How to Start a Screen Printing Business

If you’re interested in how to start a screen printing business, you’re entering a field that’s gained a lot of traction in the past few years. Customers love getting items like white T-shirts or wholesale hoodies screen printed with their favorite pop art, symbols and personalized content. Whether it’s for proud parents or to celebrate school spirit, we break down how to get your screen printing business off the ground!

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Is It Hard to Start a Screen Printing Business?

Starting a screen printing business can seem challenging at first, but once you understand the basics, it’s simply a matter of staying on track. In general, there are three main steps to starting your own screen printing business: researching and planning your company, finding a location and hiring employees. Preparing yourself for these challenges is the most important step when it comes to launching any new business venture. You need to have realistic expectations and be ready to face challenges head-on.

Do Your Due Diligence with Research and Planning

When you start a screen printing business, research and planning are two very important steps.

To start your research, think about what type of screen printing business you want to start. For example, if you want to focus on T-shirt printing, you can decide if you want to print full-color graphics on one side of a shirt or full-bleed graphics that cover both sides.

Because you can print on many different types of materials with screen printing, you should think about how many options you want to start with for your business. Think about the quality of the materials that you want to focus on and how much the costs for those materials will affect your bottom line.

Once you get your research and planning out of the way, you’ll be able to dig into how much the business is going to cost you.

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Prep Your Finances

Screen printing takes lots of upfront capital because you usually need to buy the equipment before you start making money. You’ll need to hire employees if you want to scale your business quickly, so you’ll want to save up as much money as possible beforehand in order to hire them. You can’t wait until you turn a profit to pay the people who are helping you recognize your dreams!

You’ll also need to set up your insurance to cover expenses in case of worker injuries. It may take a while before you turn a profit, so you need to be able to know that you can cover your expenses until then. You can use online tools, such as the various start-up cost calculators, to get an idea of the costs associated with starting a business.

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Choose a Location

When you start a business, you’ll want to find a location where you can easily conduct your business. When settling on your location, keep the following tips in mind:

• A space large enough to store all your equipment, bulk T-shirts supply, hoodies and anything else you need to store.
• Have plenty of room for employees to work and move about.
• A place where you can receive shipments of printed items.
• Because you’ll be working with chemicals and other dangerous materials, you’ll need a well-ventilated space.
• Find a good shipping company that can help you keep costs low if you’re going to be shipping to customers worldwide or globally.

Hire Employees

When you are ready to scale your business, you’ll need to hire employees. Before you hire anyone, you and your business partners must determine clear tasks for each new hire. For example, if you want to focus on printing custom bags and promotional items for businesses, you may want to hire employees to help with the printing and shipping process while hiring others to focus on the actual printing.

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Now You’re Ready to Get Started

Figuring out how to start a screen printing business will take some time, but it can be a lucrative business if you do your prep work ahead of time. Whatever your plan, the Adair Group is ready with what you need to get the process going!