than 1 on a sheet. For example, say your design is 11” wide by 6” tall. You can fit 2 on a sheet, or as we like to call it “2 up” for short.
Left chest designs, or heart designs, are popular on t-shirts and polo shirts, especially custom shirts for businesses, restaurants, etc. Usually, this type of design is around 4.5” x 4.5”. In this case, you can fit 6 up, or 6 screen printed images on each sheet. That means you can print 6 shirts from one transfer sheet!
Keep in mind, that these images will need cut apart before heat pressing with your t-shirt press. We just suggest to leave .5” between your images. Depending on how your sheet is set up, we also offer a cutting service. We will cut your images apart for you for an additional $0.20 per image, but this is optional if you choose.
There are so many ways to get the most out of your transfer sheet. You don’t have to limit yourself to putting the same design on the sheet either. As long as it’s the same ink color, you can add many different images to one sheet. For example, you can add an adult size shirt print for a baseball team, a cap logo, and a bat bag logo – all using a separate design for each.
Let’s say that you have a customer doing front shirt prints only. They don’t want a cap, a sleeve print or anything else. You have your main design on the sheet, but there is plenty of space left over still. Don’t leave this area blank! It’s free space for you. Think ahead. Add your own logo to the sheet. Since this space is not costing you anything extra to print, you can print promotional items for your business for free!
Do you have customers that come back to you order after order, such as a school? Print some of their mascot or school name as an extra on orders that you have extra space for, even if it’s not the school’s order that you are designing at the time. These types of prints can come in handy in the future. You got the prints for free, so anything you heat apply them to didn’t cost you anything to print. If you don’t end up using them all, it doesn’t matter either.
Some other ideas include printing your city name. Have a few shirts on display to sell as a stock design. Do you live near an attraction? Use this as a stock design to sell. Do you have multiple orders at once that are using the same ink color? Put them on the same sheet and place only 1 order!
Do you see how transfers can save you money by planning out your orders? As long as you have an empty space left on your screen printed transfer sheet, add something there. It doesn’t cost you anything extra and all you’re doing is getting more images to print something later.
The key is planning ahead. Price out the job. We have pricing calculators online and price grids in our printed Price Guide. You’re in business for a reason. Make good business decisions, starting with even the small ones. Anything you save money on, is money in your pocket.
One more example. Say you have a short run of 10 shirts. Because of the design size, you can fit 2 up on a sheet. It’s 1 color and you are getting a standard ink, using our artwork. Since it fits 2 up, you only need 5 sheets. Do you get 5 sheets with 2 images on each sheet for a total of 10 images? You could. First, put your thinking cap on. Think of it this way. You can get 5 sheets with 2 up, for a total price of approximately $40. That gives you a “per image” price of $4.00 each. Or, if you get 10 sheets and put 1 image on the sheet, it is still about $40 in this case, with a per image cost still of about $4.00. Choose wisely, grasshopper. If you choose 10 sheets, 1 up, you have a whole blank area to fit more of your own images on! For basically the same price, you will still get your 10 main images you need, but then you can fit on other prints, too, whether they are stock designs you want to sell, your own logo for promotional pieces, sample pieces for customers, etc.
The point here is this: plan, think, and think again. Price out your jobs multiple ways so you can get the most for your printing costs. Who knows, the next job you print, could cost you a lot less. By still selling it at your normal price, your profits are higher.
Bonus Tip:
Do you have your own company logo? Save it as a Custom Clip Art so you can use it in our online designer, Easy View®, and still get Easy Prints® pricing. It makes it super easy when you have a little extra space left on the sheet and you want to add your custom logo… over and over again, order after order. In a recent post, we talked about the importance of your brand. By adding your logo on the sheet in every order you can, you can build up a collection of your logo transfers to brand all your apparel or to print on various promotional products as give-a-ways.