People often ask me, Andrey, you print everything from stickers to banners. Why no T-shirts? Surprisingly, I tried. And today is a story about why this business branch failed miserably for me.
6 years ago, I decided to start clothing printing. I started simple; I bought film, a plotter, and a heat press. I cut out letters and ironed them onto the fabric. I sold them on marketplaces. Then an employee came to me with an offer. He said, Let me take over the production as a partner. I will handle the technical part and equipment, and you handle marketing, sales, packaging, and shipping. I agreed. We shook hands, and he bought a special printer for direct to garment printing, or DTG. This is when the printer applies ink directly to the fabric without any films.
I made a website for Estonia, posted ads on Okidoki, and uploaded new designs to Etsy and Amazon. It seemed like it would take off. But reality turned out to be harsher. First, the equipment. The printer was Chinese, although expensive. It constantly broke down, the ink leaked, applied unevenly, in layers, or dried up. There were a ton of defective products.
Second, the Estonian market. Back then, the market in Estonia was dominated by guys from T sargipood who sold T-shirts for 10 or 12 euros. Our math did not add up. The T-shirt itself, plus ink, plus depreciation, came out to about 6 or 8 euros. Plus tax.
In the end, the net margin from one order was 1 or 2 euros. It was simply not profitable to deal with single orders for such pennies. It was only interesting to do wholesale orders of 10 or more items, but such orders were rare.
We bet on export through marketplaces, where the margin was about 30 percent. But then a double blow hit us. First, Omniva raised its delivery prices to the US. And then the giant Printful aggressively entered the market. They have huge factories in Europe and America. Ordering printing from them with delivery to the client turned out to be cheaper than for us to just print and ship from Estonia.
We worked in this mode for half a year. My partner realized there was nothing to catch here and decided to develop in another field.
I also crunched the numbers, and in the end, we sold the equipment, paid off my partner's loan, and parted ways peacefully. We still talk, and everything is great. Back then, we did not have enough resources or knowledge to fight the giants.
#mistakes #tshirtprinting #printful
