Suggestions Hemming vinyl scrim banners - most cost effective way to start out

How many are you going to do? If youre not doing banners daily... And the banners don't have to last for years, Buy some banner tape. $8 a roll.. It's pretty cheap. Adds about a buck to every 8ft banner... Durable enough to last for months, etc.

That's the cheapest way. Most efficient if you don't do a lot of banners. Next I'd say sewing... We've never done it, but we've outsourced for banners that we know had to last for years.

 

1" banner tape and a rubber brayer. Sewing is not necessary unless you're doing webbing and d-rings, really. Now, for outdoor pole mounted banners, sewing is superior. But we have never seen a taped hem fail before the whole banner was faded or shot anyway.

 

cheapest option would be banner tape. Sewing is a better finish but to get a good double needle sewing machine your looking at $3,000-$4,000 easy for the machine. We used to heat seem and switched to sewing for all of our banners.

 

You can use the Dickson Coating JET550 banner that requires NO SEWING or BANNER TAPE. You just print, cut, grommet and go!

 

I will sell the customer whatever he/she wants, but generally they will prefer a sewn hem. Would you want a pair of pants that were taped together? I don't care how "technically superior" a taped hem might be, a sewn hem is what most customers expect and are willing to pay for.

Most wholesalers will sew a hem for about 50¢/foot. That adds about $12 to a 4' x 8' banner. Another good reason to outsource banners. You would have to be making dozens of banners a day to afford a commercial sewing machine, the large sewing tables and shop space, and a trained operator. When I can buy a 4' x 8' 13 oz. digitally printed banner with sewn hems for $36.00 plus shipping...

 

Our customers don't care about sewing. They just want a banner and they don't want the grommets to tear out like they do when you don't hem the banner at all. And, we're finding, they don't like the stick-on corners our competitors use instead of hemming and grommets.