Advice for Starting Your Own Screen Printing Business

Get tips for running your own home-based business with little more than a screen printing machine.

Do you want to start your own screen printing business? Are you looking for a screen printing kit that will help you get started? Billions of dollars are spent annually in North America on t-shirts, uniforms, hats, and other promotional items that can be created with a screen printing machine. Startup costs for a screen printing business generally range from $2,000 to $10,000. 

If you’re creative, like working with your hands, and have excellent sales and marketing abilities, starting a screen printing business out of your home could be a smart choice. The initial investment in screen printing equipment is relatively small and the materials are cheap and easy to obtain, so the potential return on investment (ROI) is significant. Here are some tips that could help you launch and run a successful screen printing business.

Determine What Items You Want to Promote

From t-shirts and tote bags to mugs and mouse pads, you can create a variety of items with screen printing. Your customer base is practically limitless and may include companies, schools, sports teams, church groups, and other organizations. However, it’s ideal to focus on a niche target market and own it. Find out what your target audience’s needs are when it comes to promotional products so you can determine which products to focus on.

Leasing vs. Buying Screen Printing Equipment

If you’re starting a small screen printing operation, you’re probably better off buying equipment rather than leasing it. If you’re looking at a larger setup, however, you may want to lease the equipment to start. At Printa Systems, we offer a lease-to-own program for our screen printing and pad printing lines.

List Every Sports Team in Your Area That Needs Uniforms and Promotional Items

List all of the sports teams in your area that need uniforms and other promotional items, such as caps and t-shirts. Sports teams tend to wait till the last minute to place orders for such items and may struggle to organize all of the right sizes and design images for printing. You can make things easier for them by organizing it all for them in advance. If they’re satisfied with your work, they’ll likely order from your screen printing business every year for years to come.

Grab a Calendar and List Every Holiday and Event That You Can Think of

Make a note of various holidays and events in your calendar so you can come up with product and design ideas, promote your services, and be ready to take orders for holidays and events well in advance.  

Develop a Comprehensive Marketing Plan

The screen printing industry is extremely competitive, so it is crucial to develop a comprehensive marketing plan. Identify all of the businesses selling the same product as you in your market and then determine how you can add more value. Every person you meet could potentially be your customer, so make sure that you reach as many people as possible and let them know that you can screen print on a variety of items, including t-shirts, fleeces, aprons, uniforms, towels, tote bags, key chains, name tags, notebooks, etc.

Unless you’re starting out with a built-in niche or pre-existing social network, investing in marketing and advertising will be an inevitable part of your screen printing business’s budget. Marketing is the key to attracting new customers, which is important in the screen printing industry since even your most loyal customers probably won’t have a need to place orders that frequently. Developing a high-quality product and offering it at a reasonable price is also important because it powers word-of-mouth marketing.

We live in a time when free and inexpensive advertising is available through online marketing methods like social media, pay-per-click advertising, SEO, and blogging. However, the downside of free and cheap marketing is that anybody can do it, so the marketplace is more crowded than ever before. It takes intense dedication and creativity to come up with marketing strategies that make your screen printing business stand out and attract the attention of new customers.

Launch a Lucrative Screen Printing Business with Printa Systems

Whether you want to start a business with an easy-to-use screen printing kit or you’d like to add more sophisticated equipment to your existing screen printing business, Printa Systems can help. Printa Systems are a fun and effective way to increase profitability. Click on the following link for more information about our products and services: www.printa.com/catalog.