for t shirts look into
T-Shirt Printing Equipment - Pantograms.com the oki CMYW machine is waaaay cool..
by far the product that machine makes is incredible. ask for a sample... and you can sub to them for the transfers, and just heat press the shirts.
Since your starting out -
sub contract as much as you can to start. Get the feel for what sells and what makes money. Every town is different. There are some great suppliers on here as merchant members. Sub first, equip when you reach 80 sq ft a day consistently or if the timelines dont accomodate subcontract.
By subbing you'll skip the hassles of learning and managing color management and product matrix selections, just concentrate on design and installation, thats what keeps clients. ASK YOUR SUPPLIER FOR THE ICC PROFILES THEY USE FOR THE MATERIAL AND USE THOSE.
PRO TIP FOR THE NEWBS: Upsell your clients to traditional 4 color process work and make money of your design skills. I get an additional $500 to $800 per client per year with this. I use 4over.com and growll.com as my trade printers. 4over has brutally competitive prices, fast delivery, online proofing, and even has a virtual front end that you can totally personalize to make a webstore for your clients. They offer grand format in limited capacity with UV printed magnetics, popup banners, and flags that are quite nice. Theyre usually quick. Im impressed by their output and im a print snob - (I use the standard gracol2006swop profile from
GRACoL - Idealliance for consistent color with both firms).. I can double or triple their prices and still be in the low end of the market - for example - they sell 1000 4/0 UV business cards on 14 pt stock for $12, shipping is usually $6, I sell those for $85 plus half an hour of design time ($60) and am very competitive.
MARKETING PRO TIP: Take a very good photo of the wrap (you need it for your portfolio anyway), put it into a sexy biz card layout, and give the client 500 cards (your cost about $16)... they'll be wowed.. you'll get a reason to revisit them a week after the sale, and they'll now know that you can do other work for them.. At very least they'll reorder those cards from you and you have a loyal repeat client..
as for laminator- yes yes yes you need one. aint no way your wraps will make 6 months without laminate or liquid clearcoat. The laminator doubles your entry cost.
as for printer width, you gotta match the laminator and laminates to it. so ask yourself - for that tiny strip of film that you have to add to a hood wrap, which you know will die in 2 years, is it worth the extra $4000 or so in combined printer and laminator cost? If so then go big - to a 74" printer, and a 66" inch laminator. Those extra print inches will pay off in banners.. learn how to weld banner stock and you can hit some big banner work that others pass on.
remember that the cost of keeping a second roll stock of base/lam on hand for hoods means you need to run a lot of wraps to offset the invested value, or you accept the the "drop" and wrap everything in 60" film.. surprisingly 54" fits most vehicles well. I've wrapped cars since 1995,and 54" has been fine IMHO...
